Just Do Something
We waste a great deal of time trying to do something meaningful, really creative, a marvelous piece of art but it is my belief that what we should be doing is anything that moves the rock a little further along the road. Our goal is to be a creative and expressive artist and shouldn’t be just to paint a painting our family and friends will love. It is nice to get those accolades and it is nice to paint a work that looks like something but if we live for the accolades soon our work will be stiff and predictable due to our fear of losing our audience. We live in fear of the “what is this I like your other work better, don’t you paint flowers and lighthouses anymore, those were real paintings. This new stuff, I don’t get it at all”.
In your work space keep lots of different creative tools and always be adding stuff to your repertoire. Your personal talent toolbox should be overflowing with new approaches and techniques that can be used to enhance your work. Spend some time drawing with different mediums, different pencils, crayons, water soluble pencils, ink, learn to express line not just draw the picture as it is. Stop tracing until you learn to draw.
Experiment with brushwork, 10 minutes a day, mix colors look at the relationship of colors, transparent colors next to opaque, pure tones next to grayed, use colors you never use, Don’t paint a painting just mess around on some paper god knows we have enough bad paintings that we can use the backs of for practice.
The more you experiment with new skills the more the ideas will come to you. Remember when you get a good idea write it down and try a quick sketch of the idea, begin and idea book. Soon you will have a long list of new things to try but they will come as a result of doing things and the more you work this way the more ideas you will come up with.
Artist Studio
