This is the project I wrote about earlier this week– the one I started over after painting the whole book last week.   Boy, am I glad I repainted it.  Much better.

Now it’s heading to New York-

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PATCH by David Slonim                                                                                                                     To be published by Roaring Brook Press (MacMillan), 2013.

PATCH | rough sketch

Last week I wrote about the struggle to begin a project.  Today comes the really fun part- STARTING OVER.

I painted the art for a new children’s book project last week.  (It’s a fast style for this one, so I got all 15 spreads done in five days).    Monday morning I came in and could see that the art was just not good enough.  Color, line, harmony… uggh.

Here’s a secret the pros never mentioned during their dazzling slide shows when I was in art school:  Professional artists are not magicians who nail it on the first try every time.

If you are not satisfied with your work, it is not evidence of a lack of talent.  It means you have the eye to know when it’s right and when it’s not.   Not everybody has that.

Now the question I have to face today is –Do I love the process or only the final result?

Time to fall in love with the process again…

“Talent is the willingness to keep trying until it’s right.” 

-John F. Carlson (Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting)

 

 

 

Today I begin final artwork for a children’s book.  Blank illustration board is lying on my table taunting me.   Insecurity surfaces, as always.  Will I be able to do it again?  Do I have what it takes today?  What if the work isn’t good enough? 

The deadline is real.  A promise has been made.    Like any performer, there comes a moment when you must simply step up and deliver.    Didn’t sleep well last night?  Me either.  The deadline doesn’t care.

Here are some strategies I’ve learned for building momentum.  These are simple, but it really does help me to remind myself:

1.  I  can’t paint an entire book.  (For fine art, I can’t paint an entire show).  Not today.  What I can do today is steps.   Break the project into doable action steps.

2.  Prepare materials and the work space.  Enjoy the fact that you get to make art today.  You don’t have to shovel dirt.  This is a blessed day already.  Be grateful.

3.  Review the project.   Divide the number of images needed by the days available.  How many images do I need to complete per day?  Per week?  Set a reasonable goal for each day.

4.  Build in margin.  Expect mistakes and do-overs.   Plan on it.  Amateurs expect magic on the first try.  Experts know when to start again.

5.  Shut out all thoughts of audience response, sales, awards, accolades of any kind.  That’s NOT what this is about.   That’s not where art comes from.

6.  Play music that energizes you.

7.  Forget everything else and lose yourself in the joy of image-making.  The feel of the brush in your hand, the smell of the paints, the textures, colors, line… FIND THE FUN and get lost in it.

These are the things I’m telling myself and doing today.  Because the inertia is real.  The fear is real.

The one other thing I always do is offer the gift back to the Giver and ask for help.  No point in trying to do this alone.

Time to get in there and make some art.

I’ll  be participating in the 2012 Coors Western Art Exhibit and Sale this week in Denver, CO.  My son Michael and I will be flying out Monday night, enjoying some father/ son time, doing some sightseeing, and enjoying the preview reception Tuesday night, followed by the Red Carpet Reception Wednesday night.  Here are my show pieces:

Bison | 24 x 30

Yellowstone Remembered | 60 x 48

Red Rocks at Sundown | 30 x 40

From the official web site:

The 2012 Coors Western Art Exhibit and Sale will open with a Red Carpet Reception on Wednesday, January 4, 2012. Advance reservations are $200.00. For additional information or to receive an invitation, please call National Western, 303-299-5560.

The exhibit will be open to the public each day of the National Western Stock Show, January 7-22, 2012.

Location:
National Western Stock Show Complex
4655 Humboldt St | Denver, CO

Exhibit Hours:
Sunday – Thursday 9 A.M. – 8 P.M. (On the last Sunday the Stock Show closes at 6:00 P.M.).
Friday & Saturday – 9 A.M. – 9 P.M.

Viewing the Willem de Kooning exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York last week, one thing was clear– de Kooning painted like he meant it.   My family and I agreed that many of  the paintings would be difficult to live with over the dining room table.   But they are not easy to look away from either, even less easy to dismiss.

The entire sixth floor of the Museum of Modern Art is devoted to about six decades worth of de Kooning’s explorations.  Due to the crowds waiting at the entrance of the show,  we chose to enter  the last gallery first, viewing the show in reverse.  It turned out to be a good strategy, allowing unhindered views of magnificently large canvases

SCALE

Since scale is an element of design,  I wanted to see these giants in person.   My belief was confirmed:  you haven’t seen de Kooning if you have only seen reproductions. (The grand canyon on a postcard isn’t the grand canyon).  Emotional force comes through loud and clear when you stand in front of a massive wall of paint.

