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Chewing gum, a soda bottle, and a paper clip and supposedly we can MacGyver our way out of anything!  I want to share one way you truly CAN MacGyver your way out of those times you feel like no matter which way you turn you are creatively stone-walled and once again the muses seem to have fled.

A lot of us will put music on in the studio along with knocking back a double espresso on those days our brain feels like day-old white bread. Get some mood enhancers going – we feel a bit better, we paint a bit better. So, now you know what this article isn’t about! What it is about is incorporating music into our painting practice in a much more powerful and intentional way.

Good friends and truly inspired – and inspiring – musicians, Dave Curley, Joanna Hyde, and Tadhg Ó Meachair, from the transatlantic trio ‘One for the Foxes’ have agreed to take this leap with me. They’ve offered up the gift of their music, thoughts on creativity and devotion to the arts and life to ‘we who wield brushes’ – their brothers-in-arms in the creative arts. They have provided the music you’ll be using for the exercises you’ll find at the end of the article. A sincere thank you to Dave, Joanna, and Tadhg!

The first exercise will focus on increasing brush vocabulary through painting using your entire body. The second, uprooting ingrained habits and assumptions that are way past their expiration date and have lost their usefulness. My hope is that the music in concert with the exercises will bring you and your paintings one step closer to the heart of all things.

I had occasion recently to work with a talented student who was stuck. The brush was in a death-grip; the approach to the canvas was sincere but unfocused. Paint would be shoveled up, a stroke would be laid down and then rather than allowing a breath, a pause and stepping back from the canvas and assessing the passage they would stroke the passage again and again until any life it might have had was gone. It pretty much bled out on the sidewalk. The student was truly stuck in a loop chanting the same ‘word’ over and over with their brush – but not in a good Zen way. The musical equivalent could be a three-year-old future percussionist banging pan lids together like a bad loop until you want to open the slider and throw them out in the snow just long enough to make them stop. They haven’t yet developed the manual skills, artistry, and understanding of complex rhythms to be the heartbeat of a future band.

I tried everything in my coach’s bag to get them past the wall they’d hit. I had nearly given up when I reached over, turned on my trusty blue-tooth speaker, chose a track and said, ”Now, stop painting the painting and paint the music.” They focused their attention fully on the music. The death grip on the paintbrush loosened. The stance that had been hunched became relaxed. The impetus for the paint strokes began originating from somewhere deep. They began using their entire body. The strokes became fluid and full of life.

For years we painting instructors have tried to teach rhythm, melodic line, composition and such with little sketches, slides, diagrams and whatever else we can think up. This was a serious ‘duh’ moment for me. All this artist needed was, not to read about, talk about or look at charts about rhythm, the student needed to experience rhythm in the moment. When they did their body knew exactly what to do with it. Watching them pretty much dance back and forth approaching and retreating from the canvas, laying down strokes inspired by the phrasing in the music actually verged on spooky since minutes ago they were carved in stone.

FINDING THE HEARBEAT

What are some ways we can bring ourselves back to true north when it feels like our painting is going sideways?

We need a heartbeat to live. A song, a tune, a painting, all need a heartbeat to live. The lot of us, painters, composers and songwriters alike, are pretty much guaranteed to now and then have a time when we stand back and realize our creation that day is seriously DOA. Don’t panic – triage. Can it be resuscitated? If not then salvage some valuable learning from it and move on. If there’s still a pulse then:

1. Step back and find the weakness that might be dragging down an otherwise important creation.
2. Ask yourself if the initial intent was unfocused.
3. Is there a weakness in the structure?
4. Did you hang the curtains before the drywall?
5. Is there an inelegant passage in the execution?

Sometimes we are only a very small adjustment away from saving the patient and a fine offering to the muses!

THE PRACTICE AND THE PERFORMANCE

As painters we work on two fronts – the practice and the performance.

1. The practice: Striving for mastery of the technical skills. A painter’s version of practicing scales.
2. The performance: We then choose a time to pull those hard-won arrows out of our quiver to create an image that will carry our message…hopefully squarely into someone’s heart.

