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Why???? (1 Viewer)

Vectis Birder said:
I do have to say that I envy those who make their living from art. Hard work, I know, but what fantastic job satisfaction!
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I make my living mainly from painting and yes it is great most of the time but I also get times when it is so hard to sit down and work but usually i find that when I do I can carry on and get into it again. As to commissions I only do ones that I will 'enjoy' doing. I also find that commissions stretch me and make me tackle subjects that I have not thought of doing before or have thought were too difficult. A painting block can be hard to deal with. I have found that what has worked for me in the past is to copy something or just tell youself you are going to draw. Guaranteed I will want to paint it.
 
It's very true that when you're forced to paint something then you don't really find the inspiration, I've done very few commissions and to be honest I'm not that keen on them as my artistic output is so variable -sometimes loose, sometimes detailed etc that I'm not sure how to paint a commission, much prefer banging out pictures and then trying to find a buyer.
 
I am never 'forced' to do anything and usually tell people they can have first refusal on the work which means there is no absolute commitment on either side.
My usual commisssons are landscapes. I used to do house portraits but not any more- those I did not enjoy and they were so time comsuming and I used to worry alot about them not being liked.
 
Hi folks
I have not submitted to an Art thread before. Some of my stuff is in the gallery, but I have followed all of these wildlife art threads with detail.

I've drawn since I got my first set of Crayola crayons at age 2. I moved to coloured pencils at age 12, and painting (mostly acrylic) at age 13. I was blessed with a fantastic art teacher in high school. I found though, that in taking art as an exam subject, I was too restricted and did not really thrive in that environment.

However, left to my own devices, I feel much more comfortable with art. I am generally a surrealist, but every so often I get an urge to paint birds. I paint any new species which perhaps I have not heard of until that moment, or the US birds which my good friend describes. The colours of birds allows the colours so vibrant in acrylics or good colouring pencils to be used. I try to make my "subjects" alive and not just to have blobs of colour on a page.
 
Hi Mabel, glad you've finally joined in and posted. It's clear from your gallery that you like the colourful birds, and with such vibrancy, why not. Personally I'd like to see some of these birds put into context, placed in a habitat, rather than surrounded by white paper (of course, you do as you wish!). It's much better IMHO to put the bird in the habitat, than to put some habitat around the bird, it makes for a much stronger picture.

I'd certainly love to see some of your surrealist stuff. I dabbled with surrealsim at school which is why they started to worry about me and gave me a crap grade - I was painting things such as dead fish with chairs on their backs, long tailed tits with their tails on fire, and lightbulbs inside cages and bottles and things. Also crabs having picnics was a favourite of mine.
 
Thanks Nick

To be honest my Gallery stuff is what I take from sketching. I have very few completed or contextualised pics. Yet.
It is something I am currently working on.

I never let grades bother me concerning surrealism. I live by a "to each their own" motto. Yes, it meant my art grades swung a bit, but I passed it so that's what counts.
 
Totally agree, I wasn't at all bothered about the grades, in the end I just had a lot of fun doing my own thing and refusing 'to take photos' of my subject matter, I must have been horrible to teach. I never liked doing art A level, what I call 'tips and ideas' were presented as 'golden rules' such as never using black or white in watercolour, or never using it straight from the tube. I deliberately refused to co-operate, once we had to draw something that had got a flight of stairs in it, a shopping centre I think it was. Everybody else was struggling to get the perspectives and everything, I just drew a ramp with a warning sign to tell people that 'due to a ramp being easier to draw, customers are advised that there are no stairs'.
 
LOL! Nick that mirrors what I remember from high school. (Much of the last year has blacked out from alcohol and other substances) I do remember attempting what my teacher wanted, but it just wouldn't work (the way he wanted). He was brilliant mind... just he knew what he wanted and was a bit of a perfectionist.
One thing I HATED was drawing people. Proportion is not my strongpoint. Cartoons and wildlife FOR THE WIN!
 
Interesting thread Nick.

Why do I paint (and draw)? Mostly simply for 'the joy of painting', apologies to Bob Ross!

Bob had the right idea I think. "Dudn madder, led it go!"

The times when I've painted commissions I've been almost invariably disappointed with the results, luckily the clients have always been happy!

Sometimes I paint for a market or a particular target audience. The results are usually OK and whilst I'm painting I can usually get 'in the zone' and the subject and the market cease to matter and the world goes away.

Sometimes I do illustration projects, very different feeling to painting. When illustrating it's just work for me although it's nicer than working for a bank or some-such. (I also do childrens' book illustration and that's fun in a different way again).

But without a doubt I produce my best work and have the most fun doing it when I paint something because I want to. And that's usually when I've seen or experienced something which has clicked with me and I know that it will become a painting sooner or later. Perhaps it's about sharing that moment of the click.

Woody
 
nickderry said:
once we had to draw something that had got a flight of stairs in it, a shopping centre I think it was. Everybody else was struggling to get the perspectives and everything, I just drew a ramp with a warning sign to tell people that 'due to a ramp being easier to draw, customers are advised that there are no stairs'.
Click to expand...

Brilliant Nick, no way I can top that but being at odds with the fine art lecturers at Uni (farties), who took the subject way too seriously I did a series of crop circle patterns in acrylics, the farties thought I had something at last but when one of the more quizzical ones asked about them, I explained they represented a man wearing a sombrero while frying an egg, two sombrero wearers on a bike, and another peeing in a bucket.
(I'll post some sketches if you can't picture it)
My card was marked after that and I eventually defected to Illustration.
 
Art at school was pretty awful I remember. Where I went surrealism (which I hated and still do hate) was considered the dog's bits and animals, wildlife (which I favoured) were strictly no-no. As a consequence I was passed over for the school exhibition while some complete b****cks (glued-together coke cans, fish on bicycles, that sort of thing - you get the idea) got selected. That was part of what put me off art for a long time. Being ignored even though you can produce art to a high standard does rain on the fireworks a bit.
 
I've got to say I've always been a fan of surrealism, maybe because I know for a fact I can paint a mute swan better then Dali and a pigeon better than Magritte. But I always found the idea of true surrealism (bringing together of the real and the irreal to create the sur-real) fascinating, for me one of John Busby's bathing starlings that looks like a hedgehog with a beak drowning itself is true surrealism as it brings together the real (the starling) the irreal - my drunken analogy of what it looks like and creates something that is a truer image of what a starling is than one where somebody's spent four weeks painting every barb on its spots.

back to the gin and my heron now I think!
 
Surrealism is always a lot of fun. My senior year in high school I did a series of acrylics full of images pulled from dream symbolism (not that I put a lot of credence into dream dictionaries and the like, I pretty much rank the whole idea down there with astrology, but it was a good excuse to paint a lot of birds and fish without making my art teacher's eyes glaze over!). Dug out a few of those old paintings while reading this thread -- it's been awhile since I've looked at these!

Back to the whole 'why' question ... I can't really shed much light on why I feel compelled to record what I see, but I will say that my state of mind is very different when I'm painting or sketching. I find that my awareness of time is very diminished, as well as what's going on around me (more than once I've been badly startled by the voice of a passerby I didn't realize had stopped to look over my shoulder while I was sitting sketching something!). I find it gives my mind an opportunity to wander and go over other issues that have been plaguing me lately. All of this may be a little peripheral to 'why', but it may explain why such a frustrating process nonetheless leaves me feeling much better afterwards.
 

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