Pear #26 - 29: Lots More Experimenting

"A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all."
                                                                                            ~ Rita May Brown

Pear #26

As I type, there's a severe thunderstorm giving a final lashing to our area before it moves on. I fully expected the power to go out tonight, leaving me to paint Pear #30 by candlelight. Thankfully that didn't happen and my last painting for the month is finished and waiting for daylight so I can photograph it and post my final 30 Pears in 30 Days on Tuesday. It's no beauty, but it's DONE.

I apologize for the less-than-perfect photos of Pear 26 - 29. It's been gloomy out for a few days now, so I've been completely dependent on indoor lighting for photos. Even with color-corrected bulbs to augment the regular room lighting, my camera has not been happy.

Pear #27

This one, however, is not the camera's fault. I don't even know what to say. What happened???

Pear #28

Experimenting with temperature shifts across the folds of the cloth. This is one of those pieces that I absolutely love parts of and can't stand other parts.

Pear #29

I had a lot of fun with this one. I added naphthol red to my palette, which mixed with cadmium yellow light to make the delicious orange in the foreground. If you look carefully, I've got the full spectrum (good ol' Roy G Biv) represented here.

Happy Halloween everyone! 

Pear #21 - 25: More Exercises and a Whole Different Palette

Pear #25
6 x 6 inches, oil on canvas board

I have to admit to feeling a little pressure right now. The end of October is fast approaching and I lost a few days for painting this month when Life happened, so I'm running slightly behind. Although I profess to believe in the importance of sharing both good and bad efforts to show that artists don't create perfect paintings every time, I am sweating the quality of some of these pieces. That's why Pear 21 through 24 are not displayed at the top of this post...

However, I suspect that Pear 21 through 24 directly led to Pear 25, and not just numerically. I tried another exercise from Sarah Sedwick; this one on brushstroke economy. I painted my pear model 4 times, for 10 minutes each time. However, I was only allowed 25 brushstrokes in the first painting, then 20, 15, and finally just 10 brushstrokes in the last painting. (A brushstroke is from the time you touch the canvas with the brush to the time you take the brush off, so you can swirl the paint around a lot, as long as you don't lift the brush off the canvas.) Finishing the background was not a requirement. The point is to really think and observe, and consider each brushstroke very carefully. What do you really need to create the impression of your subject?

Pear # 21 - 24
Limited brushstroke exercise

Oh dear, I didn't do very well with this one. I often used up my brushstrokes long before the timer went off, which meant I was rushing and not concentrating on my subject. I came out of the exercise not only with some very ugly pears, but also knowing I hadn't gotten the point of it. I was feeling very frustrated with myself. I knew I needed to keep going and paint another painting, but my brain was refusing to cooperate. I looked down at my palette and felt an overwhelming sense of frustration and boredom, and I was very reluctant to pick up my paintbrushes.

As I was hesitating, I had a mini-temper tantrum inside my head. I berated myself for ever committing to this Pear Project, telling myself I was going to fail and embarrass myself, and that I was never going to be able to paint another decent painting ever again. Luckily another, louder part of me stepped in and decided that if I was going to fail, then I should just have some f*****g fun. I was sick of the palette I'd been using all month, sick of trying to get the values and shapes right: I just wanted to paint. So I cleared off my palette and grabbed the colors that appealed to me at that moment: yellow ochre, Indian red, Venetian red, burnt umber and raw umber (I couldn't find my siennas, otherwise I would've included them, too.). I made a very sketchy drawing of the pears on the canvas and then just started adding paint all around them. It was all very spontaneous, and when I was done it surprised the heck out of me that I discovered I actually liked the piece.

This was exactly why I took on this project in the first place - to see what would happen when I pushed myself, when I got bored, to find out if there was some way to tap into the more expressive side of my creativity. I just hope that I don't have to go through such angst every time I want to paint like that!

Pear #19 & 20 - Color Scheme Shifts

Pear #19 - Experimenting with reflections

I seem to be unconsciously shifting towards more earth tones and darker colors. Perhaps it's all the brown leaves drifting down past my window, or perhaps it's that Halloween is in the air...

Pear #20 - using up what was on my palette

Pear #15 - 18

"I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing,
if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it -
keep going, keep going come what may.
                                                                                                ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Pear #15
6 x 6 inches, oil on canvas board

I have long admired other artist's rendering of cloth, especially if the fabric has a pattern on it. Oh, those tantalizing polka dots, plaids, or stripes! My hope during this month was to experiment enough with painting fabric that I would achieve a decent ability to reproduce it. When I completed this painting, I did a little happy dance in front of my easel.

My palette
Mmmm, love all those luscious greens

I should note that I added cadmium yellow light alongside my usual azo yellow in my primary color line-up this time.

I also did a couple of demos for my beginning oil painting students: 

Pears #16 and 17 - each done in 10 minutes.

One was Carol Marine's classic 10 Minute Apple exercise - only obviously I did it with pears.

Pear #18 - study in blue and orange

The other demo was to paint using only complimentary colors - this time blue and orange. This was also a good example of "do what I say, not what I do" as I overworked this one!

I can't believe it's October 26th already! This 30 Pears project has been great, but I'm going to have to start cramming my posts with paintings if I'm going to show you all 30 pieces by the end of the month!