Untitled 1986

The first gallery we entered (the last gallery of the show) displayed de Kooning’s final works, created under the specter of Alzheimer’s.  Large pale or white canvases were cut with swooping ribbons of primary color.  One arrangement of looping lines was done in blue and black.  A few included peach and tangerine.  Simple, direct and somewhat pleasing, none of them  moved  me.

Walking into the next gallery was a jolt.  Suddenly the walls radiated passion, energy, and a restless intelligence animating everything.  Seven-foot canvases floated majestically on the walls.   Vivid colors sang out like jazz improvisations.   These huge paintings are  rich, difficult, and captivating.

LINE

From his early abstract experiments, he emphasizes line cutting space.  His early masterpiece “Excavation” is accompanied by smaller, similar variations on the theme of calligraphic line carving up space.  They struck me with the force of ancient cave paintings.

Excavation, 1950

His highly praised series of black paintings are white lines slicing up black space.

1948

In the disturbing series of “Woman” paintings as well as  works  like “Easter Sunday,” slashing, angular lines provide structure over and pulsing underneath colored spaces.   Newspaper transfers — photos and text ghosted in reverse — appear subtly and surprisingly throughout.  The paint texture is rich and varied, but has a gritty, dry quality.

Woman I, 1950-52

TEXTURE

In the next-to-last gallery, linear angularity gives way to slippery lines floating over and pushing into larger masses of intense color.   The eye is offered little resting place as paint slides, drips, bubbles and clumps with abandon.   Colors threaten discord but never quite tumble into cacophony.

Each painting is a textural tour de force.   From thin paint, sanded back into the canvas,  to luscious liquid strokes as wide as your hand, to heaped up sandcastle structures pushing out from the surface, de Kooning appears to have been intoxicated with  textural possibilities.   I left the show determined to have more fun with paint.

Untitled XII, 1975

Our photography-based popular culture has left most of us without the tools for appreciating non-representational art.   Since any foreign language sounds like gibberish until we learn it, I would humbly challenge my friends who dismiss all abstract art as childish blather to reconsider.  De Kooning has something to say to those who will listen.

Would I like to own a de Kooning?  Some of them, definitely.  Many of them, no, thank you.   They can be visually and emotionally messy, even disturbing.   But this is their strength.  To me, de Kooning’s  body of work feels like a dissection or a surgery.  Not easy, but important.   I’m glad he had the guts to do it.

De Kooning was a man of intelligence and talent struggling with a universal human problem – the attempt to find order and peace in the face of  uncertainty, pain and loss.  I’m not sure he ever achieved resolution, personally or artistically.   Did he even believe  it was possible?  Hard to tell.  But he openly shared the struggle with us.  It feels very honest and very human.  For that, I am grateful.

(Sales tax will be added for Indiana residents). 

He Came With the Couch  $15.99  |  $17.11 with sales tax

Oh Ducky!  A Chocolate Calamity  (paperback only)  $6.95  |  $7.44  with sales tax

Moishe’s Miracle (paperback only)  $6.95  |  $7.44 with 7% IN sales tax

You Think It’s Easy Being The Tooth Fairy? (hardcover) $15.99  |  $17.11 with 7% IN sales tax

(paperback)  $6.95  |  $7.44 with 7% IN sales tax

Ten Turkeys in the Road  $16.99  |  $18.18 with 7% IN sales tax

Bed Hog  $12.99  |  $13.90 with 7% IN sales tax

Silly Tilly, by Eileen Spinelli

Here’s the pencil rough for this illustration:

1)  What are your strengths as an artist?

Think about visual language.  Are you good at color?  Value patterns?  Space division? etc.

Think about style.  Are you naturally wired to paint  Impressionism?  Realism?  Abstraction?  Minimalism?   Have you made peace with your particular bent?

Think about communication.  Can you move an audience?  Can you connect with something deeper than a pleasing surface?

Think about subject matter.   Can you paint show-stopping still lifes?  Are you good at capturing the soul behind the eyes of a portrait?  Do your landscapes sing?

Flannery O’Connor said about writers — this is a paraphrase in my words — that you can write about anything you choose, but you cannot choose what you will write about well.

