Archives for January 2019

Inspiration, Imagination, and Motivated Action – A Process for the New Year

Bill Davidson · Jan 28, 2019 · Leave a Comment

We want to be alive, energized, and excited about life and our growth as an artist. Is there a process based on current psychological science that makes it easier to attain and sustain higher energy in our lives and our art? Are there ways around fear and boredom? And, is the process accessible to all of us? The resounding answer is “yes” based on science.

Awareness, curiosity and focused processes (effort not talent) will blast through limiting stories and beliefs that have taken root in our unconscious. Einstein was a big believer in curiosity and imagination and concluded everything is energy. Robert Henri maintained “art is a footprint of a life well lived.” Books by Harvard and Stanford professors lay stepping stones for high achievement. If through awareness you find your inspiration (what you would love to say in art), use your imagination (how you would want to say it in your own authentic voice), and take motivated action through a process (flow) both intrinsic and extrinsic results can be achieved. How?

“Prefect Eve” by Bill Davidson
Oil on linen – 24″ x 30″

First, increase your curiosity about you, become a explorer of your likes, feelings, and what you love. You can only control in life yourself and your perceptions and if you focus on your inner workings above all else, your beliefs in yourself will incrementally change for a improved life and art. Your perceptions filter your thoughts, and as the brilliant Einstein said, “The world as we have created is a process of our thinking, it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”

Second, alter your perceptions to enjoy the process. The journey will always be there, and you never reach THE pinnacle. The journey can be motivated by fear, or by inspiration, imagination and motivated action. IT IS YOUR CHOICE AND IN YOUR CONTROL ALONE. Your primary motivation to create art should be intrinsic benefits, e.g. it will give you pleasure and meaning, not primarily extrinsic benefits like sales quotas. (HINT: there are lots of motivators at one time, the key is what is primary.)

Third, explore your inspirations. Focus primarily on intrinsic inspirations vs extrinsic. Why? Because they are the only things you can control and they alone create sustainable happiness. John Wooden, the UCLA coach won 10 out of 12 NCAA titles. A feat that has never been equaled in any sport. His primary thrust was to inspire his players to perform to the best of their ability; he never told them to win. Wooden stated after his career that what he missed the most was team practices. He was solely focused on the process in the journey. The art world is similar to other careers, it has its share of unfairness, nepotism, prejudice, clicks, pandering, and egotism (surprise). Control of enjoying your journey is only within you.

Fourth, imagining your successes will make you feel really great, but it won’t achieve anything. Studies show you must both imagine successes AND overcoming obstacles to them. For example, how will you achieve enjoying the easel for ____ hrs a week? You must change your perspective from art is work to it is a privilege, a meaningful joyous process filled with discoveries allowing you to birth your authentic voice, it gets you in a flow, a mentally healthy state, not to mention the many satisfying connections with people.

Studies show that challenging growth is a pillar to sustainable happiness and as the founder of the Montessori schools said, “nothing is more relaxing than engaging in an agreeable task.” Hedonism does not lead to sustainable happiness. Motivated action from inspiration and imagination excites you to paint. You will have something exciting to say if you are living with a curious energy. And according to Robert Henri if you have something to say you will find a way.

In “The Achievement Habit”, by Bernard Roth, a professor at Stanford University, Roth says to always err to the side of action, even when not 100% sure of direction, he states more answers are found in action. According to Tal Ben-Sahar, a professor at Harvard, perfectionism is unhealthy, so act and do the best you can. (HINT: Don’t get lost in abstract ideas like a great piece of art is always better than the sum of the parts or that you are creating universal symbols or how will you be judged.)

“Sur Spectacle” by Bill Davidson
24″ x 30″

Imagination is a key to growth. Think of how you would love for your painting to look and imagine better and new ways for you to express your authentic voice. Go beyond your boundaries and limits, it excites because its risky and edgy and prevents boredom. Try new tools, change shapes, colors, textures, scrape off, repaint. Make many mistakes, the more mistakes the faster the growth. Mistakes are not failing but learning opportunities, quitting the exploration process is the only failure. (HINT: watch great videos, and get in a supportive environment and attend positive workshops that encourage curiosity, discovery and exploration and where no one ever judges you (check with past students to verify the teacher is great), and the teacher pushes you beyond your limits. Great teachers inspire, are genuinely concerned you grow, explain the why and pour out every tool they have to help you, and yet require you to do the work.

