Feeling blue, but which one?

[crafor]

Mods, if this is in the wrong place, please move it or delete it, whichever is appropriate.
When I first started painting years ago, I was very frustrated because I wasn't achieving what I knew in my heart I could. I enjoyed what I was doing, not the result. I think that frustration was because I knew there were things I didn't know, didn't know where or how to find out, and didn't have the ability to do anything about that situation anyway. Through all the frustration and failures, I stuck with it, doing what I could on my own. The situation changed and I had to quit painting.


Now, October last year, a few short months ago, I started painting again, and am learning that there are a LOT more aspects that I didn't know about. I get frustrated now, knowing there are hundreds of things I don't know, that, to be even a somewhat okay painter, I do need to learn, which I might be able to handle, but every time I turn another page, or read another forum thread, I realize there are OTHER things that, as an artist I should, or would like to learn.


I 'm still not achieving what I know in my heart I could, what I want to, and I know that generally, it will be a long time before I do. Occasionally I see reason for a glimmer of hope.


I work to remember that the masters were massively talented to start, and attained that designation after years of apprenticeship and study, that MANY people who use this forum are terrifically talented, have been drawing and painting for years, many with good to great teachers, with hundreds—nay--thousands of hours of work, reading, studying, relearning, applying, and it just gets overwhelming. Over the last months I learned a few things. I'm beginning to remember them and apply them even if sporadically. I post some of my work in various fora because I can see a little better what really needs work. (FWIW, that's everything) I do see a bit of progress at times.


So now my frustration is more, what's the use? I looked through several old sketch books done after I quit painting, and there's not a lot of growth, mainly because on not having teachers or books, or internet. Now I have 2 of 3, but it's a long journey. I'll keep at it because I want to, because in another year I'll be another year older whether I work at this or not...It would be so nice to just KNOW what I need to know, to be able to just step up to the easel and DO it...
Crafor,
who is sort of feeling down, lost, and a bit sorry for herself...

[AbstractArt99]

You might enjoy this short video on being creative by Ira Glass.

[OOzOO]

You might also check for inexpensive classes in your area, such as the local community college. Sometimes having a structure or learning path is a good idea, so that you're not overwhelmed, and each lesson builds on the previous lessons so that they are reinforced, and you can see advancement.

For example, in a beginning drawing class, you usually start with learning about materials, then line drawings, then basic shading (shadow core, reflected light, etc.) then to more complex forms, and then maybe trickier stuff like white on black paper, or white and black on a midtone paper.

Learning in a linear fashion, in steps, makes the process easier. Here's how I learned oil painting in my first University painting class. We used a palette of only Ultramarine blue, Alizarin Crimson (the cool red), Cadmium red (the warm red), Cadmium yellow (the warm yellow) and Yellow Ochre (the cool yellow) plus Titanium white. No black or earths allowed.

1. Learn to mix your own black from the primaries. It will almost never be exactly black, but you can get very close, and the darks you paint with these blacks will be much more alive than the dead blacks from the tube.

2. Make a value scale from white to black with 9 or 10 clear, even steps.

3. Paint a picture in black and white, with the black you made yourself.

4. Paint a picture using only a warm and cool version of a color, plus white. Pay attention to whether your light source is warm or cool, and paint accordingly. (If the light is cool, the shadows will be warm, and vice versa)

5. Paint a picture with the full palette except for white. You'll be surprised how white you can make things appear without actually using white. The lesson is that white is overused, it cools colors down when added, and for most things you don't really need it.

6. Paint a picture using the full palette plus white.

We actually painted the same thing over and over so that we were familiar with the shapes and could spend less time working out the composition, scale, and placement of objects, and as boring as this sounds, it helps. You might try working out a nice still life composition on tracing paper, and using the same sheet to transfer to each canvas as you start the next step.

If you're interested in some other medium, there will always be logical steps to follow in the learning process. For watercolor, you might try using just black, then 2 primaries, then 3, then a full palette...for colored pencil, try using just black, then all the spectacular grays, then a limited palette (just earth tones, for example) then a full palette.

The biggest thing you can learn is simply to see. To be able to eyeball relative scale, angles, color, value, etc. is invaluable.