Here are some go-tos for your tool kit to help you come at your creative life with more intention and focus.

1. Slow down and resist the temptation to just launch right in. Give yourself permission to spend some time bringing into focus your intention for your painting so it is truly ‘about’ something, not a painting ‘of’ something.
2. Keep your antennae up for those things you respond to.
3. Search for what you feel deeply about. Love will be felt by the viewer if you paint what you love. Joy will be felt by the viewer if you paint what brings you joy. Peace by painting what brings you peace. Power if you paint powerfully.
4. Quiet the voices in your head and sometimes the voices outside of your head.

Musicians lead us on journeys that are image-filled through lyrics and musicianship. As painters, we should strive to take our viewers on journeys that are music-filled, if not literally, at the very least through masterful handling of the painter’s versions of composition, rhythm, and harmony. The common roots of music and the visual arts surface constantly. We compose. We seek harmony. We design with rhythm. We use melodic line. We choose what key we are going to paint in. We place color notes. We find our voice. We create contrast. We use tempo to speed up and slow down the viewer’s path through the painting.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

I asked Dave, Joanna and Tadhg of ‘One for the Foxes’ if they would share some thoughts on the creative process from the viewpoint of musicians and songwriters.  I found their insights not only inspiring but remarkably applicable to our process as painters.

“My focus is covering two angles as I embark on my creative process and I try to keep these two fundamental elements (as I see them) at the front of my mind. 

At the outset, most of my process is informed by my own personal experiences and what I take from myself and inject into the music. Establishing the narrative, drawing from past musical interactions and imagining new ones to create something new. As the structural, musical and lyrical elements begin to take form, I try to shift my focus and fine-tune my piece of art with the fresh perspective of a new listener. I have found that parts of my art that I become sentimental and attached to because of the journey of the piece, can actually hinder the overall piece of art and it might be better served if removed. This tension between the personal and the external is important for my process and can offer a lot more clarity to the listener/observer when both sides are taken into consideration.”  Dave Curley – multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter

“In the spirit of art being a sort of continuum (in my mind), I find this element of ‘balance in flow’ really important. Just as Dave is talking about balancing the internal and external for the sake of art, I think that stretches to the idea of being open to whatever creativity is coming through you and/or from inspirational sources around you, and being able to look at it all critically without overwhelming yourself with judgment. 

I think one of the most fundamental reasons for art is joy – getting to feel and share joy -, and that is a sort of mantra I try to come back to in order to keep myself balanced when I’m feeling bogged down by uncertainty or criticism, most often my own. I know it sounds trite, but I do think that happiness is the core behind this all, and that is ultimately what allows the creativity to come out into the world. Some of my favorite moments are when I’m listening to a piece of music and it fills me up so much that I get goose bumps. I’m experiencing the piece in such a pure way without consciously analyzing it. With the open and subjective process that is art, it’s sometimes hard to know from the artist’s perspective when to let a project or piece be “complete”, or at least sit for a while and decide whether or not to come back to it. I try to keep ahold of an awareness of this flow between the various states of creating something and experiencing all different feelings about it, so that I can continue to try new things, hopefully learn and improve, allow for the more difficult moments, create space when necessary, and more than anything, keeping loving the whole experience of it. That, in turn, allows for whatever I’ve created/shaped/molded to be shared, and perhaps become something new again for the next person.” Joanna Hyde – vocals, fiddle, songwriter

“As for my creative process, particularly in terms of composition, I find it to be an ever-evolving process. Perhaps coming from the Irish tradition, where ‘a composition’ is usually limited to 16 bars of music and incorporates repeated motifs within that, one can encounter a burning urge to break the rules and strive to make something ‘bigger’. This can be very rewarding. However, when all the rules are broken, suddenly the beauty of the original ‘simple’ form can also emerge. Then, rather than feel confined by strictures, one can find immense joy in appreciating subtleties often lost in a larger picture. 