Like all growth, your ability to recognize great art rises as your awareness increases; savor great art. Study it, live with it. After a while we all become competent enough to paint a scene, later you will inflict more of your authentic artistic voice with more of your imaginative skills and it will be richer. If you keep exploring and trying new things your repertoire of tools will increase. You want the attitude of hell yeah I am going to (not trying to) paint this new way. It may take a while for new methods to advance from crapola to really cool so perceive it as an exciting journey.

New processes need balance. Too much growth is anxiety and too little is boredom, the perfect balance is flow, which is a joy-filled journey.

Graph sourced from the book
“Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment” by Tal Ben-Shahar

When reaching a certain level of accomplishment you start to get somewhat serious about your work and the excitement may start to dwindle. The antiserum is to bring your “old learning playful Beginner” back in to sit alongside the somewhat accomplished “Experienced You”. This Beginner was who got you started and who knows how to enjoy the process. The best beginners had little judgment and took many risks, therefore accelerated growth.

The Experienced You naturally has a bit more ego and naturally becomes more concerned about what others think. The antidote is to go deeper into yourself and what you can control. Wooden’s teams were trained not to focus on the other teams, he did little scouting but instead focused on what they could do to become the best they could be. It’s a great freedom to say I will focus primarily on my own authentic voice, and let everything and everybody else slide into the background. Riding your own horse into the horizon without a parade is the freedom you wanted when you started the artistic journey. If honors come your way, enjoy and appreciate, and then saddle up and keep on riding. You know who you are when you don’t care much what others think. Dolly Parton explained why she wasn’t offended by dumb blonde jokes, “…because I know I am not dumb. I also know I am not blonde.”

Since this book is out of print, I leave you with James Reynolds comments on what this renowned artist thinks makes a good painting.

From the book, “The Landscape Paintings of James Reynolds” by James Reynolds

The above guidelines are useful aids and other tools from more advanced artists always make painting easier, we can all learn something from everyone. I enjoy discovering how workshop attendee artists learn quicker and easier. As I watch and develop I discover more tools that make it easier on me and students. The interesting thing is there are always new ones waiting to be discovered. A great quote by Joseph Cambell author of the learned book “The Power of Myth”, “the big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.”

Always be risking new things so the adventure is off the charts. Live on the edge and create art that goes a little farther and a little different, that is where to find the adventure and excitement. Do not deny the world the opportunity to bask in your brilliance.

For more tips on attitude, click here for Bill’s other blog posts.

Think Snow: 6 Painting Lessons from the Ski Trails

Kathleen Dunphy OPA · Jan 21, 2019 · Leave a Comment

There’s not much I love doing more than painting, but cross-country skiing comes close. There are many beautiful days in the winter when I‘m torn between either painting or skiing, wishing for more hours of daylight to get them both in. Even when I’m not at the easel, my mind inevitably wanders to painting as I ski on the picturesque trails. As I was gliding through beautiful landscapes and planning my next set of snow paintings last week, I thought about the parallels between skiing and painting. Here are some lessons learned from the ski trails that can be applied to painting:

1. Learn from a pro:

My husband and I first attempted skate skiing when we moved to Alaska. Determined to learn on our own, we headed out to the trails and strapped on our skis….only to spend the entire day with frustrating (and often comical) results. A weekend ski clinic did wonders as we were taught the basics by an expert who truly understood all the elements of good technique.

As with skiing, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort in art by finding a good instructor who can walk you through the basics of painting, taking some of the mystery out of the craft. Yes, an artist can be self-taught, but most times the process takes a lot longer and good input from competent professionals will speed you on your way to making your own art without stumbling over technical problems at the beginning.

“Winter’s Release”
by Kathleen Dunphy
24″ x 18″

2. Don’t expect to be good if you don’t do it a lot:

The long Alaskan winters allowed me lots of time to ski. Here in the radically shorter winters of California, I’m skiing a fraction of the amount that I used to. Consequently, I can’t expect to win any races or to see great improvement in my technique.

As with skiing, don’t expect to get better at painting if you don’t work at it on a consistent basis. Practice really does make perfect, and getting into the habit of painting nearly every day will help you to see gains more quickly.

3. Those who make it look easy have put in their time

Every now and then when I’m out plein air painting, a passer-by will comment, “You make it look so easy!” (I always have to resist the impulse to reply, “Well I certainly fooled you, didn’t I?”) As I’ve said many times before, I don’t think painting is easy; I think painting is really hard, but aspects of it have gotten easier over years of repetition and practice. I’ve been guilty of watching elite skiers fly past me and feeling a pang of jealousy at the apparent ease with which they ski, but I know that they’ve put in countless hours of practice to get that good.

