No postcards please

Etchings by Charles Meryon, French 1821-1868

Here is a question from a reader that I found interesting. I appreciate the questions you all provide me. I have a small file of them to trot out when for blog ideas. I do feel sometimes as if I have picked all the low hanging fruit. The first 400 posts or so are real nuts and bolts art instruction. If you haven't read them I encourage you to do so.

Hey Stape!! Question, if you have an answer - How do I keep the compositions of my paintings (of important structures) from looking like postcards?
...................... Rachel from Cardholders Services
Rachel;
Here are some points with BULLETS;

• Postcards usually choose the most generic and obvious view. Perhaps you shouldn't. Balance the important structure with another less important one or.....
• Choose a detail or an unexpected view. I joke with my friend T.M. Nicholas every time we paint a picture with a prominent house in it (in the voice of an obnoxious gallery visitor) "I suppose it's nice, but I wish it was MY house". The solution to that is often to

PUT THE HOUSE INTO THE LANDSCAPE, RATHER THAN PUTTING THE LANDSCAPE AROUND THE HOUSE.

I often will paint the landscape and THEN drop the house into it to make sure that happens. The painting then says "LANDSCAPE with a house, rather than landscape with a HOUSE.

• We all enjoy sunny, blue skied days, but so do the people who make postcards, avoid that big blue background and use something with a little more edge. Try not to paint too "sweet" postcards are always stupidly cheerful and happy, happy, happy. A less major key look will be less postcardy.
• The deep fault you are having is (I think) that you are choosing your pictures cropping and design from an object standpoint. That is : I am going to paint a picture of this house, better to:

FIND AN ARRANGEMENT OF LINES AND SHAPES IN NATURE THAT SET ONE ANOTHER OFF, WORRY ABOUT THE SUBJECT MATTER LATER.

If the shapes are good, the painting stands some chance of being successful, if they are not, and you can't bend them so that they are, you are never going to make a good picture at that location. Perhaps it would be better to introduce some tropical fish.
Postcards tend to be in all happy and bright colors too, introduce some grays and unexpected or even slightly discordant notes. Think Led Zeppelin ( Whole lotta love) not Bread (Baby Im-a want you). That's where power comes from, no edge, no power! Postcards are too "happy" to cut into the viewer much, you have to have some "attack" to get beyond the "pretty picture" problem.

• Ask yourself what YOU are bringing to this picture,YOU need to be on that canvas. That could be in the brushwork or in your "take" on the subject or in your color. A painting needs to be poetic, a postcard needs to be just what the average person expects to see. It might be better to shy away from those subjects when you can. If you are making postcards hoping that they will sell, my experience has been that the viewer knows that and feels that they want something more artful. Of course if you have a commission to paint a certain subject, you do what the client wants and sneak the art in there as best you can.
  

Here are a few notes on Charles Meryon. The son of a doctor, Meryon became a lieutenant in the French Navy. Upon leaving the navy he decided to become an artist. Because he was color blind he restricted himself to black and white, particularly etching. Working first as a copyist in a production house he later went out on his own focusing on scenes of Paris. He made great series of them.

Meryon was technically brilliant but as much as his art appealed to, and was understood by other artists who revered him, it didn't sell particularly well. In later years Meryon went mad and was committed to an insane asylum. I am feeling a little "off" myself.

I a guest artist this next week at the Ocean House, in Watch Hill Rhode Island, a very grand place indeed. If you are in the area, stop by and see me paint, I suppose I will be working on the grounds of the hotel or on the shore pictured here.

About "laying tile"

Chris Curtis, of the Searchers 1941-2005

I received this query via e-mail the other day. Following that is my answer.


Dear Stape,

I have a question that has been keeping me up at night. You have talked before about laying down paint in a tiled fashion with each brushstroke next to the other. You and other smart dudes also emphasize that each brushstroke must be planned and mixed before you lay it on the canvas. Does that mean that no two color spots on the canvas are the same? Is there ever any cause to dab at the canvas repeatedly without reloading the brush?

And finally, how big are the tiles? Say you're standing looking at a barn. If it's very far away, one brushstroke will be enough to describe it, and presumably it will only be one color. As the barn gets closer, assuming it's not shade-dappled or so big that it needs to be described with atmospheric perspective, how much of it will you describe with one brushstroke, or one color? What about a stand of bushes or a snow-covered hillock? How many tiles will you lay to describe it? Or a mass of trees?

Of course micro-local (I just made that word up) color will vary. But say you have an area in front of your eyes about the size of your palm that is all approximately the same color, like a roof or a field or a tree crown. How do you fill that in or enlarge that color spot? Thanks as always for your educational blog. After you answer this question I will be able to go back counting sheep instead of leaves.
Signed,.................................Toiling in the Data Mines.

Dearest Data miner:

I often tell students to lay tile. What I mean by this, is to mix a "tile" of the appropriate color and value on the palette and lay it in place discreetly on the canvas then take the brush away. I do this for two reasons. The first is to discourage them from trying to "worry" the paint on the canvas into a picture. The idea is to mix up the note, lay it on the canvas and move on. Secondly, "tile" implies a structure with body and thickness rather than a stain of turpentine and pigment. You cannot make a painting out of thinner. "Laying tiles" encourages a purposeful and precise authoritative approach as opposed to mucking about in an undisciplined flurry of ill conceived or tentative strokes.

I think it is OK to daub at a canvas several times with a loaded brush, but then it it's time to stop! It is really easy to get carried away and stop thinking about what you are doing. When you wake up from your reverie you have thrown the same note in too many places without thinking. So it is best to make and lay a tile or two, and then STOP! Time to think again, observe nature, consider your design and intent, and mix a new note. It might be a variation on the last one, but it should be reconsidered. Avoid going into a trance and daubing stupidly all over your canvas. That's really easy to do. So Stay Awake!