Ultimately, neither of these approaches is ‘wrong’, and, to echo Dave’s and Joanna’s words, letting go is the big challenge. You will always improve, evolve, and/or change as an artist. Tomorrow you might balk at the idea of something you love today. But today is just as valid as tomorrow. As the legendary Irish musician Dónal Lunny once told me in the midst of an album recording, ‘That’s why we call it ‘a record’. It’s a record of where you and your art is right now.’ “ Tadhg Ó Meachair – piano, piano-accordion, composer

MUSIC TO INSPIRE PAINTING AND PAINTINGS INSPIRED BY MUSIC

I’m going to share two paintings in an ongoing series that will be exploring music. The musicians are the subjects of the paintings but the message is the music. They are paintings ‘of’ musicians but ‘about’ music. The first is about music that was and will be. The second is about music in the present moment.

The Harpist

The painting is of a harpist but it is about the space between the notes where music exists.  Her hands in her lap mirror the rests in a composition. It looks back to when the music was and forward to when the music will be again.

Buena Vista Social Club

This is, on the surface, a painting of musicians on a stage. Again, the painting is about the music. For this painting, I literally used the spaces between the musicians to paint the music. Every stroke, color note, paint passage was executed to be a visual translation of the music filling the club. Even the powerful bass line lives in the dark vertical post on the left. The tangle of wires speaks about the complexities of the notes – of how the voices of instruments intermingle.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Okay, now we’ll turn our thoughts toward how to put all of these ideas into practice. Let’s dump some sound and some pigment into an imaginary particle accelerator and make the two collide. When any two things collide in this universe something is created. Water + rock = a canyon. Car + tree = a trip to the body shop. If you DO create something new because of a fender bender after you’re over inventing new profanities, stop and look at how the light might be hitting the new wrinkles in the sheet metal. Look at the sweeping patterns the grass stuck in the quarter panel is making. There’s beauty even in something that a minute ago totally sucked the life out of your day. Pass no judgment on what appears on your canvas during the exercises. Just let the worlds collide and feel the joy of the process.

My hope is that the music in concert with the following exercises will bring you and your paintings one step closer to the heart of all things!

EXERCISE 1: Increasing brush vocabulary through painting using your entire body.

Use two 12×16 or larger inexpensive canvas panels or paper. You don’t want to worry or feel precious about the surface you do exercises on.

Work standing up so you can move freely. Make sure you have a clear path so you can step back from your easel at least 6 or 8 feet if possible. You need to always be moving forward and back. Forward to lay down a passage. Back to see the big picture. For this exercise, you’re to not care a whit what ends up on the canvas. Focus entirely on the music and use it to inspire new ways to approach your canvas. Allow the marks you make on the canvas to just ‘be’ with no judgment. Relax and use your entire body. Let the stroke originate in the earth, move up through your spine, shoulders, arm, through your brush and finally to the canvas. Click on the audio clips to access the music for your exercises.

I’ve chosen two of Dave Curley’s pieces from ‘A Brand New Day’ for this exercise.

A. The first piece you’ll work to is a beautifully rendered piece that leads you on a gentle and at the same time emotional journey awash in visuals.  ‘The Pleasure Will be Mine’ – written by Alan Reid, arrangement by Dave Curley and Mick Broderick. 

I want you to be aware of the grace in the music and let that translate into how you move your body and hold your brush. You should hold a brush with both delicacy and perfect control. It should nearly fall out of your hand. You’ll move from shoveling up paint and spreading it on the canvas like stuccoing a wall to a vocabulary of true brush calligraphy that can speak volumes with a stroke.

B. For the second half of this exercise, you’ll work to one of Dave’s original pieces, ‘Off to War’, which is both powerful and poignant at the same time. e NOTES: ‘Off to War’ is a true story from Ireland in 1916, based off a mother’s diary which she kept for her son who was fighting in the Irish regiment of the English army in the 1st world war. Old story, new art.  – Dave Curley, Mick Broderick

Use a new canvas or paper. The intent, the rhythms, the message are entirely different. As you focus on the music and begin responding, you’ll discover you’ll be using your body in an entirely different way as you approach the canvas. There is a more powerful undertone in this song with compelling rhythms. There are moments that are lilting and inspiring and conversely poignant and heartbreaking. Pull out your Big Book of Brush Vocabulary for this one! You’ll need lots of different words.