[crafor]

Carolyn, Thanks. That helped. I've listened to it twice, and bookmarked it. I think if I had seen a list--even a partial list of what all--size, perspective, color, cool light, warm light, paint hues and how they affect others, shadows, methods, drawing, tones, composition, ad infinitum...I may not have kept at it. But I will.
Thank you.
Crafor

[OOzOO]

One other note: Don't view every piece as something which needs to be finished and presentable...most of these will be simply learning exercises. The paintings I did at the beginning of my class could be thrown in the garbage, because they aren't pretty and have very little worth, but I keep them because of the lessons they taught me.

[crafor]

And OOzOO, thank you too. As far as classes, due to disabilities, I can't. I can't do small groups unless people are fragrance free and solvent free.
I'm doing some drawing and painting exercises, both from a couple of books and from here. So I am learning. I have Sovek's book for 2 weeks, but had to return Macpherson's due to lack of time to do it all. I will add your suggestions to my list. I can see they will help.
Thank you so much for them.
Crafor

[fritzie]

crafor, do you think you could get yourself to love the journey rather than being discouraged at the length of the road ahead? Do you love the activity of painting or mainly love beautifully executed painting?
I have found in my life that one thing that makes a field engaging is that it offers so much to learn. Sometimes seeing how much that is can be overwhelming, like a carnival on lots of acreage. In that case, it might be good to take one ride at a time rather than spreading yourself too thin all at once.

[crafor]

Fritzie, you have a point. There are times I focus on, portraits, then on perspective drawing, then on gesture drawing, then on color, still lifes, then...
SO much to learn, so little time. I just spent an hour with a book, revisiting drawing boxes in perspective, and will spend time soon doing faces and maybe eyes.You're possibly right, I am possibly spread too thin on this. Back to basics may be the better way. Thing is, that road is not only L-O-N-G, it has many interesting side roads.
I drew a tree line at the park today, then gestures of some of the passers-by, and came home and did other larger sketches of them, which is why the book on perspective. I'm interested in it all, and want to learn it all, but perhaps that is best served by a bit of focus.Heck, I can't even write about it without being scattered all over the place! lol.
Crafor

[fritzie]

crafor, may I make one other suggestion? I don't know if you post your work to the forums here, but perhaps getting some affirmation for the strengths in what you are producing would help you see more clearly what you have already accomplished.

[Viking55803]

Originally Posted by AbstractArt99

You might enjoy this short video on being creative by Ira Glass.

Excellent video and excellent advice. The only way to catch up, the only way to really learn, is to do the work. I study art too, but most of my "art time" is spent painting. I love to study - I have a graduate degree, but studying can be an excuse to avoid working rather than a stimulus. I am learning by doing.

[crafor]

Fritzie, there are a few fora I posst work on. I have gotten invaluable guidance from one member re one work over a few weeks, and feedback from a few others on other work. I'm basically a beginner, and I think many people don't want to comment. I see progress, I'm just not at the level most people here are...

Viking, you are right also. Studying CAN be an excuse to avoid working. When I started the two 6-week painting classes,WC and oil, the person in charge--I will not call her teacher--was so backwards, I did nothing for weeks except read, trying to understand what she was saying, telling us. It made no sense. I dropped the WC and did another 6 week oil class. Still, it was another 2 weeks before I was beginning to make sense of what she was saying, but ONLY through my reading, and I actually produced a decent painting. She spent about 1/2 of each class "instructing" but it made no sense to me until close to the end, then at the last class I finally understood what she was doing. She was collecting a paycheck and wanted no responsibility. The instruction for her last class was what should have been given on the first. The instruction for the 11th class should have been done the second, and pretty much so on.
I agree, doing the work is critical, but I quit in the first place several years ago because I wasn't making any progress. Slapping paint on canvas was not getting me anywhere. Now that I understand a little more, I can read and learn, but still need shown the way, I still need and want more eyes and guidance to point out what to do to make my work better, ways to improve.
Thanks for your comments.
Crafor

[robertsloan2]

Massively talented to start? Sure, some of them were. What that means to me is Massively Motivated or taught at an early age in a way that taught them passion for the work.

