Category: Monday Motivator

“… producing more ideas creates more chances for a genuinely strong idea to emerge … [though q]uantity does not magically transform mediocre work into great work.

… As humans, we are remarkably bad at predicting which idea will become brilliant. We suck at figuring out which work of art will be a masterpiece. We don’t know which experiment or prototype will be groundbreaking. So, instead of trying to make every first attempt brilliant, we increase our odds by creating more possibilities.”

John Spencer, “How Quantity Can Improve the Quality of Project-Based Learning“

There isn’t an art rule that stipulates you may paint a particular subject only once and then need to move on to something else. Yet it’s something I encounter frequently, with both beginners and not-beginners. “Do it once and move on”, whereas it wants to be “do it once, then again exploring what ideas the previous painting prompted or weren’t explored”. One attempt leads to another and another.

This is not to say it all has to happen immediately, the timescale can be short and long.

“What is play when drawing… drawing for drawing’s sake I guess. Play has no expectations, no projected outcomes, it’s a journey of discovery that so many of us feel we’ve lost. It’s a headspace full of empty and just being. It’s drawing in the sand with a stick, with a finger on misted glass, it’s pulling hands through wet paint and daubing it somewhere. It’s doesn’t ask for validation or approval, it just is.”

Carrie Stanley, Making a Mark of Existence

How do you get yourself to pull a pen across the surface of a piece of paper with the same ease and insouciance with which we pull a twig through the sand as we sit at beach?

A twig-in-sand drawing is inherently impermanent; if the wind doesn’t erase it, the tide will. So it doesn’t matter what we draw.

A pen-on-paper drawing is but one piece of paper and a few millilitres of ink; if you ruin the sheet, turn it over and have another go.

It feels counter-intuitive but it helps to use ink rather than pencil. It forces you to respond what’s happening in the drawing rather than being able to change your mind by reaching for an eraser. Aim to accept that mistakes are inevitable, let them be, and keep going to see what happens.

Accept that it’s about the doing not the result. About putting down ink on a surface, about playing with lines, not predetermined outcomes.

“These works aren’t designed to make themselves immediately understood. Lennox [Dunbar] builds, dismantles, layers, removes and rebuilds. Painting, collage, found forms, marks and fragments come together through intuition, experience and chance.

His work asks you to spend time with it. To look. And sometimes to accept that not understanding something immediately is precisely the point.

Tighnabruaich Gallery, Surface Tension exhibition post on Instagram

Instead of instantly asking “What is it?”, ask yourself “How long have I looked at this?”.

Not looking with a negative judgement uppermost in our thoughts, but looking that’s paying attention to what we’re seeing and letting our brains unpick, connect elements, shapes, colours, layers.

We’re never going to like every piece of art, not even everything by our favourite artists. Being intrigued by a piece and engaging with it, even if you ultimately don’t want it hanging it on your wall, is learning to look beyond the obvious.

With confident humility, you remain confident in your ability to learn while remaining aware that your current knowledge may be incomplete. Humility without confidence often leads to anxiety and risk-aversion. We should absolutely feel confident about concepts we’ve learned, knowledge we’ve attained, and skills that we’ve mastered. But that sense of mastery should be tempered with a humble recognition that there might be new ideas or better approaches that we might be missing.

… when you want feedback on a performance asking, “What can I do differently next time?” (An advice based question) works better than “How did I do?”

… We don’t simply need lifelong learners. We need lifelong unlearners and relearners.

John Spencer, “Why Confident Humility is a Critical Skill in a Generative Age“

What can I do differently? What if I had chosen another option when making a decision in a painting, where it have led? How do I remember the choices later on? What if whenever I make a choice I write a quick note in a sketchbook of what I chose and what I didn’t? I wouldn’t end up with a recipe book, more a dictionary of ingredients and possibilities.

“[P]aint the same subject ten times on purpose. Call it a series and repetition becomes the point. Ten barns in ten lights is a study of light.”

James Gurney, “Obstacles to Making Art (and How to Overcome them)“

There’s no “rule of art” stipulating that we may only paint a subject only once. We can paint as many variations as we wish, whether it’s pursuing an idea that hasn’t yet resolved itself sufficiently, in different mediums or sizes, across the seasons or years or times of day, or for the sheer enjoyment of the subject. Such as sunflowers, which I’ve been painting again, for a few weeks now.

The one below I painted on Saturday during my open studio. I might still strengthen the yellow and add a touch of green, or maybe not, it’ll depend how I feel when I see it with fresh eyes.

I’ve put a sheet of newsprint underneath the dying sunflowers, partly so the falling petals are clearly visible and partly because it will make it easy to deal with them when I decide it’s time they went into the compost.

“The senses always operate in the present. To look at something is absolutely a different experience from remembering the look of something. Once painters began to work from direct observation … a new time element enters painting.”

Andrew Forge, “Monet at Giverny”, page 11

The time it takes to create an individual painting is a measure of multiple things, though I suspect most people asking “how long did it take you to paint?” mean the time spent with a brush in my hand spreading paint on a surface.

Time spent figuring out what a particular art material does, until manipulating it becomes intuitive, muscle-memory driven. Learning to use a dip or fountain pen, permanent or water-soluble ink, took time.

Now I sit in a landscape and draw without having to spend time on how my fude pen nib works; my time is spent using it, enjoying it, and looking. There’s always something to see differently.

“When the journey is long and life keeps moving around you, it may be hard to shut everything off and become perfectly still. But what if, even among all that remains unfinished, slowing down could create a little room along the way to imagine what has not yet had room to appear?

“… What future awaits your courage, beyond the hesitations born from external pressures?”

Morgan Harper Nichols, “Making Space for Possibility“

Wanting to know the outcome before you put pen or brush to paper denies you the journey, the meandering path with unexpected things (albeit not necessarily desirable) that is far more interesting than the fastest, straightest route. What future painting awaits your courage, beyond the hesitations born from being in a rush to finish it?

I thrive on painting a subject multiple times, starting a new one when a piece gets to the point where I worry about messing it up. My second attempt regularly doesn’t go anywhere more satisfying because I am trying to hard, but the third or fourth often flies to places that I couldn’t see when I started.

The “secret” to my painting “Incoming Tide” above is the unresolved plein-air painting that I cut up and used as collage. Without the first painting, this one wouldn’t exist. The flower painting below I rearranged sections; see its evolution here. I inevitably hesitate before destroying a painting, but once the first cut or tear is made there’s no going back, only seeing where it leads.