SO the question is – what are you good at?  What do people tell you they like about your work?

In the workshop session, we went around the room, telling each of the twelve artists what we, as a group, believe are their strengths.

2.  What are your weaknesses as an artist?

One person said “shapes.”  Another said, “color.”  Drawing came up.  Somebody else said dividing space was a problem.  Growth becomes possible when we can identify the areas where it is needed.  You have to know what disease you have before you can treat it.

3.  What do you need to understand better?

This is different from #2.  A “weakness” in question #2 is the inability to adequately put into practice something you already understand.  You are not yet able to get it from your head to the end of your brush.

The question now is not what knowledge you can’t yet fully use, but what knowledge do you lack?  What do you just not “get?”

I remember vividly the time in my career when it was painfully obvious that I didn’t understand color.   It wasn’t that I couldn’t do what I already knew.  I didn’t know.  I wasn’t even sure what the questions should be, let alone the answers.

Another example– It took me years after reading David Leffel’s book “Oil Painting Secrets from a Master” to really understand what a visual concept is.  He introduced me to the importance of having a visual concept for each painting, and did a fine job explaining it, but I really didn’t grasp it for a long time.

4.  What do you need to DO to grow?

Do you know what to do to “move the ball forward?”  I mean things like:  what excercises can you do to work out the things you know but can’t yet control?  What books should you read to gain insight (ask friends, make a list)?  What teachers should you seek out, what workshops you should take?  What actions can you take that will get you over your current hurdles?

And if you continue doing the same things the same way you’ve always done them…well…

5.  What are the top three names on your list of masters you intend to be influenced by?

To become wise, we must choose to be influenced by the wise.  Who are your mentors in the world of master artists?  Do you know what it is about their work that moves you?  How will you absorb the lessons they have to offer?   Are library books of their work stacked next to your bed?  Are you able to explain to a non-painter in easily understandable terms what makes their work great?  Have you copied their work lately?

6.  Who are your art buddies?

Community is a creative person’s secret weapon.  Usually I find that I have been given 80% of what I need, and the other 20% of what I need has been given to someone else.  With whom are you meeting regularly?  Is there someone you call when you crash and begin to doubt whether you have any talent?  Who needs your input and encouragement as much as you need theirs?

Anderson, Indiana
10 am – 1 pm

No painting supplies needed.
Bring 2-3 paintings to critique

Think of it as a mini painting workshop–

• Individualized instruction & feedback
• Master works decoded
• Key principles of visual communication which can be found in great paintings of every time period and style applied to your work
• Demos
• Power Point presentations

As always, my goal is not to teach you how to paint like me, but to help you paint like you with more expressive power.  You can bring whatever you are working on – abstract, realist, impressionist, watercolor, pastel or oil painting.

Throughout history, one of the secret weapons of top artists has always been community.  Here’s a chance to meet with like-minded people who are serious about growing artistically.

This is going to be FUN -  lots of laughter, camaraderie, and encouragement.  I will do all I can to make sure you leave inspired and equipped to take your work to the next level.

• $75 per session.  You can attend one, two, or all three.  Those who pay first have first dibs.
• $210 if you pay for all three in advance.

To register please use the contact page.  I’ll send payment info.

Looking forward to beating the winter blues together-

Cezanne

Degas

Diebenkorn

Rembrandt

Van Gogh | Ears of Wheat | 25.5" x 19"

Here’s a painting an artist friend emailed me today.   It’s encouraging to see that Van Gogh had the same impulse I have had for several years — to build a composition out of the fields.  No scene, no horizon, just color, line,  and texture.

Do you have an idea that feels like it may be the dumbest thing you’ve ever tried?  Every time I began painting an abstracted field painting I felt that way.    Here’s my plan when that happens:  if the impulse won’t go away, DO IT.

Art is about exploring.  If you aren’t pushing into unfamiliar territory now and then, what’s stopping you?  I hope this post might encourage you to try that dumb idea you keep putting off.  It may be the breakthrough you’ve been waiting for.

Who knows, maybe you’ll discover that not only was your idea a good one, but somebody may one day email you the happy news that you are in good company, too.

Here are a few of my attempts to make visual music from what appears at first glance to be unusable material:

Corn Stubble | 30 x 40 SOLD

Purple and Gold Harmony | 6 x 8 SOLD

Corn Field | 24 x 30 SOLD

Turned Earth | 30 x 48 AVAILABLE through David Slonim Studio