learn to paint Archives | Page 17 of 76

March 25, 2015

Selling: Motivation (Part 1 of 3)

Toys in Snow, 11X14, by Carol L. Douglas. I thought I would illustrate this post with the first thing I ever sold, but the truth is that my records don’t go back that far. This painting, however, is owned by the person who pushed me to start teaching.

Yesterday I got an email from N., who’s conflicted. She doesn’t want to spend a lot of time on the business of art, since she has already retired from a successful career. “All I want to do is paint before I can’t anymore,” she wrote.

Nevertheless, her paintings are piling up, and she would like to at least defray her costs. She’s shown without selling, but she understands that visibility is the key to developing a market.

After the storm, 18X24, pastel, by Carol L. Douglas. The buyer remains a loyal collector, but our relationship started at an outdoor art festival.

Before I can advise her about the mechanics of selling paintings, she has to decide if she actually wants to engage in the marketplace. There are excellent painters who don’t, either because they’re either highly introverted or they have other priorities.

Almost all artists take time off from selling here and there. I did that after the crash of 2008. Work wasn’t selling well anyway, and I was feeling the stirrings of a big leap forward.

Nevertheless, for most of us selling and showing are integral parts of the art process. They give valuable feedback on one’s work. They validate that what we are doing is important. They are steps in the dialogue between artist and audience.

The Rio Grande in New Mexico, 18X24, by Carol L. Douglas. This was purchased by a collector of my work, but she never would have seen it had it not been shown in a public exhibition.

I have found that, contrary to expectations, the more time I spend on marketing, the more time I paint. However, marketing does take time—between a quarter and a half of the time I devote to my career. So my recommendation to N. is to plan on living longer, so she has time for both painting and selling.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.

March 24, 2015

Rejection

Queensboro Bridge construction, 10X8, Carol L. Douglas

A friend got a rejection letter from an agent on whom she had pinned hopes. This is where her life as an artist begins, where she begins to look inside herself for approval and develops a strong sense of the value of her own voice.

Rejection either makes you or breaks you. Some of us walk away from the encounter so badly bruised that we stop putting our work in the public marketplace. Others get up and paint again.

The Dugs in Autumn, 12X9, Carol L. Douglas

Rejection is part of the artistic process. Last year, I encouraged my pal Tarryl to apply for a show that I thought was a slam-dunk. She was rejected. This year she encouraged me to apply for a show that she thought I would get in. I was rejected. This has nothing to do with either of our abilities or worth as people or inherent talent. It’s about the taste and style of the judges.

It’s paradoxically true that we can be rejected for being either too good or too bad; it’s easiest for critics to see and understand what has already been done, what is in the safe middle ground.

“When they organized their first exhibition [the Impressionists] all already mature artists who had been working for fifteen years or more… Dissatisfied they may have been, but they did not consider that they were as yet beyond the pale. Manet, in fact, still endeavored to show in the Salon, and was bitterly disappointed when he was rejected.” (Richard J. Boyle, American Impressionism)

Indiana sketchbook #1, 12X6, Carol L. Douglas

March 23, 2015

It takes time

The Harvest is Plenty, 36X48, by Carol L. Douglas

On Friday I had the opportunity of hearing Dr. James Romaine give a gallery talk at Roberts Wesleyan. He described a piece of art as working in three spheres. There is the material—your technical approach to the work. There is the subject. The meaning comes from the marriage of technique and subject. A painting is successful if its subject and technique are integrated so that it has meaning.

Yard,11×44″, 2009 by Joel Sheesley. I’d have missed the references to Thomas Cole and romanticism entirely had Dr. Romaine not pointed them out in his talk.

Gustave Flaubert is reputed to have said, “The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.” I think this is also true of painting. The artist starts out with a subject and materials and the meaning appears as he or she goes along. The mind is a mysterious and mighty tool. Allowed to work in the background, it comes up with some powerful stuff.

Dr. Romaine analyzed my painting The Harvest is Plenty. He started by pointing out things that came from the conscious side of my mind, even if they weren’t conscious decisions. I believe in a Providential God, for example, and I know my Dutch Golden Age painters, which he saw in the low, flat horizon and the rainbow. The bottom two-thirds of the painting, he said, was fairly standard in its composition.

Dr. Romaine talked about Luvon Sheppard’s marriage of the mystical with a real sense of place. To me, it’s awfully important that the place is Rochester, because it tells me what my mission field is.

Then he talked about the storm cloud. It takes up half the canvas; it rises out of the frame over the head of the viewer. When I painted The Harvest is Plenty, I was recovering from a cancer treatment in which I hemorrhaged. Chaos seemed very close to enveloping me. I recollect that I had a terrible time drawing the storm cloud to match my sketch; it chose its ultimate shape, not me. But until he talked about it, I had no idea how autobiographical that storm cloud was.

