Category: Monday Motivator

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Art Myths: If You Can’t Draw, You Can’t Paint

Art Myths: If You Can?t Draw, You Can?t Paint

Art Myths: If You Can?t Draw, You Can?t PaintNever let the belief that you can’t draw stop you from learning to paint. A painting is not a drawing waiting to be coloured in and, conversely, a drawing isn’t an artwork waiting for paint to be added to it.

While traditionally an artist studied drawing for several years before starting with paint, if you want to get straight into paint, then do. You can always acquire drawing skills at a later stage; in the meantime you won’t have wasted time sitting around wishing you were painting (see: Never Moving Beyond Liking the Idea of Being Creative).

I strongly believe that if you don’t like or are afraid of drawing, for whatever reason, then forget about drawing and jump straight into painting. Ultimately, it’s that you’re doing it that’s important, not the road you take to get there.

Painting involves its own set of skills, which complement but are different to those for drawing. Learning to use tone, perspective,the illusion of depth, etc. can be done while learning to paint. The advantage of doing so while learning to draw is that you don’t have the distraction of colour and pencil is easier to ‘undo’ to fix errors. But if you don’t like graphite or charcoal, don’t let this stop you. Get stuck straight into the wet, colourful stuff! Even if you were an expert at drawing, you’d need to learn how to manipulate paint.

Drawing is a different way of creating art. Having drawing skills will definitely help with your painting, but if you hate pencils and charcoal, this doesn’t mean you can’t learn to paint. Drawing is not merely an initial step in making a painting. You don’t need to do a detailed drawing before you start to paint; while many artists do, many others don’t. I typically do a minimalist drawing of my intended composition before starting to paint (take a look at this step-by-step video demo to see an example).

There is no rule that says you must draw before you paint if you don’t want to and no approval committee checking your process. Never let a belief that you can’t draw a stick figure or even a straight line stop you from discovering the enjoyment that painting can bring. Besides, straight lines are easy…use a ruler!

“Painting embraces all the 10 functions of the eye; that is to say, darkness, light, body and color, shape and location, distance and closeness, motion and rest.”
— Leonardo da Vinci

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Monday Motivator: Toil

Art motivational quote“I tell myself that anyone who says he has finished a canvas is terribly arrogant. Finished means complete, perfect, and I toil away without making any progress, searching, fumbling around, without achieving anything much.” — Monet, 1893
(Quoted in Painting Outside the Lines by David W Galenson, p49

It can be terribly demotivating when you feel like you’re constantly struggling to create satisfying paintings while those around you seem to have it come easily. But are you seeing the artist’s process and progress, or looking only at the end results? The few selected pieces the artist shows the world are not the full story, they don’t tell you how many paintings were never finished, how many hours were spent pondering a pristine canvas. Doubts and fears are part of the process; reconcile yourself to this, then use them as motivation to keep pursuing the impossible.

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Enhanced Colour in a Landscape

[Kahn] “…plays with imaginary color in an otherwise commonplace landscape. The simple image of a river bend becomes a chromatic fantasy ‘so entirely about color that you don’t even think about dark and light’.”
(Source: Wolf Kahn page 90)

Isle of Skye roads paintingHow realistic does colour need to be in a landscape painting? How far can you intensify it before it becomes unreal, and does that necessarily mean it doesn’t work? How much can you enhance what you see to create an emotional impact or to convey the strength with which you experience the landscape?

If you let colour overtake everything else in the composition it becomes a painting with its roots in realism. A painting about colour rather than landscape, but the roots give viewers a way into the painting. A way to relate to it and feel you’re able to understand it (or some of it) rather than being completely lost about what you’re looking at as often happens with pure abstracts. Whether you limit the realism to ‘roots’ only, or add a few more aspects of the landscape (‘branches’ and ‘leaves’), that’s when an interesting dance can happen as you juggle realism and abstraction.

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Monday Motivator: Persist

Art motivational quote“If you persist instead of giving up, then comes the one moment at which there is a chance of going forward a little. And not only do you have the impression of going forward a little, but sometimes you suddenly have the impression — even if it is only an illusion — of a tremendous opening.”
— Giacometti

Quoted in Master Artists: Giacometti by Yves Bonnefoy

It can, undoubtedly, be hard to keep at it. I don’t always, and sometimes when I do things go from bad to worse. I tend to persist for a bit (a “bit” being anywhere between 10 minutes and a few hours), then put it aside for another day. For a time when I’m able to think of something specific to do with it or willing to let go of what I’ve already done and be dramatic or willing to be more patient with it. Some of the paintings I’ve been most pleased with had frustrating starts. (The converse applies too.)

How do you keep at it? You just do, in the knowledge it’s a marathon not a sprint. The memory of those times when suddenly you know what a painting wants, or you inadvertently do it, provides the motivation when you’re struggling uphill. Persistence creates endurance; endurance enables persistence.

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(Soft) Shadows

“The cast shadow creates an effect just like a splotch of ink that is dropped on a subtly modelled drawing done in delicate halftones. For this reason artists generally eliminate, or soften, cast shadows by toning them down, so that the form beneath can be read.”

— Nathan Cole Hale,Abstraction in Art & Nature, page 17

Cast and Form Shadows in Art
Next time you have a cuppa, take the time to study the difference between the mug’s form and cast shadows.

A cast shadow is the one that “falls on the ground” when the sun or strong light shines. It is more like a dark glaze than a streak of opaque black; we still see a lot in a shadow. Yes we want tonal contrast in a painting for visual interest, a fair distance between the lightest and darkest tones, but tread softly, with colourful dark footprints, don’t stomp shadows in with flat black. A cast shadow isn’t the same throughout either, it gets lighter the further away it is from the object creating (casting) it, and the edges softer (less distinct).