A good place to start is right here on WetCanvas. In the Mediums section, "Drawing and Sketching" includes a link to a subforum titled The Classroom. What all those masters had in their apprenticeships was a nuts and bolts level of instruction in drawing and sketching along with such things as how to make paint and use color - often by formula.

I have a couple of medieval and Renaissance texts on painting. Most of them are about how to make paint. They go into using green in the shadows of figures and a pinkish color from earth reds in the sunlit areas with more white in the highlights.

So check out the Classroom and start the Drawing 101 lessons. There are volunteers who moderate those threads and answer everyone who posts a new try at the exercise in each lesson. It's a free, comprehensive course in drawing and sketching anything and everything.

In addition to that, get a cheap sketchbook with a lot of thin pages. Say hello to it every single day. No matter how busy the day is, no matter how lousy you feel or whatever else is going on, give your art at least five minutes. Fill that sketchbook with timed gesture drawings from life. Pick subjects you like. On bad days or in bad moods pick things that look easy to draw. Sometimes staying in your comfort zone is a good thing.

I did this when I got discouraged on cat anatomy, when I was annoyed I could draw birds better than cats when I love cats. I started sketching my cat from life in two to five minute gestures. He was a great subject because even when he's sound asleep he moves and changes position every two minutes on average. So when I sketch him, about half the sketch is from memory of his last pose. Sometimes I'd just stop and start a new one with the new pose.

You will learn more in five three minute drawings than you will in doing one detailed fifteen minute drawing. Each time you start over you'll observe the subject again. What you noticed last time, you'll still remember it and get it down faster. By doing lots and lots of them and doing them with such a short timer, you know it'll be impossible to get a good accurate detailed drawing that quick - so you don't have high expectations for accuracy, beauty or detail.

Then after you do a bunch of them you'll notice improvement. It'll come fast. Out of every batch one or two will look better than the rest. Some days all of them look good and you catch your breath and go "Wow, I can DO this!" Most of all it gets me in the habit of being able to sketch decisively.

Think of it like sports. These two minute gesture sketches are like the toning exercises you'd do before starting the workout before the big race or the big game or whatever your sport is. They hone the muscles of your hand. They hone the parts of your brain that are involved in drawing. By starting over and over, it's like lifting smaller weights for more repetitions.

When you follow that with attempting a larger weight, it comes easier because you're all warmed up. You're in a good "drawing" state of mind and your brain is physically used to shifting to the nonverbal right lobe "creative mode."

Then schedule the lessons. Pat yourself on the back for doing the class lessons on a reasonable schedule. Pick a day to work on them and go beyond the little daily sketches. It's okay to do more than that, but set a low easily maintained standard for "time I spend on the WC class." That's regardless of any other drawing you do.

Third thing besides daily gesture exercises and say, weekly lesson attempts.

Give yourself Play Time with art whenever you want it and don't take the results seriously. Go ahead and buy materials that interest you, try things you think are cool, play with color when you're doing the disciplined black and white value lessons. Just don't call the play time the same thing. This is to enjoy yourself.

Third thing, maybe go and purchase a high quality art journal, a good one with strong multi media paper like a watercolor Moleskine or one of the Stillman & Birn journals - Alpha and Gamma have 100lb multi media paper and a lot more pages, Beta and Delta have super heavy 180lb watercolor paper that can stand up to anything I want to throw at it and won't bleed through to the back of the page even with the juiciest markers.

That's the play place. The cheap sketchbook is for daily gesture sketching. Get a soft dark pencil, 6B or darker, so those sketch exercises are easy to scan and post. Or use a charcoal pencil for some of them, or a Conte crayon. Just stay monochrome in the sketch exercises. In the journal, use any pen or pencil or marker or stick that appeals to you. Do whatever you want. Write bits of text in. Chart your colors in it. Draw cartoons in it.

A cartoonist friend told me you don't need to draw well to be a good cartoonist, just come up with good funny ideas and draw well enough people can tell what it is. You can do a good cartoon with stick figures. Don't feel afraid to put silly stuff in your Playtime journal! It's there, the fancy expensive one, to remind you that painting and drawing are fun and are about the freedom to do anything you want.