Then you asked "And finally, how big are the tiles? Say you're standing looking at a barn. If it's very far away, one brushstroke will be enough to describe it, and presumably it will only be one color. As the barn gets closer, assuming it's not shade-dappled or so big that it needs to be described with atmospheric perspective, how much of it will you describe with one brushstroke, or one color? "

The tiles are often a pixel, that is, at least for your layin, you are going to cover the canvas with pieces of intelligence of a certain size. You might decide to make marks no larger or smaller than a thumbnail. I sometimes joke when beginning a picture, that I am throwing hamburger sized chunks at the painting. This is part of "starting out with a shovel and finishing with a needle". You might start laying in your painting with large strokes and then as you finish subdivide them into smaller strokes. As for your barn, I would caution you against covering a very large area with one brushstroke of a single tone, like a house painter. Better to superimpose two related or similar colors. That will give vibration and visual interest to the painting. I often point out to students that in my own paintings, that if they slid a wedding ring across the surface there would be several notes within it's circumference no matter where they placed it.

An area of a size larger than say a walnut should be varied in color. If you paint an area larger than that with a flat tone, like a house painter, it will go flat. Every surface varies in value, temperature and color as the eye travels across it. Your barn should be one color at its base and another at the eaves. It would also benefit by some modulation within the general tone used to describe it, barns are weathered, so throw in some variation, grayer here and redder under the eaves where the paint has not weathered as much. Invent those variations if necessary. These variations please the eye and confuse it as well. That better gives the idea that we are looking at the complexity of nature.

I am not suggesting that you will always see these things, but that your picture will be more convincing and pleasing if you install them.

A little more about Romney and why we should know him

I got this comment the other day and I think I will see if I can answer it.

Hi Stape,
Besides the entertaining history, education and terrific art, could you expound on why we should know Romney or what can we glean and apply from these great master paintings from the past. ie, the great contrast in values, placement of the objects.


I don't know that it is more important to know Romney than a lot of other artists, but they are wonderful paintings. Romney is the least well known of the the "R's" of British portrait painting
Reynolds, Romney and Raeburn. But all three were very good, Britain at that time valued portraits highly and had a lot of fine head painters. These three were the best.

I have expounded before why I think it is important to know your art history so I will keep it short. If you told me you were learning to play the guitar and I asked you"whaddya think about Chuck Berry?" and you said "who?" I would suspect you were not too serious about your playing. There is no art without artists and what they made. Just as you cannot know rock and roll without hearing the music. If you want to make good pictures you need to be familiar with what they look like. Knowing your art history builds your taste, and it gives you a library of ideas of how other artists have conquered the problems with which you yourself will be faced in your own work.

I picked out the Romney above to look a little more closely at tonight. On the most obvious level, and the least artistic, is the subject itself. Anyone without a smidgen of art knowledge can see that this is a very lovely girl and that the picture is an upbeat charming evocation of her probably done by a man who found her enchanting. She also has a cute dog with her, who doesn't like a cute little dog? Most people who look at a painting see only its subject, this is a horse, that's a pig and that's a house. They don't "get" the art part at all. They see WHAT it is a picture of, but miss HOW it is a picture of. However this is a very charming painting if seen only in the most obvious way.

Below is the painting again with some lines drawn on it.

I could point out a lot of things about this picture but I think tonight I will start with the expression of form. The artist has chosen a very complex and difficult angle to show the head. The head is facing slightly downward at a three quarter angle and tipped slightly to the right. That is pitch, roll and yaw. So Romney had to put the head into a drawing that uses perspective. We have all seen the drawings explaining how to draw a house in perspective, however many folks don't realize that perspective is everywhere and it is necessary to use it to draw a head or a figure. Miss the perspective and the head looks grotesque or at least uncomfortable in some indefinable way.Romney though, has very effectively built the structure of the head. I drew some construction lines on the picture to show how the forms of the head are laid onto the spherical and receding planes of the skull. Like so many things in painting, this had to be thought out and installed. It can't be "observed or copied into a painting. Form is a construct, a human explanation of how an object sits in three dimensional space. This head has volume.

The line that indicates the chin and jaw for instance is picked up and continues around to the back of the head by the line to it's right in the hair. The planes of the head are simplified but well presented and understood. The lines are construction lines that wrap around the head, they are lines drawn around a sphere.
Tomorrow I will go after another quality of this painting.

A belated post

Above is a blue night scene. I make one, occasionally two of these every year at this time.
I received a good e-mail query today, here that is:

Next week I'll be going on a little painting trip to the mountains. Ideally there would be some kind of sun to liven up the paintings, but with our weather (WA state) it will most likely be very similar to the light in your pictures of Williamsburg. Cloudy dim and diffused.
Do you have any good strategies or advice for that kind of lighting situation? I've struggled with it in the past.
Stygius


Dear Styg:

I used to hate painting on gray days, but I have learned to like it better in recent years. The peril is making pictures that are lugubrious. Here are some things I do to avoid that.