EXERCISE 2: Uprooting ingrained habits and assumptions that are past their expiration date and have lost their usefulness!

Again, use two 12×16 or larger inexpensive canvas panels or paper.

For this exercise, we will again focus on the music but the intent is to interpret what we’re hearing and translate it into passages of color on the canvas. We have a huge vocabulary in a single brush. We can go from a wisp of a hairline to a powerful and bold stroke with just a twist of the brush in our hand.  After you load your brush you then have three tools for making your mark – speed, pressure, and direction in infinite combinations. Try them individually and then combined. Step back between passages and assess how successfully you’ve communicated the intent of the music.

I’ve chosen two wonderful pieces from ‘One For the Foxes’ for this exercise.

A. The first tune you’ll work to in this second exercise is a beautifully crafted piece, ‘Virginia’, that is sure to draw you in and inspire you to use your brush in new ways as it takes you along on its journey.

Notes: Virginia is a town in County Cavan in Ireland, and is one we particularly enjoyed putting together with its more distinctive arc/journey from slow and airy to faster and punchier. – Tadhg Ó Meachair

Let your mark making follow the arc of the story in this one letting your brush follow the beautiful drawn out passages in all of their tenderness. Then interpret the anticipation as the tempo slows then builds and the piece becomes more complex.  This is a great exercise for breaking the habit of repetitive brush strokes. You will have the pure music of radically different passages on one canvas. That’s when the painting becomes a dance.

B. The final piece you’ll be working to in this series of exercises fully invites you to the dance of life – ‘One for the Foxes’!

Notes: “One for the Foxes…is a mix of two tunes – one Irish tune composed by Junior Crehan, and then the tune that myself and Joanna composed in honor of some foxes who lived in my back garden in Dublin!” – Tadhg Ó Meachair

This last exercise is about shaking off dusty habits that have been holding us back, stealing our voice and keeping us from true expression and connection. 

So, put the last canvas on the easel, turn up ‘One for the Foxes’ and feel what it’s like to channel joy!

Enjoy your journey of discovery! – Lyn

Credits:

Many thanks to Joanna Hyde, Tadhg Ó Meachair and Dave Curley of ‘One for the Foxes’.

ONE FOR THE FOXES

Dave Curley, Tadhg Ó Meachair & Joanna Hyde form an exciting and dynamic transatlantic trio that presents a rousing blend of Irish and American folk music, having already won over audiences on both sides of the ocean. The group is made up of Dublin’s Tadhg Ó Meachair (Goitse), Galway’s Dave Curley (SLIDE) and Denver, Colorado’s Joanna Hyde (The Hydes), and features a mix of Irish and American folk music and song – both traditional and newly-composed – presented in an energetic and engaging manner. Their performances strike a tasteful balance between the stories found in ballads across both sides of the Atlantic and the respective instrumental music traditions of these places. Award-winning instrumentalists each in their own right, Dave, Tadhg & Joanna take a unique twist on the diverse strengths of their individual backgrounds, weaving between traditional melodies, their own compositions, and songs from the broader folk canon. The results are highly personalized and thrilling in their daring and forthright grasp of the material. Through a shared deep-rooted passion for Irish traditional music, this trio highlights the vital role of Irish traditional music as an origin of many American folk musics and explores how those styles can interact with one another in a manner both eclectic and grounded.

Dave Curley

A multi-instrumentalist from County Galway, Dave Curley has worked with multiple Grammy-winning acts, as well as being a member of the Irish supergroup, SLIDE. Not only an outstanding musician, singer, and songwriter, Dave is also known as a champion Irish step dancer.

Tadhg Ó Meachair

An All-Ireland champion pianist, Tadhg has toured the world with his multi-award-winning band GOITSE. His musicianship, recognized by legendary musician Dónal Lunny in his ‘Lorg Lunny’ television series, has led him to collaborate with acts ranging from Seán Ó Sé to The Stunning.