Painting takes enormous patience and perseverance and nothing happens overnight. It helps to realize that, just like an athlete, you have to been in for the long haul in order to develop your skills and gain competency

4. It’s not the falling down, it’s the getting up that matters

Let’s face it: no matter how good we get, at some point every skier falls and every painter fails. The old skiing adage, “if you’re not falling down, you’re not learning anything,” applies to painting as well. In order to grow, we have to push ourselves to do things that that are risky and learn from our mistakes. I could just ski the flat trails or paint easy subject matter, but where would that get me? I’d be a mediocre skier and a ho-hum painter.

Although there have been many times of frustration when I’ve wanted to unhook my skis and storm off the trails or chuck my painting into the woods and head home, I’ve learned that I have to channel that negative energy into something positive in order to grow. Much like an athlete analyzes videos of his/her performance to look for ways to improve, take those paintings that didn’t hit the mark back to the studio and give them a detailed critique to learn from your errors. Remember that it’s never a failure if you’ve had a brush in your hand and have been painting with full concentration and intent. If you try, you either succeed or you learn. Challenging yourself to the literal hills of skiing and the metaphorical hills of art will force you to conquer new techniques and overcome fears, making you better at your craft overall.

5. Fear will get you nowhere, but overconfidence will make you fall on your face

We’ve all seen the skier stuck at the top of a hill, frozen with fear of the downslope ahead. Staring at a blank canvas can elicit that same kind of paralysis. The worry of making a mistake can be overwhelming, but you’ve got to start somewhere. Take a deep breath and make that first mark. Remember that errors can always be corrected and that the only thing worse than bringing home a bad painting is not doing a painting at all. But don’t get so overconfident that you’re like that skier who flies down the mountain without a care in the world, only to do an “Agony of Defeat” crash into the snow. Be sure to carefully think out your approach to the painting.

Anyone who has ever taken one of my workshops knows that I’m fanatical about thumbnails: they are the roadmap to the painting that makes everything else easier. Just a few minutes of sketches and planning can save you from falling flat on your face.

6. No matter what happens, it’s a great day out there

No matter how many times I’ve fallen or how lousy my painting turns out, at the end of a day outside I always take a moment to look around and be grateful for the opportunity to spend some time outdoors. A day in nature is a gift not to be taken for granted. A positive attitude goes a long way in all endeavors, especially painting, so take the time to be thankful for what you have already accomplished and to think of productive and positive ways to improve yourself.

Click here for tips on painting snow in my blog post, “Snow Day”

How to Mix Realistic Skin Colors and Avoid the Chalky or Muddy Look

Adam Clague OPA · Jan 14, 2019 · 7 Comments

Mixing skin colors can be challenging. Flesh often contains hints of every color of the rainbow! Plus, it’s easy for skin tones to become “chalky” or “muddy.” In this article, I’ll share information to help you mix realistic, lively flesh colors.

Simplify

When I’m mixing skin colors, I often find it convenient to dip into every color on my palette. To simplify this process, I think of flesh as containing just three types of colors:

1. Reds
2. Yellows
3. “Nudge Colors” (I’ll define this in a second)

I find simplifying like this is an efficient approach to painting any skin color under typical conditions.

“Sam” by Adam Clague Oil – 12″ x 14″
“Taylor” by Adam Clague Oil – 10″ x 8″

Mix Up Big Piles Of Average Colors

By “average” colors, I mean colors that represent the colors in the subject generally. I know you can see dozens of colors in your subject. But in the beginning, keep things simple and don’t try to match every color you see right away. You can mix more specific colors later with those “nudge colors” I’ll talk about.

At the start, I mix up just 2 big piles of average color–1 average color for the lit side of the head and 1 aververage color for the shadowed side (below, you can see these two colors applied in broad, blocky shapes).

“Becca WIP” by Adam Clague
Oil – 12″ x 11″

Nudge as Needed

So what is a “nudge color” anyway?

Well, mixing just red and yellow together can produce some pretty intense oranges that may not look natural as flesh colors. For this reason, it’s usually necessary to “nudge” your mixture toward one color or another by mixing in other color(s)— “nudge colors.”

Below are two examples of average color mixtures I often start out with. In both cases, white is used as a nudge color. The white both lightens and cools the original orange color.

Example 1: Lemon, permanent alizarin crimson & white.

Example 2: Yellow ochre, permanent red medium & white.

