Loading A Brush With Paint

Many painters paint with lots of paint, a heavily loaded brush.  I don’t typically paint that way.  I like more control for how much paint is applied at a time. And I often paint in translucent layers.

However when painting Plein Air, outside landscapes which are time limited – due to the sun moving across the sky.  I paint faster and tend have more paint on my brush and try to not fuss with where I decide to place it so there is a more fresh appearance to the marks and strokes.  Plein Air painting demands immediate decisiveness.

 
I also tend to get different color changes happening in single brush strokes loaded with bits of different colors on the brush at the same time, allowing them to mix slightly while on the canvas.  This technique in particular, makes paintings magical and exciting to my eye.  I do not "mix" as in stir the paint to blend it while the colors stream out of my brush. I let the brush marks be as they happen.

For this reason, even though I will mix colors on a pallet or container, I rarely ever mix a large batch of the same color paint. I tend to mix a few brush strokes worth of paint at a time if I am after a particular color.  I do not see the world in flat sections of color so I paint in variations and blends.  And I prefer the varied versions of color that flow out of a brush while painting. 

However when painting a large smooth sky on a mural, it does help to have sizable batches of particular colors to cover large areas and have on hand for further touching up.  And even then, that sky color is going to change from top to bottom; from a darker more red tone, purplish deep blue, high in the sky, to a faded light turquoise beige at the horizon.

I am not drawn to even flat unchanging colors, typically known as "graphic" blocks of flat unchanging color, such as in old poster art where printers had to make a whole new plate for each color and minimized the color options to keep the process simpler and the cost down.  I love the antique poster prints, because they had a lot of layering.  Yet posters later on. got simpler not more complex.  Painters are not limited to certain colors and we can mix colors to please our eyes as we see fit, so that is what I enjoy in painting. Seeing the painter's choices by seeing the brush strokes and the colors that happen more spontaneously.

While painting, I load a brush, 1/3 – 2/3’s full of paint.  It optimizes the capillary action that urges the paint to leave the brush.  I try to keep paint from building up and drying at the top end of the bristles where it is secured to the brush handle. 

 

There is a fine balance between manipulating the paint on the brush as it is put down, and moving, altering, or mixing with the paint on the painting.  I often dab the brush on the pallet before I put it on a painting.  This allows me to first check the flow (moisture and color), and second to remove some paint first in order to manage not putting on too much paint down at a time nor to have the liquid be in excess.  I also dab, to adjust where the paint is on the brush. I want the paint near the point end of the bristles when I want to lay it on the painting.  I want it further up the bristles if I am blending and do not want the full load to arrive on the painting all at once., especially if I want to manipulate what is already on the canvas before I let the paint on the brush join the paint on the painting.

I rinse the brush as needed to change colors, get rid of muddy colors, or to freshen up the moisture inside the bristles to keep the bristles pliable.  Drying paint will limit the flexibility or movement of the brush.  I frequently rinse a brush well, and dry off excess water (or solvent) before collecting more paint.

 
Due to capillary action, if a brush is too dry it will pull up paint or moisture off a painting into the brush, which is something to know about so you can use that when you want to, and don't have it happen when you do not want that effect. And it is good to know how to lift something if you want to remove paint or moisture.

While painting in acrylic paints, I use a clear matte or satin medium for blending.  It takes very little pigment to add color to a painting. And having a medium to extend the pigment versus water helps the paint bind well, and the paint with less pigment will remain the same consistency as paint versus becoming much too watery or thinned and runny.

Apply This Skill To Become A Better Artist.

Observation.

Beyond hand/eye coordination, and a desire to make art, one key technique in creating art, is Observation.  Paying attention.  Looking, seeing, looking again, and seeing – repeatedly, for hours on end. It requires a unique meditation type of patience.

This post is about representational art, which is one style of Art, and a great skill for artists to master.  When artists have this ability, they have a choice to use it or not. Without this ability artists are quite limited, and are often intimidated by the task and afraid they will get the details wrong.