Joanne Hyde

Award-winning fiddler and vocalist Joanna Hyde, a Colorado native, is steeped in musical styles on both sides of the Atlantic. A recipient of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation’s Graduate Arts Award, Joanna has an MA in Irish Traditional Music Performance from the prestigious Irish World Academy in Limerick, and tours throughout North America and Europe with various projects

oneforthefoxes@gmail.com

‘One for the Foxes’

 www.oneforthefoxes.com

 ‘A Brand New Day’

http://davecurleymusic.com

© Lyn Boyer – No Fear Oil Painting™

www.lynboyer.com

We’re inspired. Paint flies. Ideas run rampant and our only fear is one might escape before we get it on the canvas.  And then…nothing. Black nothingness. A post-apocalyptic wasteland. We’re left alone staring into our brain and see a gaping hole of rubble where yesterday flocks of ideas beckoned. The paintbrush feels like it weighs a hundred pounds and every stroke feels painful and kludgy. Panic starts to set in. Elvis…has left the building.
Stage 1 – Standing in front of a white canvas – paralyzed.
Stage 2 – Raw panic.
Stage 3 – You’re in a ball on the couch stuffing chips in your mouth reaching for the remote to binge watch Netflix.
What is it that inhabits our brain on one day pouring out ideas, energy and inspiration and then just up and leaves the next day? Connection to Spirit? A muse? Does it leave us or do we leave it? Will it ever come back? I stopped in to see an artist/gallery owner one day whose work I admired. She always seemed like an endless fount of inspiration. Year after year, fabulous work would consistently appear on the walls.  I sat down across from her. She looked up at me, said nothing for a few moments and then said slowly, “I’ve…got…nothing. It’s gone. There is absolutely NOTHING there.” There was a tinge of panic. It was a confession and plea. A confession of the secret we all carry that we aren’t the magical beings some people think we are. We aren’t the eternal fount of creativity with never a blip. It was a confession of the fear that the well was dry, that the ideas would never return. Just then, a mini-epiphany exploded in my brain, and though it didn’t diminish my empathy for her, it also made me feel suddenly not so alone.  This happens to all creative people. Perhaps more often for some than others. It may not be comfortable but it’s also not the end.
So, what you can do about it? How do you find your way back to productivity and inspiration? First, chill-ax. Take a breath. Stop begging your muse to come back. Your muse is just not that into you at the moment.  Quit acting like a jilted lover. Put a chip clip on the bag of chips, get off the couch, pick up a brush and just do the work. Be willing to do the work even when you feel….NOTHING! Feelings come. Feelings go. In true Elvis form feelings, “Ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog.” Okay, that sounds dreary but when you understand the nature of inspiration, the nature of your muse, you’ll be able to trim your sails, navigate the seas and actually begin to enjoy the vagaries of the wind and waves.
Think of your muse as a lighthouse. When it completes its circuit and its beam falls on you the world lights up. We then expect it to come to a grinding halt and forever shed its light on us. When it moves on in its never-ending arc, leaving us once again in the dark, we throw a tantrum. We greedily want it to stop doing its job.  We forget it left us with a gift before it continued on its circuit. A new idea. Something to be curious about.
