Reinventing Myself--Retooling Myself

It has been a while since I added to my blog.  My apologies to anyone who might have been looking for updates.  I, like so many artists, hit a necessary period of reinventing myself.  I became immersed in personal stuff, and changing my sources of income, and this initiated a self-examination of what was happening with my art and where I wanted it to go.  I tried very hard to look into myself to see where I wanted my art to go.
I worked on myself to be better able to feel and present those feelings in my art, but above all, I worked on a clear idea of what I wanted my art to look like, and what I needed to change to get there.

First, I left a free art workshop I had attended for years, one that was good, but not focused or headed where I wanted to go.  I decided I wanted to be a modern realist artist, and paint in the realistic tradition.  I decided that I had learned a lot of bad habits, and jumbled approaches and now was time to reassess my approach, break bad habits and create new good ones, and get an approach to creating art that was organized and progressive.

This was a major undertaking.  I had to search all over for artists that painted the way I wanted to, and taught what I needed.  I studied lots of books, and searched out lots of authors until I found a master artist who creates in a way I want to, and travelled to Seattle to take a week long seminar in figure drawing.  I learned a lot, about drawing, but the most important thing I learned was a time tested way to approach and develop a drawing, and this approach was consistent and could be applied to any and all drawings, and to paints as well.

I then struggled to find someone in my home town of Victoria, British Columbia who taught the same traditional approach, with the same integration into modern life.  I did.  His name is Noah Layne, and I have taken many courses with him, and plan to take many more.  I am working intensely on correcting bad habits and making sound measurement a natural part of me, but most of all I am challenging myself to do my best.

This may all sound well and good, but there is a dark side as well.  I was not practicing enough outside of class.  In fact, my practice was dwindling.  I struggled to find out why, and I just discovered I had lost my motivation.  I had made very satisfactory progress, the learning task is very hard, and my current results are quite satisfactory.  BUT THEY ARE NOT A MASTER'S RESULTS.  Like I have heard said before, the last 10% of a job will take 90% of the effort.  I have also heard it said that most people get 90% to their goal and quit.  That is what I discovered I was doing.

Well thank heavens it is coming up to New Year's and resolution time and I left my beginning New Year's Resolutions on the table.  My partner said my goals of drawing for 1 hour a day and painting for 1 hour a day was too aggressive, given my other obligations.  I responded that I just need to get better motivated, and put my art training first, and the rest of the stuff will have to wait its turn.  I don't know how well or not I will do with this resolution, but I need to give it my best effort.  I love my art.

I think the current economy is a help to me.  I won't be selling much art as things stand, and I do get teaching, but I want to focus on really mastering my skills at drawing and painting until they become second nature to me, and I have reached a master level at these necessary skills.  I feel at that point that I will be able to really start my study of art, the creative part, where I struggle to improve composition, feeling, expression, and communication with those who view my art.

My goals are focused on creating the best possible art I can, and that means mastering technique and then growing into a master's ability to compose, express and use the tools to maximize the feeling and communications.

I will try to blog regularly again, but I can only plan my journey, not the outcome.