• Avoid big open barren or bleak landscapes, unless you want to be bleak. Many scenes that work great on a sunny day are just too unrelievedly gray on a overcast day.
• Look, if you can, for something that does have color, a colorful building or a rusty old truck or golden grasses, maybe oaks with their russet leaves still clinging to them. Moody is good on a gray day, but watch out for depressing, the difference can be a fine line. The ocean is a good place to be too. The surf on a gray day is just as good as on a sunny day, maybe better.
• Try to keep the painting light, and avoid keying it real low, that is an easy mistake to make on a gray day. You may have to deliberately "lie" a little to do this.
• Rather than just painting an area of gray for your sky, perhaps you could put in variation in the form of clouds, even storm clouds or elongated horizontal clouds, whatever, just to get some variation in the top half of the painting. Try to keep that as high key as you can too. Seago did a lot of this and well.
• When you are mixing grays, use no black, make lots of different grays from different mixes of colored pigments. Lean them to the warm, to the cool, towards red, or towards blue. You can still have color variety, even if it is couched in innominate colors.
• Avoid painting big black "things", that is don't let any big dark area of the canvas take up to much room or get inky. It is often better to try to get big light areas into your painting.
• The good, really good news is you get hours and hours of virtually unchanging light in which to work. It is one of the things that redeems gray day paintings is that I can work on the same scene for many hours.
• Go for drama, don't let everything get all muddled together into a middle tone. Key the lights up, but don't wash out every one of your darks, keep a few for contrast. The lights won't look light unless there are a few darks for contrast.
• Think about what a sunny day painting looks like, it has contrast etc. Try and smuggle some of those characteristics into your gray day work. I don't mean convert your painting to a sunny day, but to try to use some of the tonal qualities that happen naturally in a sunny day picture to enliven a gray one.
• You can invent a break in the clouds or a patch of blue or a colored strip of light along the horizon. It is nice sometimes to relieve all of that gray with an area of color in the sky, even if it is not there. I have been known to fake sunset colors into the sky in a gray day picture.
• Study artists who were good at gray pictures. Many of the tonalist (particularly Crane) , Corot and Inness did wonderful things on this kind of a day. If you know that art well you will have a vocabulary of ideas to plug into a painting that needs some jazzing up.
  

Advice to a student

Here is a letter I received from one of the students in the Charleston workshop.

Hi Stape,

Thanks for an incredible workshop~ now that I’ve thawed out a bit, my brain is just swimming with all sorts of new ideas and information.

Anyhow, you managed to give me more to think about in three short days than anyone else has given me in the past five years. So, for that, thank you…I’m very grateful.

I have a couple questions for you, and I’ll try to make them plain and simple so they might be easily answered:

>For someone like me, what would be the best way to continue to improve and study? I checked out ateliers and the closest seems to be 4 hours from where I live. Short of moving there, which really isn’t a possibility, it seems unlikely that it would be a good option for me. Can I possibly learn more of what I need to know from books??

>What is your feeling about pastels? I’ve had people say to me “ya know, if you made these in oils, you could get more respect...better prices…etc” However, I love working with the pastels and understand them pretty well. Would it be smart to be proficient in both mediums or should I attempt to make the switch to oils? My feeling is that I should stick to what I know and continue to try to do good work with the pastels.

>What kind of lights do you suggest for a studio?

Again, thanks so much for the workshop. You’re a generous teacher….wicked nice…

Florida Girl

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Florida:

Thanks, I had a great time teaching it, but it was COLD. One guy said I worked you all like borrowed mules. Here are answers to your questions.

• I always recommend the atelier system as the first choice for training artists. But it sounds as if there isn't one close enough to you, so you do what you can. Perhaps you can do a part time program there? Are any of the grads of that atelier living in your area? A good atelier can save you a lot of time, really accelerate your learning. You need to do these things.

1. Work every day, all day if possible.
2. Read all of the books, there are many listed in the archives under book reports.
3. Go to the museum and study from the great masters.
4. Find artists to teach you, take workshops ,and try to befriend a pro in your area who will help you.
5. Join the best local art association and try to find a community of artists. If you have a few people around you doing the same thing you can be a support mechanism for each other and share discoveries and ideas.
6. Start showing you art locally. If you were studying piano you would play recitals, if you are studying painting you should be showing your art. That is part of the process. Particularly considering the high level at which you are doing pastels now.
   

I like the idea of doing both, like cross training. You mentioned getting paid for your art, so that might be important to you. You will encounter less resistance when selling oils. However as you have worked at developing your skills as a pastelist I wouldn't recommend walking away from that either.

The root skills of drawing, color, and design are the same no matter what the medium. Oil is probably the most efficient medium, it will do the greatest variety of things in the shortest period of time. Oil is the king of mediums and our art history was written in it.

I have been in some studios with great artificial lighting. Mine is pretty rudimentary. I have big north windows and almost always work by natural light. But I am set up with lights so I can work at night. I have a fluorescent shop light hung on chains about three feet above my easel. It has color balanced tubes in it. They are commonly available now. Next to that is a set of halogen track lights. These lights are like those my galleries use and I can see the painting under the same light in which it will be displayed in the galleries.

You will receive exactly the equal of the effort you put in. If you work towards your goal in an orderly and rational way you are assured progress. It takes a fabulous amount of work to be good at painting. It is the equivalent of playing the piano or a violin well. With constant effort it can be done though. The overwhelming number of people will not work hard enough or long enough to get there.

...............................Stape

Ask Stape, about solvents, safety and longevity

Dearest Stape:

You may have answered this question ad-nauseam by now, but I've been doing some research and need to know - because I love to paint wet, juicy oil paintings, about 3 different mediums solvents.

Natural turpentine seems to be the best - but there are differing "opinions" about how toxic it really is for studio use. Then - Gamblin Gamsol - a petroleum product doesn't seem that archival - is it?? Gets good reviews in the safety category. Then - last, most importantly, and my most favorite is Orange Turpine - Eco House - 915. I Love the stuff, but again - what's the truth about the toxicity and particularly the archival qualities of it???
signed;
Astrozenica Rhodococcus

Dearest Astro:

I referred your question to my friend and chemistry wiz Robert Carter, a painter and reader of this blog. The following is his answer. Robert has the ability to make the complex understandable to laymen like me.

Safety:

To answer this definitively, I pulled up the Manufacturer’s Data Sheets (MSDS) for turpentine (Utrecht), Gamsol (an odorless mineral spirit, OMS) and Eco-House Natural Orange Turpene #915. I have no experience with the Orange Turpene product, but it’s interesting to see that it is being promoted as a safer solvent that will dissolve damar. The principal ingredient is food grade orange turpene oil, which has an FDA GRAS rating (generally regarded as safe). GRAS is applied to most foodstuffs on the basis of long experience (e.g., spices are on the GRAS list), but there is no presumption of rigorous testing.

