I once heard an argument that since the important work that doctors do is commonly referred to as a “practice”, it might not be appropriate for artists to call what we do a practice. I mean, when I make a painting that I want to sell I’m not just practicing am I? But then again when a surgeon does a triple bypass I sure as hell hope they’re not just practicing! What I probably have in common with that surgeon is that we both want to get better at what we do, so yeah, practice is appropriate. Even for a finished artwork or a fixed-up heart. Or whatever.
The truth is, I’m always striving to get better as a painter. I’m also always trying to get better as a guitar player too and damn do I wish I’d had YouTube back in the days that I was first learning. But I digress. This post is about my painting. And while I always want to get better, I have to admit that I probably get set in my ways a little. I do watch painting instructional videos on YouTube, but I probably don’t utilize all that much of what I learn on that platform.
So this all brings me to last week when a friend of mine sent me a message to compliment me on my painting of John Lennon that I recently posted on Instagram. We had a bit of a back and forth in which he offered a critique of my work and made some suggestions of what I could do to improve it. I won’t go into too much detail, but his too main criticisms are that I don’t use enough paint and that I work too fast.
These are definitely valid criticisms. My go to instructor on YouTube always mentions that the biggest mistake he sees in oil painters is that a lot of people don’t use enough paint. And I know I’m guilty of it. These days I’m almost completely using M Graham oil paints which are not the cheapest brand out there. And I make a lot of work. Anyone who follows me here or on social media knows that. So okay, maybe I chince out a little. Having said that, I do have one reason for doing this that I think is valid and that is, I almost always do an underpainting (usually green) and if a bit of it shows through throughout that painting is ‘unifies’ it to a certain degree. If I use more paint, and I have, I lose that underpainting completely.
That’s not to say the underpainting is completely necessary, so if I wipe it out, who cares? The painting will probably still be pretty harmonious because I generally use a limited colour palette. So okay, I can use more paint. It’ll cost me, but I can do it.
That brings me to the idea that I work too fast. Why do I do that, you may ask? Well, the initial concept that developed into Cubo-Weirdism included the idea that I would make paintings quickly that I could sell at a very reasonable price. In fact that initial price was too reasonable–I had to quickly raise it to the more sustainable but still reasonable price structure that I have now.
I have to admit that having this rule has gotten me into a mind-set that I may have gotten a little stuck in. So my friend suggested that I do a painting in which I slow down and as he put it I should use “…the minimum number of brushstrokes to convey what you’re trying to depict.” The painting that I had decided to work on that day was this painting of John Goodman as Fred Flintstone mashed up with the original cartoon Fred. This was probably not the perfect subject to try this exercise in that I had to make up some of this painting in my head, so I can’t say that every brushstroke is there for a reason (he wanted to see that too). I still ended up working intuitively as I always do. But I did use more paint. Let’s see what happens if I keep this in mind in the future.