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Message
Posted
Over the last few months I’ve fallen out with paint and struggled due to physical issues, this resulted in looking more closely at what and how I paint .
We all change throughout our artistic journey and fir many different reasons, wanting to use different mediums, paint like a particular artist in a particular style , all seems good reasons at the time . I found that i was painting to try and impress and for if I’m totally honest recognition, we all do that to a degree I know ,but it come as a shock if you acknowledge it . It wasn’t to total reason for painting I’m really blaming it on trying to impress but it was only a small part of the reasons . I paint because I enjoy painting, and since retiring it’s become almost a job, unpaid of course but non the less a replacement.
I decided to go back to basics to rediscover why I started to paint and who I admired and still do, what I painted and how I painted it.
Quite a surprise when I looked at some old work and discovered I preferred it to a lot of my more recent paintings .
So here is my journey back to painting and now rediscovered that passion for my older style .
Sorry if it’s a but long winded, hood your still awake .
I started a always with the basic sketch.
Then some base colours.
Then some base colours.
Posted
Your words are very interesting and honest Paul. Your sketch and painting is looking good. It is a style we would recognise you most for. Saying that, I also like the new paintings you have experimented with, they have produced some wonderful results. For me, art is about working hard and producing a fair result. It's more a personal challenge especially when I thought art wasn't a realistic achievable concept. For sure if people like and comment on your work, this is an added bonus which fills us with appreciation and gratitude. I believe if we are trying to paint to impress others, we are not being true to ourselves therefore we won't produce the best of what we are capable of at that time.
Posted
Thank you Ian for your kind comments. Denise your words are very true about being true to ourselves, I certainly won’t be giving up the experimenting and trying out new things etc. I’ve struggled with this paint as I’ve had to learn how I can work with the five pound gauntlet , but practice and more practice means my brain is now accustomed to the weight and I can move it a lot better. Fear is after surgery it will be undoing the learning and learning to paint with a light weight hand.
A few more shots of what stage I’m at with this one and a photo of one I’m experimenting with .
Posted
I will quickly go through the latest stage, it’s almost completed just a few tweaks and additions.
I had to redo the distant tree as I fiddled around with them and they look wrong to me , but overall in pleased with it , been a struggle not to get to much detail and resist the temptation to do just a bit here or there.
Posted
I think I paint and draw to impress myself - or at least to please myself - rather than anyone else; which is probably why I'm very self-critical, because I'm a hard man to please or impress. You say you were painting to impress others .... well, if you really were (and how well do we ever know ourselves in these things?) and have moved on because you really had to, the results do seem to me to be a good deal stronger than some of your earlier work. I don't know if that's in any way as helpful as I intend it to be, but still!
I like watercolours which are far more colour than water - yours weren't watery, in that insipid way that I do find rather irritating, but I think you're now getting stronger contrasts (the greyscale versions will be helping with that) and that your work is benefiting from it. So - even in our problems and frailties we can find consolations (sometimes).
[I suppose that painting for popular approval is really quite common - probably we all have that desire for praise (and sales) in mind at one level or other; my theory though is that the more we do what we really feel like doing, the more individuality there'll be in our efforts and, if ours meshes with the individual tastes of someone else, preferably with a plump bank account, that's when sales happen. It's certainly true that on occasions when I know, whatever I might tell myself, that I've painted something to capture the market - it doesn't work. I end up with choccy-box. You can find those canvases tucked behind the furniture to keep the draughts out....]
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