Lachri Fine Art – The bad vegan

Every painting, every drawing brings me to two conflicting emotions. The first is pride in what I have finished. The second and generally the stronger of the two is a sense of absolute failure in that piece. Its so odd to have such feelings occur together. This statement always puts things into perspective for me:

“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide whether it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they’re deciding, make even more art.” – Andy Warhol

I have been hesitant to start blogging painting tips just because of that constant “I’m not quite good enough yet” attitude that I will likely always posses.  I realize that I have good info that I share all the time with my students, so really there is no reason not to share some of my views here.

I see this over and over on artist forums. This will be a debate that never ends.  To use or not to use a projector or lightbox, and is it cheating.  There are a few things you need to realize about these tools.  My outlook applies to realism, so keep that in mind.

• If you cant draw at all, the projector and lightbox aren’t going to make a big difference in your finished painting.
• If you want to learn to draw or strengthen your current abilities, tracing with a lightbox  is a GREAT way to do this.  I will talk more about this in a minute.
• These are just tools. No more no less. They aren’t going to blend your paint, choose your colors, decide your composition,  or choose what brush to use. Just like using a ruler, masking tape, or an easel aren’t going to do the work for you. Really, what is the difference then in using a grid besides saving a lot of time?

I have been teaching for 13 years now. One of the  things that I have learned is that if someone cant draw, these tools alone aren’t going to make much difference in their work. First you have to know how to use these tools properly, which can be an art in itself. Second when you start blending and shading you are going to lose most of the lines you had drawn out. If you cant draw, you cant tell where to put them back in.  You are not generally going to have every line drawn in with these tools either. When you need soft shadows, if you had a line where the light and dark blended together you will always see that pencil line.

On the other hand if you take someone who cant draw well, these tools are a big help in the learning process. It is the same way that we teach children to draw their letters. We have them trace them over and over again. I can take someone and have them draw out a rose for example 12 times. By the 13th time, hopefully they will have improved on their initial drawings. Now, I can give them a lightbox and have them trace that rose 12 times. If I then have them draw it out on their own the 13th time, they will most certainly have improved leaps and bounds over the first scenario. Tracing forces you to see details and shapes that you may not notice on your own. It also forces you to see things as they really are, not how you think they look.  So often we get stuck in our head that trees look a certain way, or eyes have a certain shape that isn’t necessarily true. Tracing helps break that mold so that we can draw things on our own without the aid of a lightbox or projector, and draw them correctly.

I see this over and over again with newer students. When trying to decide what they want to paint or draw next, they look for something that is “easy” enough for them to do. There are a couple of problems with this way of thinking.

Things that look simple tend to be more difficult to make look good. Paintings with a lot of detail and busyness are easier just in that you can cover mistakes with some of that busy detail. You also don’t notice minor mistakes in something that has a lot of busyness to look at. I’m not saying you shouldn’t try the simple things too, but don’t avoid the stuff that looks more difficult just because it has that extra detail.

Example:

In this first painting, there is much less detail. Much of the background is just a gradient of greys and whites.

"fuse" acrylic painting

This second painting has a LOT of detail. More time consuming yes, however it was fairly forgiving when a mistake happened. I could thrown an extra ripple in the water to cover a problem with a fish, or  a tree branch where the sky had an issue in blending. With the painting above, any mistakes in that background stand out like a sore thumb (which seems like a silly saying given I have yet to see a sore thumb really stand out at any point in my life).

"extempore" oil over acrylic painting

When I first started painting I would copy the dolphins and whales painted by a well known marine artist. I knew his paintings weren’t very realistic but I felt I wasn’t good enough to try anything more advanced. Finally I started modeling my work after an artist who knew the anatomy of sea life and had such detail and amazing lighting I was hesitant to try. While my work was clearly not as good as the second artist, I had shot up several levels over the work I was seeing from the first. Don’t limit yourself to something that you feel is a beginners level just because your work isn’t as good yet. Try something more difficult and see how much better you can do!

Something I should add to this however is don’t skip the basics. Study lighting, contrast, perspective, anatomy and such while you are trying to paint the stuff you thought was too hard.  Those things are still building blocks to a great artist.