A form shadow is the “dark side of the moon”, the darker tones on the opposite side of an object to where the light’s falling. These are even softer than cast shadows. They are essential for creating the illusion of 3D in a painting or drawing. How much form shadow you see depends on the light direction; if most of the subject is in direct light, there’s very little (unless you walk around to view the other side of it). If you find the thought of two types of shadow confusing, try labelling a form shadow as “lack of light” instead.

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Monday Motivator: Every Drawing Should

Art motivational quoteEvery drawing should tell a story, the tale of the looking, the seeing, and the making. …the drawing is as much about the artist as it is about what is being drawn.”

Drawing Projects by Mick Maslen & Jack Southern, page 20

The “tale of the looking” are the lines/marks in a drawing that have led to the final drawing. The lines in the wrong places, the imperfections, the hesitations. Don’t erase to eliminate, but leave an echo which will add to the final drawing. Drawings that show how they were created, what the artist looked at and how they progressed, end up far more interesting than neat, clinical, faultless drawings. Drawings with individual personality rather than drawings with bland facelift perfection.

Drawing Tip: If you can’t help but desire that every wrong mark is eradicated, then work without an eraser. Start with light pencil marks and move slowly towards darker as you find the “right lines”. Try working with a hard pencil, such as a 2H, initially, then swapping to a 2B.

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Monday Motivator: Going Back

Art motivational quote?There are always new emotions in going back to something that I know very well. I suppose this is very odd, because most people have to find fresh things to paint.”

— Andrew Wyeth, quoted in The Helga Pictures, page 94

Being familiar with a subject isn’t the same as knowing everything about it. On the contrary, I think the more you paint it the more you discover. In landscape painting, weather, season and time of day all have an impact on what you’re looking at. Your own mood influences your perceptions on that day. It’s never identical.

A painting need not be one moment in time, but various moments, combining observations, experiences, and memories into one image.

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Monday Motivator: At First a Speck

Art motivational quote?At first it seemed a little speck,
And then it seemed a mist;
It moved and moved, and took at last
A certain shape, I wist.?

From The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Isn?t this how a painting happens: the first brushmark, so important at the time but ultimately a mere speck.

A mist of possible ways to approach an idea, finding clarity by moving with and through them. Colours shifting on the surface, possibilities changing and solidifying.

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A Sky That Tastes of Rain

Rothko painting colours in the clouds

“A sky that tastes of rain that’s still to fall /
And then of rain that falls and tastes of sky?”

from a poem by Douglas Dunn, Tay Bridge

These two lines have been generating images in my mind since I came across them on the Scottish Poetry Library’s website. (Poetry is visual and emotional life put into words; it helps show the world anew. Like art, you have to hunt around for the bits that’ll resonate with you.)

In paint, there’d be a some “rain colour” in the sky, and some “sky colour” in the rain. Or perhaps a “mother color”, which is a color used in every mixed color in a painting (it may itself be mixed or a single pigment colour). I’m mostly seeing is as combinations of two favourite colours — Prussian blue and burnt umber. Together with white, these produce beautiful greys.

Adding a fourth colour will give a sense of season and time of day. Sounds like a series… Prussian blue, burnt umber, titanium white plus one other until I’ve worked my way through all my paint tubes. Or perhaps “plus one other and whatever yesterday’s other was”.

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Paint with a Beginner’s Mind

Self-portrait with black ink

Self-portrait with black ink
Draw and paint with a Beginner’s Mind

Whenever you find yourself thinking “I can’t do it” or “I don’t know how” add a three-letter word to your mental dialogue. Add the word “yet”. Say “I can’t do it, yet” and “I don’t know how, yet“.

Give yourself permission to spend time learning, as well as to stumble and fail while you strive. Abandon the expectation that it ought to come easily (whatever that “it” is) and use the fear of failure as motivation to continue rather than quitting or not trying at all. Learn to “Fail better”1, be open to “what if I…” curiosity.

In the same interview that yesterday’s motivator quote was taken from, artist Alan McGowan mentions the Zen philosophy of a “beginners mind”, saying it is

“not easy to do and it’s quite scary because there’s always the chance that it will not work at all, that it will turn into a big mess… There can be an expectation from others that one should always be successful, that a picture should in some way be an expression of expertise, especially as I teach as well. But that’s a bit of a trap. The risk of failure is for me an important part of the whole process of painting (and drawing) and so you want to keep that possibility open; that it could all collapse.”

Stop caring so much about it looking to others as if you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re busy learning and discovering as you go along, so you do indeed not always know whether what you’re doing will be successful. But the end product (a “good painting”) isn’t the sole objective, and often not relevant at all. Having an intriguing and interesting journey is also an objective. A drawing/painting that’s about observation, about the process and techniques, not about ending up with a pretty picture.

A beginner’s mind means:
1. Focusing on the moment. What might be the next step in a painting’s creation. Not obsessing about what the finished painting will be.

2. Endurance. Sticking with it, layer after layer. Don’t be preciously protective about any “good bits” in every single drawing and painting. (Ideally none, but that’s near impossible.)

3. Embracing uncertainty and working through it. Don’t habitually erase and restart; go forwards not backwards.

4. Enjoying the journey. Enjoy the art materials you’re using and try different paints, papers, brushes, colours etc. to find new favourites and fall in love anew.

5. Being patient and impatient. Grant yourself time to learn while being constantly eager to learn more.

Further Reading: How to Live Life to the Max with Beginner’s Mind by Zen master Mary Jaksch.

References:
1. Writer Samuel Beckett, in Worstward Ho (1983): “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”