You’ve nailed where the ART part comes in. That’s what makes art fun, inspiring, uplifting and motivating.

I am older also and was trained in art school for classical realism, and even spent a summer at Florence Academy of Art doing painting and doing sight-sizing drawing for hyper-accurate drawing skills. Plus workshops with artists like Tony Ryder who also teach precision and accuracy skills more than creativity.

I am glad I had all that instruction and learned those skills, but my art became boring and unsatisfying to me as I couldn’t loosen up and express any poetry or magic in my paintings. I became way too serious about accuracy with no confidence in my creative side. I might as well have just taken a photograph…..and I left art for a few years until I understood what was missing for me.

So you are asking the right questions and seem aware that there’s more to art than just good draftsmanship. You are fortunate to have that skill already, as many paintings suffer from the lack of it, and the long time it takes an artist to get accurate hand-eye coordination, measuring skills, perspective, etc….
You are ahead of the game already with your skills and training, so let the “art” happen now!
Good luck!

I like to try and combine accuracy with a bit of impressionism. I mostly do space/spaceflight scenes, and while I strive for accuracy on spacecraft, I tend to be a bit more impressionistic on the surrounding scenery… but not everyone understands where I’m coming from. Take this painting of mine: I was praised for the rocket, exhaust flame, and launch tower, but got practically ripped a new one over the sky, water, and grass. My philosophy is that if someone wants 100% photorealistic precision, then they could get a photographic print. I like to take some artistic liberties, like the late, great space artist Robert McCall. He was spot on with his spacecraft, but very whimsical with the surrounding scenery.

Marc. My philosophy such as it is and for what it’s worth is almost the opposite of yours (I think). A little detail goes a long way.

I paint/draw mostly the local landscape, it’s a landscape I know very well and that’s important: I feel that I ‘understand’ it. I work from sketches made in the field and my little bit of art-blurb is that my work is about being in the landscape not a painting of the landscape. I feel that a painting is done when I can say to myself “Yes. I know that place”. Often the studio painting takes it’s own direction and may finish up being a different place from the sketch that generated it. The sketch is only a means to an end after all.