The Rejects

 "To try and fail is at least to learn; to fail to try is to suffer the inestimable loss of what might have been."
                                                                                                   ~ Chester Barnard

The duds. Let's call them Pear #12, 13 and 14

The problem with painting is that it doesn't always go well. Many paintings, for whatever reason, miss the mark and end up in an artist's reject pile. Even the great Masters painted over unwanted pieces, which modern science is now allowing us to see. (If those artists knew we were exposing their abandoned works, I wonder how they'd feel...) This should give us artists some comfort, but I will admit it is small comfort to me. As many times as I tell my students "Every painting is just practice for the next.", my failed paintings eat away at me. I was not even going to show you the "bad" paintings from my 30 Pears in 30 Days project, but if I didn't then I'd just be perpetuating the belief that a "real" artist has talent that magically makes every painting perfect, which I firmly believe is a myth that needs to be dispelled. So many people give up on making art because their work is not perfect.

My mother subscribed to this belief, which is why she did not support me as a developing artist. I stopped showing her my work after a while. Many years later she happened to see some of my work through a family friend and was shocked at how far I'd come. Yet this still didn't dispel her belief in the myth. A few years later she decided she wanted to learn how to draw, so she enrolled in an evening class for beginning drawers. She quit after two classes because, in her words, the instructor hadn't taught her how to draw.

There is no magic formula to making art - just hard work and study. Art, just like any other skill, takes practice. Lots of it. Years and years of it. And even when you've reached a certain level of mastery, there will still be bad paintings, bad days when you wonder why you're even bothering, months when you wonder if you'll ever be "good enough". Too much self-doubt can lead to giving up, but in moderation, that doubt is a good thing. Perhaps without that doubt, we wouldn't push ourselves to keep getting better. If we thought our work was already perfect, we might not be motivated to keep improving. As the Robert Hughes quote goes: "The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize."

Pear #11 - Double The Fun

"Today is a good day. Today she feels she is the master of her craft. Today she is
free of the grinding tyranny of doubt. The voice that mocks her ambition. The voice
that bites and slanders and causes her more heartache that any other voice. Today
she is focused, she is exultant... If only painting were like this every day."
                                                    ~ Glenn Haybittle from The Way Back to Florence

Pear #11
oil, 6 x 6 inches on canvas board

This is the kind of painting that makes you want to keep painting, the kind that makes all the frustration and self-doubt and stacks of failed pieces worth it. The kind that makes you blink and say "I managed to paint that!?" And yet, when you've stopped congratulating yourself, all that elation quickly dissolves into the realization of how much further you still have to go. Paintings like this are just mile markers on the long, long road.

Art and Stress

STRESS!

Our internet service was down for 4 days less than a week before my 30 Pears in 30 Days project was due to start. I had a long list of things I needed to take care of for my website, Etsy store, the new blog, etc. I was feeling a little stressed and overwhelmed, to say the least.

Life is stressful enough as it is, but being self-employed or an entrepreneur in a creative field has its own special set of stressors. We need to be focused and energized to accomplish all we have to do, as well as relaxed enough to allow creativity and new ideas to flow, and unmanaged stress can zap our ability to do any of that. Top that with the surprising number of artists who are full-time caregivers, or live with chronic pain, or any other added long-term stressor, and it’s amazing anyone can finish a piece of art.

If only we could relax like this!
Spending time with animals is a good stress reliever.

Dr. Eric Maisel is an author and creativity coach who writes a column for Professional Artist Magazine. In a blog post last year, he discussed stress and the artist:

            “An artist needs to honor the reality of stress and make plans
              for dealing with it...

            Take some time, have a fruitful conversation with yourself and
             answer the following four questions:
            1. What are my current stressors?
            2. What unhealthy strategies am I currently employing to deal
                with these stressors?
            3. What healthy strategies am I currently employing to deal with
                these stressors?
            4. What new stress management strategies would I like to learn?”

We’ve all heard the “eat right, get enough sleep, and exercise regularly” recipe for stress-busting, but honestly, when I’m stressed out, that doesn’t help much. Through trial and error, I’ve had to figure out what works for me. I hope you find something here that’s helpful to you.

Mmmm

Chocolate has always been my go-to quick relief for stress, and there's scientific proof to back me up. Eating dark chocolate (in moderation!) actually helps reduce stress hormones in the body. Hurrah!

I’ve had an on-again, off-again meditation practice for 5 years now. When I meditate regularly, I feel much more clear-headed and better able to deal with Life’s little surprises. However, there are times when my mind is just too active or distracted by something to be able to meditate on my own, so I also use guided meditations, or guided visualizations to help me relax. I just pop on the headphones and let someone talk me into relaxation.

One of my favorite guided meditation/relaxation collections is from Joanne D'Amico and her "Relax for A While" channel on YouTube. She has the most amazingly soothing voice, and many of her guided meditations are short enough to use as a quick break during a busy day. Some of her videos include relaxing sounds such as rain or a babbling mountain stream. (My apologies - try as I might with YouTube's Share/Embed settings, I could not get the YouTube related videos at the end of this video to go away. According to the HTML, they shouldn't be there, but they are. At least I managed to eliminate the ads at the beginning!)

Okay, so maybe this sounds a little crazy, but I find doing the dishes relaxing. I kind of get into a zone in my head and the sound of water probably helps. Weeding the garden helps me de-stress as well. It's so satisfying to pull out stubborn weeds!

Many people find putting on upbeat music helps to clear their head and get them in a better mood. You can burn off the stress (and maybe some of that chocolate) by dancing to the music or playing air guitar. Even just a few minutes can make you feel better.

Nature is a natural stress relief

Getting outside in the fresh air, whether to a local park, your own backyard, or out in the wilderness is a wonderful stress reliever. Throw a ball around, play with your dog, go hiking. If you've been holed up in your studio for too long, maybe it's time to see what that bright thing in the sky is.

We've now come full circle: just the act of creating art has been scientifically shown to decrease stress in the body, regardless of whether you're "talented" or not. So perhaps when we are feeling stressed, we just need to drop everything and make more art.

Please leave a comment and share what you do to combat stress.