The first step to accurately represent something in a drawing or painting, is first see it well.

Noticing, and observing is learning and recognizing, assimilating what is being looked at, and understanding the details of what defines it. 

Mapping out and placing representational details on a page or canvas to artistically recreate it, requires noticing features and reproducing those aspects, relative all other details, including spacial orientation and proportional composition.

Too many Art students learn to create without ever really paying attention to the item they are recreting, which leads to a serious disadvantage.

When I was in my last quarter of college before I graduated with a BFA, I took a Science Illustration class.  It was the single class that had far better artists in it than any of my other Art classes.

This class happened to be attended mostly by science majors, and only a handful of other artists.  You might think that the artists who had studied Art and painted for most of their lives would have out-shined the other students by a long shot.

However in this class it was the Science students' work that shown far better than the Art students' work. I noticed a remarkable thing: Science students' ability to pay attention; to observe, notice identifying features and then slowly meticulously document those details in marks on the page.  These skills are crucial in order to most accurately as possible represent a depicted item.

After watching Science students illustrate a botanical sample or a preserved racoon, I noticed very careful, deliberate, disciplined students accustomed to studying details, attentively observing what they saw. They were in no rush. 

Which led to me note a huge difference between Artists in my classes and the Science students.  Art Students seem to always be short on time, or in a frantic race to a finish, as if they were on to their next project shortly after the first one began.  

Artists I witnessed, looked at their reference item, briefly, sometimes only once for just a second to get an idea of what they saw, and then drew a lot, sometimes for fifteen to twenty minutes before looking up at the item again.  They tended to paint what they felt, or an impression of what they saw, without rechecking back to the reference item being drawn.  They carried on with their drawing or painting, from memory, and the image quickly became something either only loosely related to the item being drawn, or something else entirely. This lack of referencing the object being drawn, as a way of creating is prominent in Art Students.

In contrast, Science students frequently look to the thing they are drawing, always checking and rechecking the reference item for how it really looks, so they really get to know it, intimately; they study it all along.

So anytime you feel stuck, or unsure of whether you are representing the item you are depicting, stop, take a breath, slow down.  Look longer at what you are creating, just observe, study what you see. 

Observing will help you be more confident about what you see, which will help you make more confident marks, and give you more options to how you depict what you are creating. It is a perfect place to pause any time you feel stuck, simply see, relax, and carry-on.

Returning to Art

When my daughter Jevana, was a child, I noticed she had little or no interest in painting and drawing. I felt a little sad she did not share my passion for painting and creating, but I simply figured, she was more nerdy and left brain oriented, as she loved to read – constantly and she was a brilliant student.

A few times a year she attended street painting festivals with me. Mostly she watched and often slept when she got bored.  Occasionally, she would color in some areas, and occasionally went off to draw her own thing.  She began her own sponsored street paintings squares at age eight and did that once a year for ten years.

As a young teenager, she first began drawing profound cartoons, and then began painting in oils and water color. 

At fifteen years of age, she suddenly came into painting with a fierce passion.  I set up an area in the garage where she had a desk, an easel, a heater and time to focus and go inward all alone.
As a teenager painting became her saving grace.  Her paintings were raw, shocking and powerful, compelling and engaging.  She had no expectation of being a good artist, she simply did what she was driven to do – once she got into creating, we've had this passion in common for many years.  She was more curious than determined to make any of it "be" something.  That recipe worked well.  And her inner critic had not fully ripened, so she seemingly had no internal battles about discrepancies between what she had in mind and how it was turning out.

She focused a lot on the human figure and studied my anatomy books to get a feel for our human skeleton under our skin.  And within a short period of time, she submitted her artwork and won merit based full scholarships into two summer programs as well as a full scholarship to college in New York.

She is now in her early thirties and my daughter has rarely painted in the past six years. She has been a fully responsible working adult.  Lately her need to create has been calling her again like sirens on land, eager to entice her into the waves of creation... and she recently dove back into drawing and painting, and though productively producing beautiful works, she is also finding many stumbling blocks to freely enjoying her creative inclinations.