Much of what is wrong with contemporary art is that the cart has been put before the horse. We are bludgeoned over the head with artificial meaning by artists who can’t or won’t concentrate on their materials. Artists pursue meaning—even when the meaning is explicitly the lack of meaning—instead of concentrating on the material and subject and allowing the meaning to grow up organically from that.

March 20, 2015

Giving it away

Photo courtesy of the Gunnings.

George and Donna Gunning and Burt Truman have made 2,474 eagle canes and given them free of charge to any Maine veteran who wants one.

About eight years ago, the Gunnings heard about the Eagle Cane Project, an Oklahoma-based organization that makes canes for disabled post-9/11 veterans. George Gunning is a Navy vet and Donna grew up in a Navy family. The idea moved them. They were joined by Burt Truman, who spent two decades in the Navy, Army Reserve, and Air National Guard.

Their version offers a personalized presentation cane to any Maine veteran who has served anywhere, in any conflict. Each cane has a carved and painted eagle’s head, the recipient’s name, and medals indicating their branch of service and honors.

Photo courtesy of the Gunnings.

The canes are funded solely through donations.

The trio were recently honored in the Senate by Maine’s junior senator (and former governor) Angus King. “Earlier in March, I was meeting with members of the Maine Veterans of Foreign Wars, and one of the gentlemen had with him a beautifully carved cane that caught my eye. Thinking it was the only of its kind I asked him where he found something so unique. Needless to say, I was shocked and impressed to hear that, although it was personalized, it was one of thousands made in the same Windsor workshop,” he wrote.

March 19, 2015

The Christian artist

Dead Wood, 48X36, oil on linen, 2014 by Carol L. Douglas

Tomorrow is the Schoenhals Symposium gallery talk by Dr. James Romaine at Roberts Wesleyan’s Davison Gallery. Luvon Sheppard and I both have work hanging in Objects of Grace at the gallery. We have been asked to say a few words at the end of Dr. Romaine’s talk.

How do you compress what it means to be a Christian artist into a few words, especially when you’re a Christian artist who’s been recently shut down for obscenity?

The role of the artist is much like that of prophet or priest: we are here to tell the truth. Sometimes that takes the form of a beautiful landscape and sometimes that takes the form of pointing out injustice.

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)

It is very easy to show and sell art that sexualizes women. After all, just last week Kim Kardashian filmed a naked trailer for her reality show. But use nakedness to talk about injustice and you make people very uncomfortable. And yet misogyny is one of the great besetting sins and something we should speak out against.

The Beggar, 36X48, oil on linen, 2014 by Carol L. Douglas

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

The talk and reception are from noon to one PM. If you’re around, I hope you’ll join us.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.

March 18, 2015

Choosing your paints

My own palette contains no greens. I mix them.

There are millions of possible palette combinations out there, and there is no one ‘correct’ system. My goals in choosing pigments are:

· Lightfastness

· Transparency

· Single pigment

· Position on the color wheel

· Environmental friendliness

Understanding the difference between pigments and colors is essential in buying the right paint. Almost all paints sold in the US carry a Pigment CI name in tiny letters somewhere on the label. Learn to buy paint from this, rather than the poetic color name under which the paint is marketed.

Top row: hansa yellow, yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt sienna. Second row: Indian yellow, cadmium orange, quinacridone violet, ultramarine blue. Bottom row: Prussian blue, ivory black, titanium white. The carrier was Jamie Grossman’s idea and I’ve used it for several seasons instead of tubes.

The single-pigment paints are made with only one pigment. Thus, cobalt blue contains only the pigment PB28; Prussian Blue contains onlythe pigment PB27. Paint manufacturers often blend pigments to approximate discontinued historic colors (Naples yellow or Alizarin Crimson) or to sell cheaper ‘hues’ of pricier paints, like the cadmiums.

My own palette doesn’t usually contain a true red, but when I use one, it’s generally naphthol red, because I’m concerned about the consequences of cadmium manufacture in China. Sadly, I’ve not found a substitute for cadmium orange, which is one of the three solid opaque pigments I use (the others being titanium white and yellow ochre).

Long after my own palette was written in stone, I came across this in a Grumbacher book and realized what I’m doing is pairing primaries.

My palette is roughly based on the idea of paired primaries. This means I have two blues—a warm and a cool—two yellows—a warm and a cool—and two ‘reds’, which in this case are quinacridone violet and cadmium orange. I fill these out with a variety of ‘earth tones’ because these are inexpensive paints and save me a lot of mixing.

March 17, 2015

My book of pithy aphorisms

The Mamaroneck River, oil on canvas, by Carol L. Douglas

My teaching year ends at the beginning of June, when I start my summer wanderings. So I was conflicted when V— contacted me about lessons. She is a well-known lithographer and designer. Normally I’d jump at the chance to have her join us, but there’s so little time left in the year. Still, we have time to lay out the basics.

Let’s start with my mantras. These are the things I say so frequently they might even be true.