Now, although I often start with the above mixtures, I certainly also mix in various other nudge colors as necessary. Sometimes your subject will dictate a nudge toward green in places. Or blue. Or violet. In fact, any other color on your palette is a candidate for a nudge color.

How Do I Know Which Reds, Yellows and Nudge Colors to Use?

Excellent question. My best answer is let your subject be your guide. Choose colors that are appropriate for the values, temperatures and colors in the subject. In the end, observe your subject with care and faithfully paint the colors you see before you. Much more important than any formula is the process of training your eye to observe and paint faithfully.

Now that we’ve explored how to simplify and mix skin colors, let’s take a look at a common difficulty:

Muddy & Chalky Skin Tones

It’s happened to all of us who have ever attempted to paint a portrait…

You’ve been painting that cherub of a child. You’ve been carefully trying to match the colors of that perfect, unblemished skin. You think you’ve nailed those rosy cheeks, that fair flesh, that sandy blonde hair.

But then you stand back from your work and… wow. Those cheeks are definitely rosy… like the red soil of Arizona. That skin is exactly as fair as chalk dust. And that hair is sandy, alright. Just like… well, sand.

If only you had a chart of “skin-tone recipes” written by some Betty Crocker of the art world that would tell you exactly how to whip up big batches of “Satin Skin” and “Ethereal Epidermis” instead of the “mud,” “dirt” and “chalk” currently on your palette.

Fortunately, the cure for “muddy” or “chalky” color is not an unobtainable fantasy. In his book Alla Prima: Everything I Know About Painting, master artist Richard Schmid sheds light on this topic…

“’Muddy color’… is simply a color that is inappropriate in temperature” —Richard Schmid

“Muddy” and “chalky” color is not so much a color issue as it is a temperature issue. So let’s talk temperature…

Temperature Basics

Here is the first thing to understand about temperature: When you’re painting, there is no such thing as “warm” and “cool.” There is only “warm-er” and “cool-er.” It’s relative–a color is only cool-er or warm-er compared to another color.

Therefore, a “muddy” or “chalky” skin tone is a color that is either too cool or too warm compared to the surrounding colors.

Side-Note: A color might also look “muddy” or “chalky” if it’s the wrong value. For example, a shape that’s too dark on a portrait will look like just that–a dark smudge on the face. But given the value is correct, the reason a color looks “muddy” or “chalky” is that it’s either too warm or too cool in comparison to the surrounding colors.

But of course, this information is useless unless you know how to fix a mixture that’s too warm or too cool…

Two Ways You Can Make A Color Warmer Or Cooler

1: By Moving Around the Color Wheel Like a Clock

First, however, here are two important things to know: 1) the red-orange-yellow side of the color wheel is considered “warmer” than the green-blue-violet side, which is considered “cooler.” 2) Most consider either bright yellow or yellow-orange the very warmest color. Blue is considered the coolest color (However, there’s an exception that I’ll mention in a bit…)

Now, imagine you’re traveling around this color wheel like the hand of a clock. The closer you move toward the cooler side, the cooler the color will become. The closer you move toward to the warmer side, the warmer the color will become.

Here are two examples:

Let’s say you’re standing on that very warmest color–a bright yellow-orange. You take one step clockwise toward the green. Now, you’re standing on a yellow that’s tinted with a hint of green. This yellow-green is cooler than the yellow-orange because you’ve moved closer to the cooler side of the color wheel.

This time, start out on violet. Take one step counter-clockwise toward the blue. Now, you’re standing on blue-violet, which is cooler than violet because it’s closer to blue and because you’ve moved further away from the warmer side of the color wheel.

The 2nd way you can make a color warmer or cooler is…

2. By Moving Along Imaginary Spokes of the Color Wheel

Earlier, I said blue is considered the coolest color, but I mentioned there’s an exception…

It’s true that blue is the coolest color of the rainbow. However, for the painter, there is one other color so icy, it gives blue frostbite… pure white.

In this particular color wheel, you’ll notice there is a narrow ring that contains the main colors in their most saturated forms (1)…

The farther you travel away from this ring toward the center of the circle, the more white is added (2).

Adding white will cool any other color… even blue!

Did you find this lesson valuable? Watch me demonstrate these principles on video in my upcoming online course, “Learn to Paint Dynamic Portraits & Figures in Oil.” The course will launch later in 2019, but you can access the first unit for free! To learn more, please visit //ClagueFineArt.com.