I feel very happy to hear she is re-employing her artistic skills and practices, as I know creating as a meditation and the self-righting effect it can have.  I have also missed seeing her work and sharing the joy about the images she creates.

The difficulty now, is she is no longer innocent to her abilities, and her expectations are elevated by a productive history, and her mind is interfering. She is struggling with letting what ever she is creating be enough, or good enough simply for having put time and energy into it.

This challenge of hers led me to think more about how to help someone get over the first hurdle: not giving into negative self talk... that KFUK radio station inside our heads can rob all inspiration from us if we let it play. 

Healing a broken heart and righting one's self in the world is a very different motivation than wanting to paint a beautiful painting for your wall, or accrue enough merit to get bills for school covered.  For her, when she was young, she did not care what came out of it. She simply had to create and spend that quiet time alone with herself and her feelings, once she had an incredible portfolio, it won her recognition.

My daughter wants to re-experience the freedom that being creative gave her when she was younger, and she is struggling a bit because her mind and inner critic voice is interfering with her enjoyment of the process.  Of course it is easy to suggest, ditch the inner critic.  But that is easier said then done.

Her challenge has led to me suddenly rethink what Art is for me and how I have gotten to where I am, as well as what creating is, in a bigger perspective and how to present what I want to impart to a student. I have nearly thirty years of street painting experience, being in a crowd making art. Making mistakes, or marks I did not like, or detracted from a painting, correcting them if I could, and moving on.  The fast pace of it forced me to continue, and being in a crowd, let me to be gentler on myself.

For me creating is making something out of nothing.  I get high from creating.  And that uplifted sensation is enough for me.  I learned to get over my big bad self.  It was not helping me do anything. Now, I often easily accept, or do not mind the outcome, even if it varies from my expectations or original intention.  That kind of outlook takes a lot of pressure off the process and the end result.

What carries the thrill, is the enjoyment of sitting and experimenting with paint and color to see where it goes, always keep a keen-eye lookout for something new and different, versus being heavily attached to the results being a certain way.

And for the record, No, I was not always able to get the results I liked or had in mind. Maybe even now, or possibly ever. But I learned to be OK with the results I do get, and see the beauty in what happened versus how I thought I wanted a painting or other creative project to turn out.

I have learned over time to enjoy the process, versus measure it all by the end result.  And when the end result represents a good time had, creating it, it is easier to appreciate the art – the art brings back a good memory.

I think all people have artistic talent and sensibilities. If their artistic talents are not active those talents are simply dormant, and unstirred. Those abilities can be brought out at any time, but they need to be coerced or invited to come out and be used.

People who improve artistically, are the people who practice creating and experiment freely.

So, I encourage you to practice.  Make time for it.  Even if it is a short period of time.  Make it a time of meditation. Give the gift of creating to yourself. Your temperament will be graced with a sense of peace – few other activities produce this as easily.

The people who practice creating more are the people who enjoy making art more.  So, enjoying it leads to doing it more, which leads to better skills and abilities which leads to better results, and hence more enjoyment.

It is a cycle.

However, the beginning of the cycle is not good results – it is enjoyment.

How does someone enjoy painting?

By being lighthearted about the process.

#1)  – by getting out of your own way.  Finding ways to tone down the inner critic, and let the youthful inner self explore and play.

#2) – minimize discomforts (such as temperature, hunger, thirst, )  so there is little to distract you when you are doing the serious work/play of creating a painting.

#3) – Be curious and playful.  Experiment. Try things. When you are quiet enough, an inner guidance will lead you to what to work on next.

You do not have to solve the painting in a second, you are a witness to its unfolding. Enjoy it!

I think the most prominent aspect of painting for me, is the peaceful feeling that comes when I paint.

Painting is a type of meditation, or study. It is a spiritual experience.