Let the light move on, get comfortable with the twilight. Know that as the light swings once again through its arc, it’s searching the horizon, it’s gathering new ideas to deliver to you when it next visits.  Our psyche, our creativity, our passion needs rest periods. It’s only fear that the beam will never complete its sweep and fall on us again that sends us to the couch with a bag of chips.  When you learn over time that yes, Elvis has left the building, BUT he is scheduled to return, we can relax and use the time for a number of things. Reconnecting with nature. Doing some introspection as to why, exactly, you paint. Practicing some core skills. Doing a focused study – the painter’s version of a musician doing their scales. In other words, spend/use the time productively so that when the beam sweeps around and falls on you again you’ll be prepared!  Half of the secret of life is being prepared so you won’t miss the moments when they present themselves.  When you’re alert and fit you can race that train to somewhere awesome and grab onto the handrail as it’s leaving the station on a new journey. If you’re asleep on the couch you’re going to miss the train.
So how about some pretty pain-free techniques for breaking out of a serious funk:
1. This is counter-intuitive, but try making yourself NOT go in your studio. Limit your painting time to something ridiculously doable like 30 minutes. If even that sounds painful make it 15. Set a timer and stop painting even if the fog is beginning to lift and things are going swimmingly. The magic moment will come when you desperately want to work past when the timer goes off. Stop anyway. Stay hungry my friend. Pretty soon you’ll begin passionately hating the timer. Passion is back…even if it’s in the form of glaring at a timer. You’ll fling the timer aside and paint on into the night. The funk will have been banished like a roach by the light.
2. Set a specific intention. Choose a reason to walk into the studio. ‘I will learn about…’ ‘I’m curious about…’ ‘What would happen if…’ ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to try…’
3. Use your tantrum as energy. Put up a dart board in the studio. Throw darts. Then throw paint…at a canvas. Be physical. Stand up to paint. Paint with energy. Don’t slouch in a chair. Jump up and strike the power pose. (Feet wide and strong, chest up, arms thrust above your head in exclamation and face pointing defiantly upwards.)
4. Figure out what it is that’s intimidating you. Hit it head on. Wrestle it to the ground. Stop staying safe.
5. Demand nothing of yourself except to go through the motions. Mix a little paint. Sit on the floor and put your art books in alphabetical order for no particular reason. Lie on the floor, stare at the studio upside down and imagine what life would be like walking around on the ceiling. Congratulate yourself on whatever small thing you managed.
I’ll leave you with an image: “Havana Nights.” It turned out to be one of my favorite paintings of the year. It was waiting for me on the other side of some impenetrable wall. There was a literal war going on inside me. I had no idea what to paint. My internal tantrum was palpable. Finally, by sheer will, stubbornness or exhaustion from my own mental battle I made myself walk into the studio, pick up a brush and make one mark. Then another. Then another. Then there was no stopping. Paintings want to be painted and we sometimes just need to allow them to manifest themselves by the simple act of picking up a brush no matter how we’re feeling.
No one is exempt from periods of struggle. Don’t worry. Pick up your brush. The magic always comes back. The lighthouse doesn’t stop shining. And remember…sometimes our best work waits for us on the other side of the greatest resistance.