The health concerns of any solvent are acute toxicity on the one hand, and long-term health risks on the other. On both counts, turpentine is definitely the worst, Gamsol (and other OMS products) are better, and Orange Turpene is the (presumably) most benign. As the Merk Index notes, turpentine is absorbed through the skin, lungs, and intestine. It causes acute skin and mucous membrane irritations, skin eruptions, gastrointestinal irritation, delirium, ataxia (loss of muscle coordination), kidney damage, and coma. Inhalation causes palpitation, dizziness, nervous disturbances, chest pain, bronchitis, and nephritis (kidney irritation). Chronic contact can cause benign skin tumors. All in all, we’re better off not using it, except when necessary (e.g., damar-based mediums). OMS has similar risks, but they are generally regarded as less acute. In part, this is because it is less volatile (has a lower vapor pressure) than turpentine, so the build-up of vapor in the studio over time is lower. Certainly the narcotic effect is less. But among OMS products, there is a great deal of variation in the composition of the hydrocarbons present. Gamsol’s claim to superiority is that it is very low in aromatic hydrocarbons (less than 0.02%), which potentially reduces the long-term safety concerns. Chemists these days are very concerned about the use of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in synthesis and manufacturing, but most especially about aromatic hydrocarbons. Aromatic hydrocarbons are composed of planar, six-member rings of carbon atoms, with benzene (C₆H₆) being the parent compound. Years ago, we thought nothing of doing reactions in benzene, but today you have to jump through hoops just to buy a bottle. The problem is that benzene is carcinogenic. So anything that minimizes benzene and other aromatic compound content is preferred. The Orange Turpene product, having ingredients on the GRAS list, is presumed to be safe. But we should throw in a word of caution here – GRAS just means we don’t know of any problems. Just because something is natural does not mean it is necessarily benign. In the absence of data, one should still take reasonable handling precautions. Beyond this, the only other thing I spot in the MSDSs is a difference in the flash point temperatures: 91^o F for turpentine, 113^o F for Orange Turpene, and 145^o F for Gamsol. This is the same order as the boiling points. It means that the potential of starting a fire in the solvent is least with Gamsol. But this is really a minor concern.

Longevity:

The principle to apply in evaluating for longevity is that simple is better than complex. The process of forming a paint film (“drying”) is actually an oxidative polymerization process. Polymerization is the joining together of smaller molecular units (monomers) to make an infinitely large structure. The strongest polymer, and hence the strongest film, would be formed from a single vehicle (e.g., linseed oil), because only the same kinds of monomers would be joined. With a variety of alternative monomers present, the network building frequently ends in dead ends or less strong linkages. Now that’s the theory, but in practice it may not make a big difference. For example, white paints frequently have a mixture of linseed oil and safflower oil to reduce the yellowing tendency, but I do not know of any data that says these make weaker films than a white mixed with, say, pure linseed oil. So, how does this apply to solvents? Well, we need to think about the residue they leave. Looking again at the MSDS data, Gamsol is 100% volatile, turpentine is 99.5% volatile, and Orange Turpene is 99% volatile. The latter two, then, leave a nonvolatile residue in the paint. We have hundreds of years experience with turpentine, so we know that the oily residue it leaves does not interfere with the polymerization of linseed oil, and may actually be incorporated into the film. At least in theory, Gamsol should be even better, because it leaves no residue to interrupt polymer formation. In other words, your questioner is misinformed to think OMS compromises longevity. The Orange Turpene leaves 1% residue, so the question is what effect if any does it have on the strength of the film? The manufacturer claims that this material is archival, but it is a new product that does not have the lengthy record of turpentine, or even OMS. They may be right, but they could be wrong. As far as I know, orange oil (which is 90% d-limonene) is not a drying oil, which means it does not readily polymerize on exposure to oxygen. If that is the residue, it could be a problem. But to be fair to the product, I am speculating here.

Speaking personally, I tend to be very conservative about materials with respect to longevity. (By contrast, painters like Fairfield Porter loved to mess around with odd materials, and now their paintings are employing legions of restorers trying to hold them together.) I avoid turpentine, except when necessary, only because of the health issues, but certainly not because of longevity concerns. I prefer OMS because of health concerns, and I am confident it poses no compromise to longevity. (As an aside, if someone with the technical expertise of Robert Gamblin doesn’t have a problem with it, then I don’t.) Personally, I would be reluctant to take a chance on this new orange product. I know, for example, that Turpenoid Natural should not be used as a painting medium solvent, so I guess that prejudices me on this stuff. Maybe I’m just reacting to the knowledge that if I really wanted to mess up my paint film, I’d add orange oil. That’s like adding Goo Gone. I guess if you like the product and you’re willing to take the manufacturer’s word on its archival nature, then go for it.

Hope this helps.

Robert L. Carter, Chair

Department of Chemistry

University of Massachusetts Boston

Thank you Robert, That was great!.....................Stape

About doing commissions

Dear Stape,

I want to know your opinion about working on commissions. Recently I got a commission to do a big abstract painting, then I came to know that they wanted a particular painting in mind and asked me to copy it. Though I didnt feel good about copying, I went ahead because it was good money and I needed that. Does this mean that there is no freedom for the artist in commissions? Or it is not the same case all the time? How much can an artist compromise in such cases? Should I have refused the deal because there was no freedom for me to express in my own way?
Thanks,
Malgasay Orogeny

Dear Malgasay:

This question comes in from India. I like doing commissions, but they do take a little prenegotiation or you can end up holding the short end of the stick.
Here is what you need to tell the client up front.

I LIKE DOING COMMISSIONS AND I DON'T CHARGE MORE TO DO THEM.......BUT, I GET HALF UP FRONT, AND HALF UPON YOUR SATISFIED ACCEPTANCE. THE UP FRONT HALF IS NONREFUNDABLE THOUGH, IS THAT GOING TO BE A PROBLEM?