The reason to buy a very good one with strong watercolor paper is that the higher quality, more expensive artist grade supplies perform better than the cheap student grade stuff. I am not kidding. The only mediums this doesn't seem to apply to is charcoal and graphite pencils - those the cheap ones function perfectly well and the expensive stuff is more for convenience. But in watercolors, acrylics, pastels, oil paint, anything else, artist grade mediums have more pigment load and go on better, have better working qualities and dramatically better results.

Beginners often get discouraged by using kid supplies and trying to make them do things a professional did using a specific brand of expensive artist grade paint. They get a fancy iridescent effect on the neck of a grackle and it turns out they mixed this color and that color and glazed it with an interference color and wow, yes, it has the same literal optical effect as a live grackle's feathers. I've done this!

Playtime is about fun but also about responding to impulse. It gets you in the habit of enjoying it. It's also practice - it's learning the materials. Within a wide variety of different mediums and subjects, it's a journal of discovery where you'll find out what your favorite things are.

That's entirely personal. You're brilliantly talented. Believe that. You care about it. Your post makes it so clear to me that you already have a brilliant talent just coming to the surface like a newborn dolphin gasping for its first breath. The ocean is very big but it's your home. You're made for this, it's natural to you, swim free and enjoy it.

These three exercises done continuously can become lifetime good habits. They are never a waste of time, any more than a classical pianist warming up with scales is wasting his time. They are stupid easy, but so are scales on a piano once you know them.

Some schools would not let you touch color till you did seven years of black and white work. They're too strict in my opinion. I can see doing that for the classwork - and also playing with color in the playtime, so you're going neck and neck with it.

In the mean time, read about art. Get good magazines from the library or subscribe to them. Buy the books that interest you and try the lessons in them. Surf online for more free lessons. Take the WetCanvas Live! webinars. I've been taking the Johannes Vloothuis ones for over a year now, since he first started.

His are all-levels. Total beginners are painting like professionals now because those classes knocked out a lot of early mistakes like noodling over details too much and mistaking accurate detail for skill at painting.

Several times Johannes has mentioned that Pastels are the easiest medium for a beginner to learn to paint in color with. Visit the Soft Pastel forums for challenges and lessons and discussion on pastels and color.

Transparent Watercolor is one of the most difficult mediums, but very good for any painter to master. It's challenging but it has its own advantages. For one thing it's cheap and compact. You can start with a very small palette (few colors) of the most expensive artist grade paints and good brushes will last forever if cared for, so you can do that "start with the best" thing without breaking the bank on transparent watercolor. You can also shove it in your pocket and have it handy for your impulse painting.

Transparent Watercolor also has an easy form. Sakura Koi pocket watercolor sets are the ultimate in color convenience and good enough to underpaint pastel paintings. They are high quality student paints, one of the two best student watercolors in my experience. The other is Winsor & Newton Cotman watercolors. The advantage of the Koi pocket set is the water brush in it.

The 12 color one is as small as a cigarette pack or a smartphone. That and a pocket size watercolor Moleskine or Hand Book journal would let you have watercolor sketching materials with you at all times. That'd let your breaks at work turn into painting playtime after the day's sketching. It's also easier for a beginner to combine pen and watercolor than use watercolor by itself. You can do this with normal pens like ballpoints, or get a waterproof archival Pigma Micron or Prismacolor drawing pen. Any normal HB pencil is good enough for light sketching under the painting or under the inking and you can always erase it before painting.

Last, get some kneaded putty erasers. Derwent makes them and the ones in the USA are usually Design Kneaded Erasers. That's useful for a lot of things - including covering a page with black charcoal and drawing-by-erasing. That's one of the exercises that can be a ton of fun and give beautiful tonal results.

So that's my answer to your "Where do I start?"

These things will help you no matter what direction you go with art. You might take to squishing the kneaded erasers into three dimensional shapes as models to draw from and become an inspired sculptor. You might paint in watercolor and pastels but fall for the allure of oils and get into oils. You might find yourself as a pastelist or watercolorist or think acrylic is the best medium. You might get bored with all the color stuff and become a fabulous monochrome pencil artist doing tight large renderings that sell for hundreds of dollars.

You'll find out along the way what your favorite subjects are.

Other than following the lessons - which will train you to draw anything you can look at accurately - paint and sketch what moves you. Even if your favorite subject is difficult - live cats is a tough subject - if you do it enough times you'll get used to it and get good at it.