Pin this on your wall. It’s your license to learn. I’m giving you permission…right now… to slow down. We’ve become victims of speed. “How many paintings did YOU get done today??” A better question. What did you feel about the place you chose to paint today? Someone once asked me, “What do you paint?” An innocent enough question but I knew that they were asking what ‘things’ do you paint. Do you paint landscapes? Do you paint cats? I didn’t say anything for a while because I wanted to give them an honest answer. I finally said, “I paint what I love.” And you can’t love something in a hurry. It takes time.
Okay let’s talk about speed. You’re watching the Olympics. You see a skier totally shred a slalom course at a billion miles an hour carving a perfect line as you hear them give the smack down to each gate. It’s INSPIRING. It’s so inspiring you run out and buy skis (probably the wrong ones) and a lift ticket. You dump yourself off at the top of a Double Black Diamond and with every cell of your being, every ounce of your will, every deep desire of your heart you decide to just ‘express yourself’ with wild abandon. You launch yourself over the edge. You are carried down in a stretcher. Do I need to say it. You see a great painter. You are INSPIRED. You buy a bunch of stuff. You launch yourself at your canvas to express yourself with wild abandon. You’re carried out on a stretcher.
I’ve been asking myself a question for the past couple of years. Why do we as painters sometimes try to ‘cheat the gods’ – meaning – try to shred the gnar without the chops – when athletes and musicians would never dream of it. Because they clearly know if they do they will end up dead, in the hospital or humiliating themselves on stage at Carnegie Hall. As painters we can cheat because: One, we’re not going to poke an eye out with a paint brush if we do piles of paintings showing zero improvement. Two, we can always find someone who doesn’t want to hurt our feelings to tell us we’re brilliant. Three, we can find a show to enter that gives out so many ribbons they’re pretty much participation awards. For us there are no life-threatening consequences. Except maybe to our soul. Then one day we look in the mirror and say, “How’s that workin’ out for ya?” We get a fire in the belly that drives us to find another way. We wake up and start working our butts off to conquer the skills that have bucked us off a hundred times. We never give up and we let out a battle cry that echoes off the canyons the day we stick it – the day we stay on for the eight seconds and hear the buzzer. Now THAT makes life sweet and imbues our paintings with a power that speaks to our audience.
Taking on the coaching style that athletes and musicians practice, can, by slowing us down, actually kick our progress into high gear. One of the keys is to clearly separate practice from performance. The masterful painting comes at the end of much preparation and study. When we go to a concert the musician has already prepared. We don’t go to watch them practice. Be patient. Work the problem. Practice. Study. Do it when nobody is looking. When there’s no glory. Then present your performance. Give the audience your best.
Here are a few of the exercises I use to herd my own set of mental cats:
MEASURE YOUR PROGRESS
a.) Every 90 days or so give yourself a report card. On paper or mentally – first list the core skills: drawing, perspective, composition, values, color. Next, list the higher level skills: edges, brush handling, surface quality, intent, site selection, atmosphere, carving space, designing using local tone, designing use light and shadow, rhythm, intervals, pacing, eye travel, etc.
b.) Without over thinking quickly assess your skill level in each area on a scale of 1-10. Make note of the weakest area.
c.) Set yourself on a focused course of study until you’ve brought the weakest area in line with the stronger skills. As you continue to do this your whole skill set slowly improves and becomes more cohesive.
You may have great skill in a few areas but your painting can be totally sunk when you confront something that reveals your weakness. Pretty much…we can’t run. We can’t hide. Measuring our progress also gives us the time to reflect on and feel the satisfaction that we ARE indeed improving. This CAN be done.
STOP MAKING PAINTINGS…(AT LEAST 9 TIMES OUT OF 10)
a.) For 9 painting sessions – studio or plein air – don’t make a painting. Painting infers we are going to create a finished product – come to a conclusion. Instead on the 9 canvases – study your core skills in order of weakness.
b.) Make the 10th canvas the performance. Attempt to orchestrate the skills you worked on in the first 9 into a harmonious painting.
c.) Then do it again. And again.
I used to be so performance oriented I tried to badger every canvas into becoming a painting. I murdered many a nice study session that, though not perfect, had some nice passages I could have used for future reference.
GET OUT OF THE BIG MUDDY – FIND CLARITY
a.) Mentally separate studying from painting – the practice from the performance. Be clear about what you are doing and do nothing until you are clear. Just moving your paintbrush doesn’t accomplish anything.
b.) If something goes sideways in a painting, stop, analyze, set a course of study to correct the weakness, then revisit the subject and try again from a point of knowledge and a stronger skill set.
NOW DO IT – HAVE FUN – NOBODY’S WATCHING
