Well-known, very successful artists are recommending paint brushes and other products. They get paid for this which is cool, like actors plugging products. Seeing these artists recommending paints and brushes, knowing they were highly successful before these products were on the market I would like to have them tell me why they switched from what they were using and how much were the materials they used involved in the creation of their art. I had a teacher in high school who made his students analyze television commercials. He taught his students to think, to listen and analyze everything in life. So when I began seeing artists recommending paint brushes I wondered why they switched from what they had been using to what they use now?
One of my students switched from what he had been using to these new brushes. He discovered they did not work for him. He had trouble moving the paint around. The new brushes did not suit his style of painting. One of my students has tons of brushes, every workshop she takes she buys the brand and type of brushes her teacher uses. She cannot keep up with me because I'm so hard on brushes I just buy the cheap ones, I think will work. I never leave a paint store without things I've never used before. So my students know I will not recommending anything to them. Mary Kay is a wiz with her brushes and Linda loves her cheap runny paints and, she too, is a wiz at art. Jeff does wonders with his palette knives. My students cannot afford the finest - and sometimes fingers will do. I do recommend gloves then. It isn't the materials that make an artist, it's who you are.
50+ Hours A Week & Two Questions
I am a professional Fine Artist. I make my living from creating art. Do I know what I'm doing? After 50 years I have some idea, at least I can eat, pay my property taxes and buy more paints. Anyway, I'm still at it, still painting and still learning. My parents gave me great advice - listen to people. Jordan and Adrienne, my two advisors, convinced me that I have collected enough from listening to begin blogging. Yet still I question myself as to who am I to be writing a blog, anything I write comes from the people I have listened to or read their ideas in books.
Being an artist used to mean that I didn't have a job. I was the family member who drove across town to kill six ants in my elderly aunt's kitchen. I was the one who cleaned the back end of mom's elderly friend's German Shepard. One or two hours here and there add up and soon I was spending less time doing what I needed to do, which is creating art. I had to learn to say no and give myself a job. A forty hour a week job, with flexible hours to still be able to help kill ants and make Rosie angry messing around under her tail. But at the end of the week, I had to have put in forty hours at my job as an artist. Some weekends I added an additional eight hours. I found to really make it I needed to put in fifty hours or more a week.
I got a question today about going back into a painting. I cannot afford to waste a canvas or an effort so I do go back into an unsuccessful painting. Some paintings that have made the rounds of my galleries I will study and, if need be, I will remove the varnish and make adjustments to it.
Second question: How to keep from getting bored while painting. This one threw me and took some thinking about getting bored while painting. I have never gotten bored so I had to think why I was still excited about painting after 50+ years. I think it is because I challenge myself with every painting, even when I've done the same subject a hundred times. Can I improve the color or the brushwork? do it under a different light? My friend Ron and I did some night scenes of the desert around Taos which was challenging. I returned to that idea with a night scene of where I went camping as a boy scout. That led me to do a night scene of a farm I'd done several paintings of. Doing the same subject over and over again and again with the same approach is going to lead to a boring painting and people will see your boredom in the piece.