What modern non representational artists have made the art world and art critics forget is that painting and drawing have a long learning curve. Back in the day of those Old Masters, the training to become a good professional artist was as long as it would take to become a concert classical musician or a doctor or any other profession. Artists who take that approach to learning art gain skills anyone that skips to splatter painting before they understand composition loses along the way. Those gaps can sometimes be mistaken for style - but style is much more potent if the artist who can draw well chooses later not to and deliberately destroys perspective or proportion for artistic reasons.

It also means if you come out doing distortions or abstractions and somebody says "Well anyone could do that, I can throw paint at a wall and roll around in it" you can demonstrate that it was choice and artistic integrity by showing them an older, accurate, classical sketch. Homer Simpson is not drawn the way Michelangelo would do him. But Homer comes out accurately Homer every time and he moves in three dimensions with eerily natural human gestures.

It doesn't matter if you want to be a cartoonist, a realist oil painter or a fine art professional doing abstract expressionism. The three habits I just sketched out will give you a strong foundation for any direction you discover and a structure that gives you the best chance of learning fast.

Nothing succeeds like success.

When you try something small and easy, then succeed on multiple tries, you get in a habit of expecting some success. Daily successes are addictive. There is something every day that you know you do better than last week or last month. Date all your daily sketches.

I paint better than I used to and not as well as I will.

That's a lifetime-length of learning curve. If they double the human lifespan I won't slow down. Drawing and painting will also open up areas of the brain that make you more creative in everyday life. Solving how to organize the refrigerator or troubleshoot your computer will become easier and more intuitive by way of learning to draw and observe and think in a right brained, creative way.

School teaches left-brain logic. Art teaches right-brain intuition. It feels spooky because it's not verbal, but it's just as powerful a mode of thought. All the arts also lead to personal growth and introspection. Becoming decisive with paint may make you more decisive in your personal life and other occupations. There are a world of benefits to doing this even if you decide you're going to be a happy leisure painter for the rest of your life dabbling in anything that interests you.

That's a good direction too, even if you're brilliantly talented. What you choose to do for a living is a life choice. Getting good at art is the natural consequence of doing it a lot and learning how.

Enjoy!

[robertsloan2]

Suggested schedule for minimum -

Daily: one or more timed short gesture sketches, preferably from life (real things, not photos, they can be coffee cups and other unliving things.)

Weekly: one or more sessions working the lessons in the Drawing and Sketching "Classroom" threads for "Drawing 101." Stick with each lesson thread until you master that one. Some will go easy, you might get it on the first try. Others may stump you for weeks and it's completely individual which lessons are the easy or hard ones. One of the biggest advantages of that free class is how completely self paced it is. Don't skip lessons if you already do it well, just do it and post it once and get feedback.

Third: Playtime whenever you want. Watercolor pencils and a water brush may be another easy alternative for art journaling. Or markers. Any colorful, convenient and easy to use mediums that you want to experiment with. Color mixing is possible with almost all of them but easier with watercolor than with markers. Though that may just be my personal path, some friends have taken color mixing with markers to incredible results but have trouble mixing paint.

Other classes or paintings, online events, books, lessons, as they interest you. Make time for anything you're excited about because the more you enjoy it, the more you'll get out of it. You may want to start a slow careful project like a pen and ink stipple drawing or a colored pencil realism piece from a photo reference - if you do, relax and give that as many sessions as you like. The art journal's a good place for those.

Oil pastels are also an easy medium for beginners with strong color and many possible effects, I forgot to mention those. My website has some tutorials, a lot of product reviews and other information about oil pastels. The group in the Oil Pastels forum is small and friendly.

Though the "friendly, supportive and inspiring" is something I can say about every forum I've visited on WetCanvas. This place is my art home, it's where I improve my painting and drawing without really trying. Just rambling into anything that amuses me at the moment is another path to a learning curve. I discovered all three of those good habits here.

[robertsloan2]

Originally Posted by crafor

I 'm still not achieving what I know in my heart I could, what I want to, and I know that generally, it will be a long time before I do. Occasionally I see reason for a glimmer of hope.

I mentioned that you are massively talented. This sentence is why. This is what it feels like to be massively talented.

