Artwork, Ideas, Contests, Kitchens, Dogs!
Cedar April 10th, 2007
Lots and lots of things are going on in my life right now. If you are one of the lucky people subscribed to my blog, you’ll have maybe noticed this. Here are a few of the things happening this week:
• Finished another portrait commission—a beautiful red-headed lass by the name of Zoe Baumgartner Brown.
Zoe
16†x 12†Acrylic on Canvas
• We are making huge progress on our kitchen remodeling! The countertops were installed yesterday. We still have to hook up the plumbing, install new electric sockets, do all the tiling, baseboards, and other trim work, install a few more components on the cabinets, put shelves in the pantry, and other minor cosmetic things. Then we can set up the fridge and the range and start moving our dishes, food, small appliances, etc. back in! So there are still a few more weeks till we’re back to normal, but the end is in sight.
Click here to see photos!
• We are throwing away our old sofa…it’s ancient, has been through a lot, and is really quite disgusting if you look closely. But I’m not one to waste, so I decided to take some of the old cushions and build a tiny dog sofa out of them for Clara. She loves it!
I know everyone thinks their own pets are cuter than everybody else’s, but come on, really. Clara’s cuteness can just be too much sometimes.
• Just one more thing I want to share with you today. If you’re not an artist, this may help you understand some of what goes on inside us. I recently posed this question to some of my artist friends:
It seems to me that most of the time, getting to the point where I decide to paint and actually making myself START something is like, SO much harder than the actual painting part. Painting is easy once I start.
The exception to this rule would be when I’m in a creative frenzy and completely excited and inspired, in which case it’s easy to start painting….this does happen to me, but only occasionally.
It seems like I generally put as much or more effort into thinking/dreaming about what I’ll paint, and analyzing the possibilities, than I put into the part where I’m actually applying paint to the canvas.
Any of my painter friends ever feel this way too?
Here are a few of the responses I received:
Figuring out what to do, planning/sketching, takes just as long as really completing it! A lot of planning, time, and energy goes into the composition and details so it comes out looking polished in the end.
I sometimes find myself spending more time looking at what inspires me to paint than the actual process of painting. I have to kind of kick myself in the butt and tell myself to just get down to my studio and paint and stop thinking about everything I want to paint.
When I do get in the mode of painting though, everything is good and usually amazing things are happening. I just need to stay focused more on bodies of work and not jump around so much between so many mediums and things that interest me. I sometimes feel that I’m a young boy again and the world is my candy store. Completely overwhelming—in a good way though.
I keep a large file box of inspirational/reference pictures…magazine pictures, greeting cards, wrapping paper, old calendars, my own photos. When I am stuck I browse through my box and can usually find some element that will spark my interest. Most often I will find an element in several pictures that come together as a new concept…I am convinced the act of daily painting will ultimately bring out “our best” in painting. So, I have recently committed to the act of daily painting or drawing. (Most of which nobody will ever see.) The more I paint the easier it is to get started on the next …then LIFE throws me an interruption and I get all rusty and have to START again. I think that is the way it is supposed to be.
I spend hours and days stressing and beating myself up over starting a painting. For some reason it feels like the most difficult thing ever to just begin the damn painting. And it seems like at the most inconvenient times (like when I’m at work) is when I actually feel motivated enough to create something. It truly kills me, especially when I have nothing else to do and I feel like I should be spending all of my time creating art.
I agonize over my subject matter. What to paint? So much beauty in the world how does one decide what to paint? when I finally decide. I start out with a greyed canvas and do my underpainting making revisions at this stage. working from my mid range tones I work out to the darks and lights. Once I am mostly finished I set it up in my front parlor and look at it till what ever is going to bother me bothers me I make revisions ….sometimes several times. I beat myself up a lot. It’s part of the process. I prefer to work from life, I do work from photographs but only as reference. I find it impossible to translate a 2D image to a 2D image and expect it to look like a 3D image. You can’t always paint from life, then you sketch, photograph, sketch some more, photograph some more, Etc Etc. When your all done you hope you didn’t waste your time.