Check out www.wetcanvas.com I am
offering a free class on Dolphins in Acrylic for kids. I will also be
learning to put video up on the website for short demonstrations.
I have two grandkids and they will be returning from
Brazil tomorrow April 19th. They are the greatest. I will give them
some more painting lessons as they are loving art. I was directly
influenced by my mother at a very young age. She was an impressionistic
pallet knife painter. I didn't think much of impressionism at all. I am
loving it now.
April 21
My grandkids
are here and I am fully having fun with them. Now back to
painting. Nothing replaces practice. The older I get the more I need.
LOL Well something like that. Wine gets better with age but I get
better with loving what ever I do and working at it all the time. I
meet different people from all over the world each and every day in the
Gallery. I get so many questions about painting that someday I will
have to write a book and just hand it out at the Gallery to save time.
Actually I do have DVD's to teach my art classes with. So instead of
talking about me, myself, and what makes me so hopelessly boring I want
to talk about how someone can take their art to the next step and start
to actually make a living with it. Oh, I forgot someone told me that
artists shouldn't let anyone know that they were actually making a
living at doing what they love. Labor of Love. Starving artist sendrum.
I am talking to the artist that wants to be
the very best. It takes time. Dedicated time. Every painting I do is a
million dollars to me. Now that is serious if you can imagine. Why not
do your best and forget about how long it takes to improve your work
and make a buck. Double talk? No. Just being honest. If you want to
make a very good living with your art you have to start with becoming
the best you can be and that is always like chasing a rabbit. You will
always have room to improve if you are serious about your work. Some
artists I know have just trying and are
content to just sell enough work to pay the bills. How boring to me.
Who would go to school for six years to end up working at a low paying
job after all that. If you are quit going to just paint to
have fun than skip this chapter and go on to the next where I am
talking about the love of art and the great fun it is to be
creative. Being content is good if you are always striving
after a higher hill. But if the boat is sinking and you stay to content
you just might have to learn to swim. Raising six kids and keeping them
happy as an artist in Hawaii has taken time and effort. For you to
really make it as an artist in this new age of hi-tech power house
computer generated digital competition you will need to both learn the
basics of eye to hand Old Master techniques and computer savvy editing
and printing. So first concentrate on learning and practicing every
day. I taught myself most of what I know by just
experimenting. But you can save many years of trail and error by going
to school or finding someone to help you. If you can
study with an other artist you will learn at a faster pace. I like to
teach new artists and get myself excited about how well they do. It's
not all about myself. I am competitive and need to know where I stand
among other artists also. There are plenty of better artists every
where you turn. It excites me and makes me want to
get busy and become better so that my work isn't
always the same as so many of the other artists. I hate it when someone
looks at my work and says "Oh that looks so much like so and so's
work." Here is one of the statements I hate the most. Your work looks
just like Kinkaid. He is a master at what he does and I am happy to be
different and not at all happy to be the same as someone else. We all
learn from each other and our own style emerges over time. It's not
enough to be better than so and so, but I want to be different from so
many other artists I know. Learn from many but become your own person
and personality as an artist. Does that mean you won't look like just
another seascape painter or landscape painter at first? No, you
probably will look the same at first just like me and many others. But
in time you will grow into who only you can be. It is much easier to
copy other artist at first. Try copying nature or your own
imagination but don't worry if it takes four or five years to be truly
an individual. Most of my work starts by looking a little to much like
one artist or another, but in time I go past the learning stage and
it's my own. But don't let me fool you. I still learn from others and I
still look to much like other artists. It is an ongoing process. I
remember the painful experience of painting outside with so many
different people watching me and someone in the crowd sarcastically
stating that, "Why doesn't he paint something everyone else is not
already painting. In other words I looked just to familiar to them. It
will happen to you also. So be ready to take a beating if you don't
eventually have a style of your own. I am now learning portrait
painting and sure enough I look like another artist down the street at
this time. But I will learn and become different. We all have our own
artistic expression and yes we need to learn to be different. That is
not to say that forging an old master painting can't be really a
challenge. It is and we should try it if we want but be sure to give
credit do to whom it belongs.