It is a practice of paying deep and intense attention to an image and the process of creating it and allowing for unexpected things to happen and evolve, then accepting it and moving forward from that point. A bit like life, mmm?

Creating is a spiritual experience, a meditation – it is finding peace in a particular function of making something out of nothing.  Be your god, self for a time, make something out of nothing, for fun.

Reflections on beginning and ending Artwork

Detail of A Plein Air Oil Painting I did in 2006 on San Juan Island, Washington

Knowing about color was something that came natural to me.  It is a sensibility I thought everyone had and I learned that many people appreciate exposure to information I take for granted. 

Becoming familiar with the color wheel and acquiring hands-on experience mixing different colors and seeing what happens helps artists get where they want to go because they learn which colors to add or refrain from adding to a painting so the painting more closely depicts the image as an artist's mind sees it. 

I believe the lack of understanding colors is the biggest stumbling block for those desiring fluent tools with which to create art.  When an artist has a good understanding of color, then addressing shape, form, and lighting, or mood in a painting happens easier.

Please forgive me, if anything I share is below your knowledge.

A student asked me to break down painting, into clearly defined steps. I can get to the basics of set up, what to have on hand, what I think about, how I move forward, and then… a big abyss opens in my mind and I have a hard time articulating the next steps.

They are choices.  Decisions made based on the current information about the painting, as well as my mood, how much time I have to paint.

At any point, what to do next depends on how that painting evolves. It is infinitely variable. It is based on all the previous decisions.  And whether I am patient.

I do not paint systematically like paint by number set.  I paint in order of what draws my attention, or in accordance to the color I have on my brush and where I see the painting calls for me to add to it somehow.  I listen.  I listen for internal guidance about where to start and how to proceed.

I know it's a bit etherial; I listen to the painting.  And where it is calling to have color or marks to note its beginning and becoming.  Paintings evolve.  And they often evolve to something other than a creator had in mind, because… some artists say paintings have a mind of their own.  Perhaps this is how the subconscious communicates to us what is going on beneath the surface of what is already known.

If you think of a painting guiding you, letting you know what needs to be put where, it can take a little pressure off you making that decision mentally.  Listen with your heart.  Art is much more intuitive, so learning to listen to that message and inclination is helpful.

The steps of painting: each step involves all the decisions I make as I paint and observe the results I am getting, as I try different ways of depicting what I see and evaluate or compare to what I want to obtain with each added paint stroke, within a painted image.  Or I get reckless and I simply try stuff. Random efforts or calculated efforts, sometimes when I just trust and move forward. 

To put things into perspective, though I have been a very confident painter (most of the time), it was only in 2012, after nearly 50 years of creating art that I suddenly realized, (while painting a mural in December outside in nearly freezing weather), that I was no longer afraid of paint! That was incredibly freeing!  I was no longer afraid I would not be able to adjust a painting to suit me. It is quite freeing to not fear the results.  (More on this later).

Painting may seem easier than it really is. 

Actually painting as a activity, is easy.  However achieving a desired result is sometimes tricky; it requires hand eye coordination, patience, (lots of it), and and ability to be with the painting while it is not yet finished and may give every indication that it is not what a painter had in mind – yet.  This is a lot like life. Learning to be with something in process, that is not finished yet.  Living with incompleteness is a challenge, especially if we have the expectation of already wanting to have arrived.  

When people ask me at a street painting festival what happens if I do not finish in time.  And I laugh. I tell them.  "If I do not finish before the end of the last day, at 6 pm on Sunday, I call it done."  There is no way to not "finish".  When you decide you are done with a painting.  You are done.  You may come back to it later, repaint it, change it or completely paint over it.  But at the time you called it done, it is done.  Much of my abilities to address problems in paintings evolved to seem easy, months or years later.  All is much better when I relax. But I did not begin that way. I began with such high frustration issues that i would put projects away until my upset passed so I would not ruin something out of frustration.

