My Dad gave me some good advice a while back. I was telling him I wanted to do an art fair and he said pick one consistent style and make a cohesive body of work.
I later went to an art fair and noticed the advice at play. Each booth told a different story ~ each in a different language. One artist had all impressionist outdoor building scenes, one artist had all nature photography, another had all modern art with the same color palette and similar shapes.
I haven’t really sat down and tried to chose one style recently but I keep thinking of one thing ~ again and again. Im going to work towards it and you will see, when I finally make one, in this blog/newsletter. Until then I’m going to keep making all of random ideas i come up with. In fact I don’t think I’ll ever stop making random ideas.
Maybe one of them will lead to my next cohesive body of work; so I don’t have to completely reinvent the wheel when my steam eventually runs out.
But that doesn’t mean I’m going to throw this good advice away. Maybe I will just make so many of the one-certain-style I’m thinking that I have a body of work that shows well together while I keep making all the random ideas I want to pursue. And hopefully I’ll get to a point of proficiency with it where “He did each single thing as if he did nothing else” -Charles Dickens. Where I can focus that deeply and it seems like that is as if that one thing is all I do. I know it’s kinda counterintuitive towards the knowledge that doing one thing leads to a great level of specialized technical skill.
I do not want to get burnt out, or feel like I’m not doing really what I want. I also just want to pursue this multitude of ideas. Confining myself to one style and concept seems the opposite of fun. I also want to make peaceful groves but and also I want to make flowers but and also I want to make dogs, and cats, and etc. I don’t want to not make an idea because I’m sticking with one way of making art.
I feel like jumping around to different ideas doesn’t confine me to one thing, making it a job. It shows some creative versatility that I’m not staying in the same box. Though I do need to get in the box and refine it! And maybe “Eventually all thing merge into one, and a river runs through it” -Norman Maclean (Author/Professor)
But when one thinks of an artist one usually can imagine their style. Like Picasso does only weird face guys (though he did other stuff) or Dali and weird surrealism (though he had the skills to paint whatever he wanted surreally) or Monet and water lilies (that’s what his entire life’s work built up into).
This week I didn’t further a main style but did a bunch of random stuff.
i bounced around with a few things. I made another pet portrait. “Yellow good boy 2”
And then I went to the lake to take photos for some abstract landscapes I’ve been thinking of.
I ended up making this. “Mellow Cove”
It’s a not abstract enough! It’s a little too impressionist-y / Monet-y. I was going for less likeliness of a scene…I am trying for, next time, more shapey and less lake-y; but I guess I’ll just have to make more!
I also enjoyed painting the rainbow graffiti J a couple weeks ago and had my rainbow paints out still and so I ended up making another rainbow gradient piece. “Not a Real Coca-Cola product or US Stamp” is what I am naming this picture.
The rainbow gradient wasn’t super difficult to do but adding the small highlight with a gradient was quite difficult. I had thought that through ahead and put a layer of retarder (slow drying medium) under the acrylic paint to slow the drying time significantly (from about 15 mins to 2 hours.) The gradient was just made by just blending the colors; but the highlights i added white on top and then blended it into the color (like a lighter yellow.) but then I had to make a gradient with the lighter white blend-in which wasn’t too hard again. The hard part came when I blended the highlight gradient into the regular gradient. So I didn’t mix the colors I washed out my paint brush a couple dozen times, one in between each stroke so I didn’t mix the colors like light green with yellow. I ended up getting some dirty paint water on the canvas a couple times but just blotted it up gently. The retarder slow drying medium made the gradient a bit splotchy but I think it turned out fine I think. I can’t use that with everything though. Fast drying 100% acrylic binder (just paint) is the way to go in my opinion. No water, no mediums.
I didn’t work on my big painting any this week but it’s good to keep doing it as more fun and less of a ‘must get it done.’ It’s been good to be able to work on other stuff. (when I’m not feeling like ((possibly)) messing up sed big painting) I have a couple of other ideas to keep me going through next week. Until then.
Bye
P.s. sorry I’m late today. I slept in…a lot
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