“The Student” by Adam Clague Oil – 12″ x 9″

What it Means to be an Artist

Dr. Jacqueline Chanda · Jan 7, 2019 · Leave a Comment

When I started this journey of being an artist, I didn’t realize how many different kinds of artists or artist markets exist. I am not talking about styles of art, realism verse abstractionism or folk verses traditional. I mean artists who focus on local/regional content only, those who are driven by social/political issues, those who seek to be nationally or internationally connected, those who produce work only for its aesthetic beauty, those who are driven by cultural/ethnic content, those who seek out new and innovative approaches and cutting-edge techniques, those who just want to paint whatever comes their way, etc. I struggle, as most artists do, with identifying what, which market I want to be a part of. So I ask myself the question what kind of artist do I want to be and what unique contribution can I make to the field?
Do I want to be a portrait painter, a landscape artist, or an equine painter, consistently producing the same kind of artwork, using the same media in the same style? As I looked closer at art history, I realized that famous and not so famous artists did not stick to one subject matter, one style or one media. Pablo Picasso, for example, painted all kinds of subject matters, worked with clay, created etchings, made sculptures, and produced drawings. According to The Art Story.org “Picasso had an eclectic attitude to style, and although, at any one time, his work was usually characterized by a single dominant approach, he often moved interchangeably between different styles – sometimes even in the same artwork.” Yet consistency is supposed to be the hallmark of an artist work.

Three Mints by Jacqueline Chanda 12″x16″

If we continue with the example of Picasso, we see that over a lifetime he was anything but consistent. He was, however, consistent during certain time periods. Thus we can identify his Rose or his analytical cubism period. However, none of these periods lasted very long, some for two years, others for 10 years. I once read that consistency in artwork is based on six elements; style, palette, subject matter, theme, medium, and presentation, and while you needn’t have all six elements in your work to be consistent your work should exhibit at least three or four of these elements. Perhaps the answer is consistency in a particular body of work and not consistency over a lifetime. Will consistency help you develop a unique contribution to the field?

Inspiration on Mount Lemmon
by Jacqueline Chanda

How exclusive can one be when there are thousands of artists out there striving to be ‘unique’? In Picasso’s case, it was his contribution of seeing form in a different way, cubism. He was influenced by a number of sources, other artists and cultures. And he worked to step away from many of the academic conventions of his time. So even though he was an excellent draftsman and could render in a classical manner, he chose to see things differently. So ‘unique contribution’ is important if your interest is in transforming the field, turning it on its ears. But what if you just want to paint, what could be your unique contribution? Could it be theoretical exploration, a new way of visualizing an idea or notion, a different way of developing a composition, etc.? While these are all interesting concepts, they take lots of time to explore, develop and perfect. Wasn’t it Chuck Close who refused to exhibit his work until he had perfected his technique? But what can an artist do especially if s/he has to eat, make money to buy supplies, support their art habit? Do you ‘go with the flow’ and create work that is trendy so it can sell? Or do you take the time no matter what to explore, to do work that connects the past and feeds the future, to produce work that is truly unique? Which are you?

So now I come back to the questions at hand, what kind of artist do I want to be and what unique contribution can I make to the field? Even though I have selected oil painting as my major medium and figurative art as my content, I enjoy painting birds, horses, still life arrangements, which might include fruit, shoes, candies, bowls, etc., landscapes, and whatever I find appealing. I feel that the skills I use in painting people are applicable to painting landscapes. I might have to work a little harder at landscape painting, but the principles are the same. And what I learn from painting landscapes, especially plein air landscapes, I apply to my figurative work.
As for consistency, I personally find it hard to stay with just one subject matter for consistency sake. So I focus on creating series or bodies of work that allow me to explore different elements of ideas or related subject matter. One series may focus on a particular subject matter and a special palette while another might focus on composition and a theme. What remains most consistent is my medium, oil painting, my style, loose brush strokes, and my theme, people. As an artist who started her journey late in life, I am not sure I have the time to explore the notions of a truly unique contribution to the field of painting because as I said before it takes lots of time to explore, experiment, and just play. Therefore, I have determined, that my unique contribution, while not earth changing, is really about my voice and vision. The scenes I select to paint, my personal vision of what is important in a scene, my unique voice of expressing my subject matter, the internal logic I use in developing my compositions. Do these choices come naturally? No, not necessarily, I am always looking at what other artists past and present have and are doing, how they manned brushstrokes, the color palettes they use, the compositional arrangements they select. I use what I learn from them sparingly, because creativity is, “knowing how to hide your sources.” While this might not change the face of painting within the next century, it is what I enjoy doing. How about you?