If they won't give you half up front, walk away. You cannot accept their offer otherwise, because that offer is "make the picture that I describe to you, then if I like it I will buy it". That's a losing hand for you. Anyone who is serious will give you half up front without hesitation, any one who won't, is going to be a problem when the piece is finished. So NEVER, EVER do a commission without half up front. If you aren't going to get paid, find out before you do the job!

You need to agree very clearly on what it is they want you to make. It sounds like this job was a little fuzzy from the start. But now they want you to make a copy of an existing painting. That is not a moral dilemma so long as you write "after so-and so below your signature. Copies are fine but the original artist must be credited. I would suggest that you only copy paintings by artists who are dead. Do not copy anything recent enough to be covered by a copyright. Rembrandt is OK, Warhol would not be.

You do give up some freedom on a commission but that is your choice. If you don't want to do the job, don't take the commission. The person who commissions you has every right to get the painting that they contracted for, just as you have a right to expect payment,. that's the deal. If you don't feel like you have room for your self expression, don't do the job. It is nice to make the paintings and if people like them, they buy them. But you are working on spec.

If there is a dealer involved, getting you the commission I would expect them to take around 15% not half. If your dealer wants more, you will have to decide if you want to take the job, but I wouldn't allow them much more. The beauty of doing commissions is generally that there is no dealer involved and you make the full retail price for yourself.

Most people who have commissioned me to do a painting have been excited about the painting and have been a delight to work with. They chose you to do the painting because of their faith in you. That is a complement to your ability. They deserve the best you can give them. Many commissions result in more work from the client or their friends, so I work hard to make them as good as I can. I have been known to make a second painting if they were dissatisfied with the first.

I hope that works out for you and you learn something from copying that abstract. I would grid up your canvas from a photo of the painting you are copying. That will save you some time and since it is a copy you are doing an essentially mechanical exercise.

Learning color for beginners

Dear Stape:

My query is to hear your thoughts on tips for learning color for beginners.... Ive have taken the daunting step of wanting to learn all about color but don't know what should be the first thing I should start with?
I predominantly have been working in graphite and charcoal and with so much information available and so many varied opinions on color, where should I begin to ensure I learn the principles of color in the right way and not become overwhelmed in the process.

Thanks mate.
Synesthesia Daubinatus

Dear Synesthesia:

Artists work to improve their color all of their lives, but I suppose their are a number of good ways to begin . I guess I would recommend, (bullets please)

• Start out simply, use a three color palette to begin with red, yellow, blue, (plus white) rather than trying to learn your way around a wide palette.
• Learn to mix the colors that you you see in a still life. Set up simple arrangements and try to match the colors as exactly as you can. Learning to accurately mix the color notes you see in front of you is a basic color skill, and you need to have it mastered.
  
• Do some small (8 by 10) color copies of paintings from books that have color that you like. Again be careful to match the colors as closely as you can.
• When you have learned to work from a three color palette enlarge your selection so it contains a warm and a cool version of each color I suggest Cad. red light, Ultramarine, and Cadmium yellow medium and Permanent Alizarin , Cobalt blue, Cadmium lemon . This is not the normal palette I recommend, but one chosen to give you a warm and cool of each hue for study purposes.
• I have written a little on color on this blog, if you search my archives under the tag "color" you will get to most of those.
  
• Here are some books on color to study;

"The enjoyment and Use of Color" by Walter Sargent. An old but classic text, it takes some study and you may want to skim over the exercises, but it does present the ideas that govern color usage.

"Keys to Successful color" in Landscape painting by Foster Caddell. A simple primer on impressionist color for the landscape painter. An easy read and contains excellent illustrations explaining the artists decision making.

"Principles of Color" by Faber Birren. A standard art school text, relatively easy to read and not too technical . Some texts are scientific beyond the needs of one learning color as a beginner.

James Gurney has a new book coming out very soon, called "Color and Light" I expect it will be excellent, I have seen some of the material on his blog.

• Robert Gamblin has an excellent explanation of color and the Munsell system for charting it, here on his companies web site. It is a very high production video and exciting visually. You should learn a little about the system and its terminology.
• Sling paint, lots of it. In the long run, that's what it takes, after gaining an understanding of how color works you can work towards a personal way of handling color.
  

Ask Stape; about color temperature.

Dear Stape,

I am hoping you can provide some deeper insight into the subtleties of warm vs cool temperatures and how the more advanced painters think about them. Often when I am watching a professional artist's demo or DVD the artist will point out instances of when they see a "warmer" or "cooler" color next to the one they just laid down. These are very subtle shifts, the ones that help to model form. But sometimes warmer can mean more yellow and sometimes it can mean more red or orange. How do they choose which color to push? Do they actually see more yellow or more red first and just speak about a color being "warmer" in the broadest terms? Is there a hierarchy? Inevitably I get confused, especially when the subject is flesh because the artist is moving in color space through variations on reds, peaches, browns and yellows. In that world, what is warm and what is cool?
Thanks,
Out in the Cold

Out in....

I think I know the source of your confusion, at least I hope I do. I believe it is this. When most people think of a warm color, they assume it must be a red or an orange, or maybe a yellow. When they think of a cool color they think blue or green. Those hues are warmer or cooler in relation to one another. BUT within any given hue ( another word for a color) there can be warmer or cooler notes. For instance in the red family. I might mix a warm red on my palette the color of a brick, and a cool note the color of cherries. They are both reds, and one is warm and one is cool in comparison to one another. Compared to a blue , neither might seem warm. It is all comparative. If next to my two reds, I mixed a note the color of fire, our brick red might seem to be a cool note.

ANY HUE CAN BE PRESENTED IN A COMPARATIVELY WARMER OR COOLER TEMPERATURE. THUS THERE CAN BE A WARM BLUE OR A COOL RED. TEMPERATURE IS NOT "STRAPPED TO HUE".