Slow to Fast

The quality most appreciated in modern painting is assurance. If you take the time to map out your painting in advance, you will avoid a lot of tentative or corrected brush strokes.

That means doing your measuring, erasing, and composition in the drawing phase.

Draw, baby, draw…

Dark to Light

In oils, it’s difficult to paint darks over white. However, this rule is appropriate for all media except watercolor.* If you mass in darks first, you can see the value structure. This gives you a pretty good idea whether the painting will work.

A grisaille by any other name. It is still a great way to start an oil painting. This one, by me.

*In watercolor, you start with light washes. The lights are where you omit paint. It’s important for watercolorists to make a value sketch before they start.

Thin to Thick

Your bottom layers should be lean. Your top layers should be thick and creamy. It doesn’t matter if you want your painting to be clinically hyperrealistic or clotted impasto. This is the only way to paint without cracking or obvious pentimenti. That is a beautiful word to describe an ugly problem: visible reminders of how many times you’ve changed your mind.

Eventually you get to impasto, but it’s a treat you work up to.

March 16, 2015

Making it look easy

Renocation of the Kirkland Hotel, acrylic on canvas, by Bruce Bundock.

Remember my pal Bruce Bundock from Kingston? He’s on a roll this year. The catalog for his Faces of Vassar is out. And he is featured in this month’s Acrylic Artist Magazine as one of five winners in the 60th anniversary show of the National Society of Painters in Casein and Acrylic.

The Kirkland Hotel at Kingston is on the National Register of Historic Places. Bundock painted it not as a tidy, quaint renovated place, but in the process of shedding its old skin and acquiring its new. “My painting is a form of investigative reporting on light, form and content,” he says.

Renovation of the Kirkland Hotel, #2 by Bruce Bundock

Bruce started by making plein air studies from the parking lot of the hotel and proceeded to a large scale drawing. From there he gridded and painted the finished work. In other words, he works hard to make it look easy.

Bruce’s drawing of the Kirkland Hotel project.

March 13, 2015

Tenacity

Running feet, oil on canvas, 24X36, Carol L. Douglas

If you think painters have a hard time, you should consider the unpublished novelist. He struggles for months or years on a single work, getting very little feedback. When it’s finished, he peddles it to publishers through a faceless formality called the query letter. He has to be braced for responses from lukewarm to cold. Based on some of the responses he’ll get, publishers apparently hate writers.

One of my friends is doing this right now. The end of her book has coincided with an economic crisis, making the process even more difficult. It’s been very hard to watch her struggle with professional rejection at the same time that her life is so chaotic. I know nothing about the business of writing, meaning that I have absolutely no constructive help to offer.

This is why I was so chuffed to get a text from her last night: “Nervous. Editor has asked for book.”

Waiting, oil on canvas, 24X36, Carol L. Douglas

One of the great things about being old is that you know that seasons of trouble, inertia, doubt, and failure eventually pass. The best artist isn’t the most talented; he’s the one who clings most ferociously to his craft in the face of trouble.

March 12, 2015

It’s tax season

Plein air painters drive around until they find what they want to paint, and then they stop and paint it. That makes absolutely no sense to auditors. This is my dearly-missed painting pal, Marilyn Feinberg, in Naples, New York.

I get a “how to succeed in art” newsletter. A few weeks ago, they sent a sample schedule out. It included time for making and marketing, but no allowances were made for recordkeeping.

I love the time I spend zooming around from plein air event to plein air event in my elderly Prius. However, summer generates not only revenue but receipts. Eventually they all have to be entered in my books.

A scene on the same road, above. They don’t magically happen; you have to look for them.

Some people do that as they go; I prefer to collect a stack of papers and curse at them in March. Not only do I do my income tax and sales tax returns, I also look at our investments and determine if they need to be redeployed. At the end of this, I clear out and reorganize my files, which is why Easter is the one meal we’re able to have at our dining room table.

There was a time when we had a single, standard currency. Although our financial system is pegged to the dollar, we now use credit cards and EFTs more than we use cash. That’s convenient, but it means that we must check credit card statements, Paypal, Amazon, bank statements, EZ pass records, and cash receipts.

A recent tax ruling involving artist Susan Crile validates the idea that artists regularly lose money in the pursuit of future success. This is only fair, since the IRS eagerly taxes those of us whose ship has come in. But before you can deduct your expenses, you must keep track of them. It’s persnickety business.

And you don’t get beautiful paintings without generating a rather ugly stack of receipts.

“I don’t have a destination,” I once told an IRS auditor. “I drive until I find a view to paint, and then I stop and I paint it.” She couldn’t find a reason to disallow that on the spot, but she warned me that my future mileage logs better include destinations. Now my GPS unit logs my mileage—as longitude and latitude points, which are converted into addresses with software my husband wrote for me.

But most people don’t have a software guru at home, nor should making a living be such an exercise in appeasing government inspectors. I spend about a hundred hours a year on record-keeping to satisfy the IRS. How does that advance art, or advance the American economy?