Buy stacks of inexpensive 5″ x 7″ canvas panels so you won’t feel they are precious. If you really have a problem reining in the desire to ‘perform’ rather than ‘practice’ then choose something non-archival so there is no chance you’ll be tempted to think you might come home with a painting. It removes the pressure to perform. Use one brush a size larger than feels comfortable to you. I prefer a nylon long-flat made for oils that can hold a clean edge when I want. I can get nearly every stroke I want out of this one brush. Before you begin a study on one of your wee canvases first set a problem to be solved or a question to be answered. Be curious. Set your intent. Examples: Today I will get the values right. Today I will see the scene as 3 to 5 large shapes. Today I’ll work on edges. Today I’ll do wireframes of a landform to better understand it. How does the light falling on this object change throughout the day? How many value steps are there between the zenith of the dome of the sky and the horizon at high noon? Next work the problem. Enjoy the process. No..bo..dy..is…watching. Work on one and only one problem at a time. There is no sense trying to orchestrate the complexity of a complete painting without mastery of the individual skills. One oboe out of tune can ruin an entire concert. Spend only about 30 minutes on a panel NOT in an effort to ‘paint fast’ but to practice the discipline of focusing your mind, making clear and simple decisions and resisting the temptation to wander, daydream or start picking at the canvas. Don’t ‘pet the kitty’! The urge to lay down a stroke and then ‘pet’ it again and again. Don’t place a stroke until you are sure of why you are placing it. Then place it, leave it and move on. When you are finished do your post game analysis. How did you do? What buffaloed you? What new light went on in your head?
DAILY TRAINING
Daily painting is an excellent discipline to develop a work ethic. However, I’d like to refine the concept a bit and take it a step further. I prefer to call it daily training. Putting paint on a canvas every day without purpose and direction – without a program – doesn’t do much to move us forward. Athletes take rest days. They plan their program so they peak at the right times. They know how to not burn out. To not injure themselves. Schedule in days to do nothing but flip through your collection of books on the great artists and illustrators throughout history. If you don’t have a collection start building one. Schedule in a day to simply pack a lunch and explore an area that you’ve had an interest in painting. Sit and become aware of the sounds, the feel of the light and shadows as they change throughout the day. Take the time to truly connect with a place. Find a coach who will help analyze where you are in your education as a painter and help you create a program for moving forward. If you can’t find a coach do the best you can to model a program for yourself. We have a world of great material available to us. Be selective when choosing material, teachers, workshops, coaches.
In the end it is only in slowing down that we’ll be able to speed up, to learn to lay down that confident stroke that doesn’t need correction or fiddling. To say what we want to say with brevity and elegance. The end credits on a favorite old TV series of mine always makes me take notice. Over the sound of a film reel rolling there’s a voice-over. It says, “I made this!” After our work, our commitment, we get to stand back with deep satisfaction and say, “I made this!”
Below I’ve included 4 examples of my own 30 minute training sessions and a description of the question I set out to answer, the skill I chose to practice – the motivation – for each.
For my study sessions I use inexpensive 5″ x 7″ oil primed panels and normally only one brush – a Rosemary Ivory size six flat/long bristle, long handle.
I hope if you incorporate the study sessions into your training program you’ll enjoy doing them as much as I do. You’ll find the descriptions below the block of four images.
I set out on a ‘light and shadow’ day to describe trees using basically two values with a clear division between light and shadow. Reduced to the simplest shape these trees are simply tall cylinders and obey the same rules of how they interact with light.
When another painter recounted a somewhat humorous story of setting out in the morning with a friend to find a painting location, they drove for hours and…yes…ended up back where they had started and finally stopped the car and set up their gear. It made me wonder why the endless search for the perfect time of day, the perfect light, the killer scene, as if finding those will somehow make us good painters. The answer came in another story I heard of a writing instructor at an Ivy League college. When final exam time came, each student pulled a piece of paper out of a bowl with the subject they were to write about. When one student whined it was a boring subject the professor said, “There are no boring subjects only boring writers.” OUCH!! That sounded so incredibly harsh but I never forgot it. I took it as my job as a painter to learn to be able to paint any subject, any place, any weather, any time of day and find beauty in it. My new mantra. Just stop the darn car! For this session my intent was to go out on what appeared to be a dull, gray, uninteresting winter day and paint the first thing I came upon which turned out to be a tree and a phone pole. I was fascinated to learn that something so mundane could become a nice little study. I found a pleasing value pattern relying on local tone.

I’m always tuned to moments when an opportunity presents itself. I glanced up one day from what I was doing and saw a scene entirely made of grays, clearly divided into 4 differing value shapes with each gray bent to a different cool or warm. I immediately grabbed one of my small training panels and set my intent to get those values right and also to practice mixing the subtle shifts in the grays.
When a study panel can become your backup plan. Always keep a few of your 5″ x 7″ panels handy. I was painting with a pal and didn’t want to bail even though my invincibility cape had temporarily failed and half my brain was being used for pain management. I knew I didn’t have the focus to ‘paint’ but really wanted to have the time with my pal AND not have to admit I was a weeny. I downgraded my plan for the day, took out one of my small study panels and set a very simple task for myself. I glanced around and became interested in a patch of light in the mid-ground that was equal in value to the values of the dome of the sky and light on the mountains. One of those exceptions when the dome of the sky is in fact not lighter than everything on the ground plane. What also interested me was because the patch of light abutted the darker value of the foothills it in fact appeared lighter than the sky and the light on the mountains when in fact all three are the same value.