So a red or an orange might be warmer or cooler. I could for instance make a comparatively cool orange by adding alizarin into it. I might even be able to place a note next to it made from ultramarine blue and cadmium red light that would be warmer than our orange. This gets to be important when we are representing something that must be say, warm in the light and then cool in the shadow. The whole object might be red, perhaps for example a barn. I could paint the warm side with cadmium red light, and the cool side with alizarin. Both are reds, but one is warm and the other is cool. So color temperature is not a quality of hue, it is its own thing.

Color temperature is also not "strapped" to value. I often see students automatically making for instance, a cool red darker in value than it appears. They are confounding value (light-dark) with color temperature.
There can be very light (high key) warm colors and there can be very high key cool colors. Color temperature is just that, how warm or cool the temperature of a given hue is, not how light or dark it is.

I haven't seen the artists demo CD's you are watching, but I would guess that when they are confusing you, they are hitting a note that is cooler than the other colors about it, to which they are comparing it. If instead of putting that particular color note on the painting, they put it on a sheet of white paper it might look warm, but in the position it occupies in the painting it is cool in relation to the other notes about it.

Perhaps it is a little like calling someone tall or short. I am tall most of the time (6'4"), but sometimes when I am standing next to people who are VERY tall I am not so tall. If I was standing in a room with the Boston Celtics you might say, Stapes the short guy. Its all relative.

Odds and ends, also Snowcamp

Whose hand is this?

I am going to answer an e-mail question tonight.
Dear Stape; I would love more then anything to pursue art as a career goal although obviously I am FAR far from a professional. However I am pretty clueless on the professional side of art (that is not associated with the commercial aspect). I would appreciate any advice you have in terms of reading materials, online references, and especially how to approach cultivating a professional art career.

I have no idea how to sell the works I have completed so that I can pay for living expenses and art supplies. Also pricing of work is a very hazy subject.

Earnestina Striver

Ms. Striver;

Good for you! I looked at your web site and saw you were just out of college, and have lots of time ahead of you, and probably no kids or mortgages. You need to take a long view.
There seems to be an excitement today about becoming a professional painter, when I started it was real obscure. Things change. Becoming a professional painter is a long road. At the point you are at now you should be working to develop your chops. If you can, I suggest you find an atelier to teach you. There are many now, and some are good. Most are not terribly expensive, virtually all are far cheaper than college. They also produce more pro's.

The most important thing is that you should be honing your skills.Become a fine painter first being a pro will arise from that. It takes perhaps a decade of full time work to be competitive in the arenas with which I am familiar. But there are outdoor art shows and other venues that can make you some money before you are ready for the better galleries. I know people who make a living selling scads of 5" by 7"s for about 250.00. You need to produce like crazy and promote ceaselessly to do that though, and there is no room in that price for a dealer, you will need to sell the art yourself. Check out Renee Lammers, she does it. I think there are a number of people using this business model today, I don't really remember it existing until recently. The social media have made this possible.

Many successful artists have facdebook pages where they show their art and talk about what they do, if you freind a bunch of them you will learn from them. Many have hundreds of freinds and welcome all who want to follow along. There are also many good artists blogs out there. I have a list in my side bar and they have lists in their sidebars. You can learn a lot that way. FASO is an outfit that can set you up with a blog and a website, but even if you don 't sign up for that they put out a daily newsletter mostly on the business of art and time management, you can get it in your e-mail every day for free. Here is their link.

If you take care of your art, your art will take care of you. If you paint well enough, you can make a living at it. But it is a VERY fast track and you need to operate at a very high level to make a living. I have written a lot on finding and dealing with galleries, if you search The art business waltz, in the box up at the upper left of this page you will find them. You should be able to make your materials pay for themselves and then work at increasing your sales. I recomend you read John Carlson, Harold Speed and Edgar Payne, John Pike and Foster Caddell, Richard Schmid and Jim Gurneys new books. If you read all of my blog, you may find things of use to you there too. Below is a list of some of my favorite art books.

Carlsons guide to Landscape painting. I have written a lot about this book. Here is a link to some of that.

The Composition of Outdoor Painting by Edgar Payne, another classic text,written by an important California impressionist explaining methods of designing paintings. Only available used, but is routinely reprinted. Worth spending some money to get though.

The Human Figure by Vanderpoel I felt I should include one artists anatomy book, I like this one. It is clear, well illustrated and approachable.

Sargent, by Carter Ratcliff, I have a whole shelf of Sargent books, but this one is a good overview of his whole career and different sorts of paintings.

Gruppe on Painting Great outdoor painting book. Another classic by a fine American painter.Explains his one shot, full sized canvas, rapid painting techniques with bold color and brushwork. Power painting!

Edward Seago There are several books of his paintings they are getting hard to find but are worth the effort.

The Boston Painters by R. H. Ives Gammell (my teacher) Out of print but not expensive. Also Twilight of Painting , by Gammell. Out of print AND more expensive. Good book though. A bit of a tirade. Still informative. This book changed my life.

Keys to Successful color by Foster Caddell. Simple presentation on color in the impressionist landscape. Caddell uses a clever means of presenting the material. He shows you an amateur version of a painting and then his and explains what he did differently. So wonderfully simple it could be used as a middle school text. I learned a lot from this book long ago.

The Painted Word, by Tom Wolfe. Great contemporary writer and author of The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities takes on the philosophical underpinnings of modern art.

Everything I Know about Oil Painting by Richard Schmid A living master writes down his approach. Worth the price. Schmid has mentored a great number of young painters and this book does cover a lot of information. A few of the ideas in here I have found no where else as clearly. Well illustrated and based on a lifetime of experience by Americas most admired traditional, impressionist painter.