Some teachers told me it takes two people to complete a painting. One to paint it and another to indicate when to stop. They often wanted to be the one who told me to stop way sooner than I was ready to call it complete.  The saying  made me laugh, because I was notorious for over working my paintings.  Without being able to recognize it at the time.

These days I use a vibrational measure to asses completion. I assess, "Does it sing?" I know another odd way to approach artwork.  It is a little bit like balancing huge rocks at the beach, in a river or on the top of a hill.  There is a feeling inside my bones that lets me know the stack is in balance, and I can stop adjusting and feel the harmony of something in balance.  When a painting meets that criteria, and the harmony vibrates, and it feels to me that the image sings.  I am most satisfied when I work an image until I hear its completion song.  

If I am not paying attention to this potential song early on, I might paint past the completion song, and miss it altogether and paint it out of harmony into chaos again… 
in that case, it is like being in a spiral dance, I may keep painting until I hit another harmonious balance moment that will come around again, eventually.

If I have four days for a street painting, it take four days.  Typically the amount of effort put into a painting will fill the allotted time, and then some, just to fix or adjust or correct or change that little itty bit that may not have been in the choir-song toward the end.  But that nitpicking can go on and on and on if you let it. Street Painting events have an ending point which helped teach me to quit and enjoy looking at the finished work of Art. I can never go back and change or alter any of those images – they were in chalk and are long gone.

Learning to love the results helps keep artists producing art. As soon as displeasure escalates beyond enjoyment, people freeze and creativity may shut turn off until the activity is restarted and someone works through the difficulty or what was not happening according to a desired result.  

Having strong opinions fuels creativity – unless those opinions are about the result being not good enough.

I am no longer a beginner.  In many ways, I am masterful.  However I am also always discovering and learning as well.  Being too sure is not helpful to a creative process.  Lots of people like to maintain a "Beginner's Mind" in life about most things; because being curious and interested in the process is helpful, versus too established in what is known.  This is true with creating art as well.

I am familiar with and can articulate many minute aspects of how to get where I want to go, yet, I might not even notice all the subtle shifts I make to adjust my work in accordance with how the aesthetics of a painting appeals to me. These color or design shifts are often very subtle. 

While painting, I also have to be selective about which aspects I will put into a particular painting. As I cannot include all styles or aspects in one painting if I want it to make sense to me, I have to select and chose, and remember the direction I was heading, or it could get complicated and very messy fast.

Before I get to the actual painting techniques, I want to bring your attention to these aspects, which are tightly integrated within the painting process:

Consider these, as in, notice.  Creating Art is an observational process, it begins with noticing.

Just consider these: 

1) How do we see what we are looking at? How is your view of it different or unique? 

What do we notice. What aspects matter to us enough to include in a painting?  

        What matters to you?

2) What do we most want to preserve in order to tell the "story" of the image? 

3) What do we want to accent, or minimize, in lighting or color or shadow, etc?

4) How do we want to depict what we see?  Realistically? Figuratively, Impressionistically?             Suggestively?

5) What color choices do we make?  Bright? Saturated? Calm? Muted? 

6) What brush size? Soft smooth blended strokes? or rough choppy paint -filled strokes?

Creating as prayer

This blog is about my thoughts on teaching art. 

It is my musing, and it is what I share to help a student learn what I know about painting, which does not begin with techniques of painting. 

It begins with Seeing.  Noticing. Decision making. With how we begin or finish anything.  

And it includes acknowledging Creative endeavors as inviting LIFE FORCE energy to flow through us in order to make something out of nothing.

Yes.  Any time you stand or sit with the directive to create, it is like a prayer to a higher power, a creative all, to the great spirit or God, what ever you want to call the source of all, that you request energy beyond yourself to flow through you, to not be hindered by your mind, in order to allow your hands to create a gift to you and those who see it.

I believe this is why people enjoy creating, because doing so evaluates them to a more calm inner peace of mind and heart.  Even if their creative moments are fierce and intense.