Your vision will always be greater than your reach. No matter how good you get, you'll get ideas for things you can't do yet and happily learn or invent everything you need in order to make that concept a reality. Then other people will see it and go "Wow" and "That's so amazing" and "I can't believe it, that is so cool" and hand you actual money for it.

The point they will give you real hard earned money for something you drew actually comes at Journeyman level. What today would be called Intermediate. When you can render one popular subject well enough that a non artist can recognize it in a consistent popular style, non-artists will give you actual cash for what you drew. Treasure that first payment. Blow it on art supplies, preferably something special you've drooled at for a while.

Then look sensibly at the markets and price what you do according to skill at dead average for what other artists about as good as you are charge for that size, medium, subject and venue. If price is not the main selling point in either direction, people buy art because they fell in love and want to live with it. They pick their favorites, which is highly subjective.

Your worst drawing in an exhibit might be the one that gets bid to the skies because two or more people fell in love, while you scratch your head that your best went unsold because the subject didn't grab anyone in the audience. Happens all the time. It's because you and I, the artists, are individuals with personal tastes too. Also sometimes you get it right on some technical point you don't understand yet and the buyers flock to the "botch" before you realize a few years later that it actually WAS the best thing you had up in that exhibit.

The market does not determine the real value or importance of your work. All it determines is how much money you'll get for it in that circumstance. But the payment is powerful validation that helps get other people over the idea you can't be an artist because they know you and shift to "I always knew you were so talented."

The internal successes of doing a little better every time are the real morale builder so that a lucky big sale doesn't get you overconfident or a market lull discourage you at a time you're seriously improving. That and watch the reactions of the serious professionals on WC, because they do know what they're talking about and if they like it, you did get something right that you don't understand fully yet.

[robertsloan2]

Originally Posted by crafor

And OOzOO, thank you too. As far as classes, due to dis abilities, I can't. I can't do small groups unless people are fragrance free and solvent free.
I'm doing some drawing and painting exercises, both from a couple of books and from here. So I am learning. I have Sovek's book for 2 weeks, but had to return Macpherson's due to lack of time to do it all. I will add your suggestions to my list. I can see they will help.
Thank you so much for them.
Crafor

Try the new Water Soluble Oils if the excellent oil painting regimen OOzOO described catches your imagination. That's not too many tubes to find out whether pigment, salad oil (linseed oil is an actual edible salad oil but don't use the food grade, get the artist grade formulated for use with watersolubles) and water will trigger your allergies or not. It's a wonderful plan for becoming good at oil painting.

Oils sell for more money too, probably on some level because gallery directors don't have to buy frames with glass for the dang things or ship frames with glass with them to buyers. Acrylics are the same and can be framed without glass.

A third possibility that's literally a new invention is Pan Pastels. The tools are Sofft micropore sponges invented by the same people that invented the Pan Pastels. These are soft pastels that mix and behave like paint. In sets, the 5 color Painters Set gives you three primaries - a neutral (very well balanced) red, Ultramarine blue and Hansa Yellow (a bright cool yellow) plus black and white.

10 Painters Set has a good basic palette and it's what I use for field painting, because the 10 color tray is compact and handy. That has the three primaries, black and white from the 5 color set plus Pthalo Green (a bright blue-leaning green), Violet (essential for landscapes), Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna and Raw Umber (a cool yellowish dark brown).

That ten color palette is very similar to watercolor starting palettes. I can mix anything I want from it now that I'm used to color mixing, if I want a cool red I can put a touch of Violet into the neutral Permanent Red. A touch of the Hansa Yellow makes it an orange-red. The three basic earths plus black make a very interesting muted palette too - use the Yellow Ochre for yellow, Burnt Sienna for red and Black for blue with white and you have an interesting low intensity painting.

10 Color Painters plus the tray and a mixed bag of tools is what I suggest for beginners, unless you think you might want the full range. 20 color Painters gives you all the pigments they use and the 60 other colors are convenience colors - 20 tints (those pigments with white), 20 shades (those pigments with black) and 20 deep dark shades (those pigments with more black.) I bought the full range - and then bought 10 Painters as a field kit so if you like them you can start collecting more sets. They're cheaper in the sets than individually.