You should join the local art association and subscribe to art magazines. It would be useful if you could befriend an artist in your area who is successful, I don't mean someone who makes their living as an art teacher, but someone who makes their living selling paintings. Finding a mentor is important. I have had many. I would never have figured out the trade on my own.
..............................Stape

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The legendary Snowcamp, a three day snow painting workshop, is scheduled for January 29th, 30th, 31st. Snowcamp will again be held at the Sunset Hill House near Franconia Notch in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Last year we braved some cold temperatures and had a lot of laughs doing it. After a day of painting in the snow, we all meet for dinner in our private dining room and enjoy the camaraderie of the other artists. This is a total immersion experience, a refrigerated boot camp.

We can walk out the inn's backdoor, and paint the panoramic views of the Whites and if our feet get cold run back inside by the fire for hot coffee. There are great locations all over this area if we want to leave the enormous grounds of the inn. Built at the turn of the last century, the inn is charming and comfortable without being too formal. I have taught three workshops there and it is an ideal venue. They also give us a special rate. This is sacred ground for American landscape painting, Bierdstadt, McEnteee and Kensett and nearly all of the other Hudson River School artists painted here in the 1860's.

Some questions, answered

The grave of John Singer Sargent in Surrey, England from findagrave.com

I get a lot of e-mailed questions (thanks!) so I think I will catch up on a few of the more interesting tonight. The questions are in italics.

I looked at their primers online and they make several different oil primers. I was wondering which one you used specifically. I tried one a while back but I don't think it was the right one because it melted when I put a turpentine wash on my board. Hope you can help.

I had that happen too. It seems that Sherwin Williams has reformulated their primers, to be low VOC. I have been using Zinsser, oil based interior-exterior Cover Stain Primer. It seems to work fine and I haven't had any problems with it. They also make a lot of shellac based primers, they are NOT what you want.

As an emerging artist with no gallery representation and only Facebook to show my stuff to the world, I realize I could get out there more by setting up a blog. But I want to be very clear about my motives and goals. So far, I think those are: 1. Use it as a tool to become more daring, productive and skillful; 2. Focus and articulate my thoughts about the creative process; and 3. Generate some sales. What do you think are the main reasons for an artist to have a blog? Do you think I should use Blogger, or as my techno-nephew recommends, WordPress?


I see a lot of artists blogs that show a painting and then tell about why the artist painted it and then ask for money. Maybe they work, I don't know, but it doesn't seem like a good business model to me. If your prices are low enough, it might work but you need to generate some interesting narrative for people to read. I don't think you will generate much of a following just showing your paintings unless you are REALLY, REALLY good. I know there are some "painting a day" people who have become very successful, but I think there are a million others who have not. Still If your work is very inexpensive it might be worth a try. My friend Renee Lammers has a blog you might want to emulate, she generates interesting text about what she is up to and her readers can feel like they know her. Here is a link to that. I think Renee is doing what you would like to do, and she is selling paintings from her blog.

I don't know that it will make you more productive either, my own experience is that it takes time to do this and that time has to be subtracted from something else. I don't have a TV for instance. I sit down and write every night the way most people sit down to entertainment. In order to have a following, I think you need to write routinely and constantly update your blog. People will not return many times to a stale, unchanged blog. So doing it is a discipline. Writing about what you do will clarify your thinking, I know it has for me. I also have to stay one lesson ahead of the class, which means I have to study up to write the blog. A lot of things I write about I know well enough to talk about but I have to double check everything when I am committing it to writing. I spend as much time doing research as actually writing.

My main reason for doing the blog is to give away the things I have learned. I keep the self promotion to a minimum. People read my blog because they learn things that are useful to them. I am able to do that because I have been painting a long time and have had some exposure to older more experienced mentors who have passed on. The payoff for me is that a lot of people know who I am and that is useful up to a point. It is like advertising, I guess. It does fill workshops. But mostly I like to feel that I am useful.

I do my blog on Blogger, but I am moving to wordpress soon as my techno-wife thinks (insists) I should. The beauty of that is my archives are on our own server and not Googles. It is supposedly a better platform, I will let you know if I find it that. You might check out this article by Clint over at Fine Arts Views He is in the business of providing artists with websites that include a blogging platform. Their sites are user friendly and I think they provide a good service. They are inexpensive and I recommend checking them out. You can quickly have a web-site and a blog and they will be linked and easily found by anyone looking for you.

If you want a lot of people to buy your art a blog might help but I would recommend you get VERY good at painting. There are lots of galleries (there didn't used to be) perhaps you should find one that will show your work, a local coop perhaps. If you were taking piano lessons you would play recitals. Part of the art gig is showing.

Showing art on Facebook is weird. I see dreadful things followed by twenty comments from their friends saying how great they are. There are some great artists showing on Facebook, but they are generally in galleries too. Usually I knew who they were before joining Facebook. I think there is no substitute for actually showing the art on a gallery wall. I don't think showing on Facebook will hurt you, but it is not the same.


I'm new to oils and have only learned to paint alla prima. If I want to add to a painting (Want? I need to!) how long do I wait / can I wait / should I wait to add more color on top of what I have down? There are a lot of times when I try to add my next layer but do nothing except smear what's already there.

You don't need to wait. You will find that with practice you can add a new note into or onto the existing paint. A delicate touch is the key, that and not having too much paint already on the canvas. If the paint gets too thick, pull it back with your palette knife. If you want your paint to dry more quickly, use an alkyd medium, like Galkyd or Liquin. The reason that oil paint is so great is that it doesn't dry quickly. That long open time is an advantage because it allows you to manipulate it. I think that if you practice you will find that working into wet paint is just as enjoyable and maybe more so than working on a dry painting. You have far better control of your edges and you can meld the new paint to the old better than on a dried painting.

Ask Stape, retouching with Liquin?

