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Message
Posted
...and I am.
In my recent paintings of Bees I have hit a massive epiphany. I can't paint bees. I mean, I can't paint what I see as bees. I can see bees but my pilot's eye sees them as lines, as flight paths across the sky / flowers, so I cant actually tell what I am seeing. I can't see bees - yet I have a hive full of bees not ten yards from where I am sat now. It's just a mass of lines.
This got me thinking...what I can't paint is bees as I think they OUGHT to look (first rule of painting, paint what you see not what you know is there). So then I thought, do I try to paint everything as I think it ought to look? I think I try. Which means I haven't developed my own style yet - oh for five years at art school...How can I ever find my style if no one tells me when I am deviating? How did you develop your style, how did you free the inner artist within you and stop painting what you think you ought to be painting? I think the best painting I ever did was that dog in indigo...an indigo dog! But that's what I saw. These blasted bees. Van Gough, now he painted Starry Night as he saw it. If I had done that I'd rip it up as rubbish - when he did it he stuck to his guns and said, no, this is what I see.
Who said the forum was dying?
David
Posted
I think we all have a blind for some things, mine happens to be steam train wheels. I manage everything else it's all in perspective looks fine, then it's time for the wheel. I've tried drawing them then copy, if tried painting them direct onto painting with no practice, what Rubbish they look. I have a friend who is s railway enthusiast he thinks there ok, but all I see is s painting the someone had given to a child to finish the wheels . I have one on the board at the moment I am pleased with it, but for the wheels, I don't know if I should bin it or leave I a bit longer and try again with he wheels. I could always or course put the platform in the way. I share you frustration. But do keep trying as I will.
Posted
Y'need to get out more, as the saying goes. Would a series of random prompts help?
"Kick in the creatives" dot com (Tara Roskell) have a series of prompts and monthly challenges which you can dip into for as long or as little as you want
"Creative Fire" - (Tara Leaver) I follow this one on Facebook - has occasional "find your voice" mini-things. I drew a set of butterflies in about 10 coloured pencil lines each on 5" x 3" postcards last summer and they went down stonkingly well.