Colorful Portraits
I like painting humans and other animals. I love the moment when I notice the face is coming alive. I will paint more landscapes and use bigger canvases in the future. Oil paint is my favorite because it dries slowly- I can work on one painting for days and on several paintings at the same time. I believe practicing a skill is more important than talent. I don't believe in art schools because most art teachers working today never really learned how to draw and paint themselves. I believe any piece of art should show the skill and talent of the artist. As for styles, I don't see the point in putting anyone's work into boxes. I just paint whatever I like as realistically as I can. Sometimes I'm lazy to put in the necessary effort and then the painting looks less realistic. When I have an idea that excites me of what I want to paint, I make or find online photographs to look at, which makes it easier to make a painting look realistic. I rarely look at just one photograph. I never considered getting someone to sit for me for hours and days because I don't see the point. Even if I wanted to hire sitters, I can't afford them. Sometimes I would want them to make weird faces or positions they couldn't keep for long even if I paid them a fortune. Most animals don't make good portrait sitters either. I like making a painting funny and interesting. I think that a good idea coupled with a skillful execution makes a good painting.
"Arts degrees are awesome and they help you find meaning where there is none - and let me assure you, there is none."
- Tim Minchin
"When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.”
-Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
‘... there is a difference between value due to prestige and value due to intrinsic quality. In very much the same way a canvas with little intrinsic value which has the signature of DeKooning, Pollack, Rothko or Mondrian are assigned high values because people with a PhD or Museum Director next to their name have told us what to think about their value, or major dealers or auction houses have assigned estimates of millions of dollars to their work, and told people how paying a million dollars today could lead to a ten million profit in the future. Most people do not feel themselves knowledgeable to know what has value or does not have value when it comes to pocket books Persian carpet or wrist watches, and much the less so with works of art, so even if their instincts are to reject something they keep silent lest they expose themselves to ridicule or being considered ignorant.Prestige suggestion causes people to assume automatically that a work must be great if it is by any of the "big names" of modern art, so they at once start looking for greatness. If they don't see greatness they are made to believe that it is due to their ignorance or lack of artistic sensibilities, but never because, just maybe, there is some failing in the art work. To acknowledge doubt is to make oneself vulnerable to ridicule and derision. It's so much easier to go along to get along. Students operating under that kind of intimidating pressure, you can be sure, will find greatness no matter what they are looking at. The reverse of this has been trained into them when they view academic paintings. They have been taught that works exhibiting realistic rendering are "bad" art and therefore any good that is seen is not due to qualities in the artistic accomplishment, but are rather due to a lack of intelligence and taste in the viewer.
So many students and even teachers have written and told us how realism has been virtually or actually banned from their art departments.
-Frederick Ross
The common advice to beginner painters is to focus on one narrow subject. So I'm supposed to just paint, say, monkeys. And not any monkeys, just chimpanzees. Preferably just blue chimpanzees. In order to make my work recognizable to collectors. Screw that. I'm painting whatever I feel like painting. Whatever entertains me and challenges me. I find joy and satisfaction in the process of expressing myself creatively and improving my skills every day. Sometimes I get so focused and immersed in painting that I lose track of time and everything else. Sometimes I listen to audio books as I paint. I move from city to city a lot because I like the thrill of the new and unfamiliar. I tend not to finish some of my paintings because of this. Sometimes I finally finish them my last week in a country and I have to leave them there because they are not dry. Sometimes I paint murals.