Dear Stape

I was wondering if it is good to use Liquin instead of linseed oil for oiling out and if you see any problems with this? If you don't see any problems with this, do you think it's OK if I oil out a painting with Liquin where I've used only linseed oil as medium? I have read somewhere that Liquin yellows less than linseed plus I like how much faster it dries (than linseed), but I was worried about cracking and other bad effects it might have in the long run. I would like to give my paintings an even finish without the matte parts. I have tried brushing on retouching varnish, but it was very inconsistent in that some paintings became sticky.
I really love your blog as I find it extremely informative. Thank you so much for generously sharing your knowledge with us!
signed;
Sheena Leavin

Sheena;

Oiling out means to restore the gloss to the surface of a painting that has "sunk in". When a painting sinks in, areas have gone matte during drying. Some colors and dark passages are prone to this. I think the first choice would be to spray it with retouch varnish from a can or with a mouth atomizer. I think it better to spray a fine coat of retouch rather than to paint it on, as you will get a thinner coat.

Assuming the painting is very dry, I believe you could put a little Liquin on a paper towel and rub it onto the surface of the painting to restore its even gloss. I have no idea how much linseed oil you are using when you say it is your medium. I would suggest you go very easy on that if you intend to add more layers of paint. It is advisable to have fatter layers on top of leaner layers. But you knew that.

I have used Liquin to oil out a painting many times without a problem, but I have not done it over linseed oil, but I think you will be OK. Perhaps you might use Liquin as your medium, I like it very well. If you want more gloss, try Gamblins alkyd medium, Galkyd. That would eliminate the problem of using two different sorts of mediums. I think alkyd is less likely to crack than other mediums, it has a flexible rubberyness to it that I believe will reduce cracking. I don't feel straight linseed oil is a particularly good medium. If you want to use a natural, traditional medium , I would suggest 1 part stand oil, 1 part damar varnish and 4 to 7 parts turpentine, it must be turps, not mineral spirits though. Get the real stuff, the hardware store turps has dropped in quality and now smells like death. On the next painting I think you might want to rethink your medium-retouch varnish system and avoid making a habit of using the Liquin over linseed oil, it seems a little too complex to me, simple is usually better, and the fewer varieties of mediums in a painting the better.

I have never had a painting crack, and I have been very careless about the fat over lean dictum on some occasions. I am not dismissing that advice, just saying I have never had a problem, and I have paintings going back nearly forty years. I have seen paintings crack that I believe was the result of using the the old copal mediums ( now unavailable), and I have seen paintings crack that were painted extremely thickly. Those paintings were probably worked on in such a way as to add a new layer of paint day after day after day. They might have been as thick as a nickel in places. I am suspicious of "academic" methods that are super thin and made more from oil or medium in glazes, than from paint .Overly diluted paint, particularly if cut with thinner, is more likely to be a problem.

There are people who are really fixated on making paintings that they believe will last forever. Sometimes they make paintings that will last for centuries that never should have been made in the first place. As I am a working professional painter, I try to be sensible, but I am not grinding my own whiting or making rabbit skin glue on a hotplate. I try not to paint too thickly and I often paint on panels which don't loosen and tighten under the paint like a canvas. I think rigid supports are always better if you want to avoid cracking or other problems like being dented or torn , but they get too heavy when larger than about 20 by 24.
-------------------Stape

Ask Stape, about repeating paintings

Here is a question I received via e-mail.I have several more in the hopper that I will answer in coming posts.






Hi Stape,
thanks for all the great blogs you have done. I follow you and learn a lot. Question: when does a painting stop being an original? I have a collector unhappy with me cause he bought a painting of Deathwhistle Lake 3 years ago and has seen others similar (but not exactly) to that in the local gallery. Also, I have posted on my web a duplication of a painting but in a larger size. So if I do a painting in a different size, is that bad also? I have heard that I can go back to the same location and change subject slightly and still be okay. Maybe it is a gray area or am I relying too heavily on my past success?
Regards, Tetanus B. Mandiblesnapper


All paintings in this post are by Gilbert Stuart of George Washington

Dear Tetanus:
That's a delicate question. There are artists who make the same painting over and over. When their name comes up in the conversations of their artist brethren, that counts as a strike against them. Respect of your peers is one of the conditions of success. So there exists a point at which an artist is perceived as having become a mass producer working merely for money. There are a lot of gradations short of that though.

If you have a client who is concerned you probably have a problem and I would take it as a warning. I see no problem with making a larger version of a small painting. You can call the small one "A study for Deathwhistle Lake" and the larger, simply "Deathwhistle Lake". I have had customers ask if I would paint them another version of a painting that they wanted but I have sold. I tell them I can, but I have to make it a little different out of respect for the owner of the first version. They usually have no problem with that, and I make it noticeably different. I also get half up front, please.

I don't think there is a problem with doing a series of paintings of the same subject, but they should all be variations on the theme and different enough that the average Joe can tell them apart at a glance.

I don't think however that it is good to make the same painting more than once. I know that some artists feel that a certain subject is a good "seller" and they want to always have that picture in inventory. But I think in the long run you lose more than you gain with that. You might sell a few extra paintings, although there is no way of knowing if what you might have made instead would have sold as well.

An artist sells integrity, that is your most important product. In the long run people are trusting you to be an original and inventive artist, at least when the money gets meaningful. Production painters doing stacks of small inexpensive paintings probably don't have as much expected of them, and they can crank out widgets and still sell them. But at the level I like to operate I am selling to collectors and they expect to get an original one of a kind, lovingly crafted painting original in concept and execution. They buy my art expecting to receive that, and I want to give it to them. That is important when selling collector quality art. If there is more than one of a painting they feel that what they have bought is reduced in value. Artists are expected to be creative, always making something new and different is more creative than wearing the same path over and over.

There is another reason I think repeating yourself can be a problem. I don't think you will get as much artistic growth making the same image repeatedly. Making new images stretches you as an artist. You have to try harder. When the painting is sold the money will be quickly spent and what you will have to show for it's creation is an increased ability to make paintings. I am much more interested in the increased ability to make paintings than in any one painting, I have made thousands.

I would get bored with the tedium of making the same picture twice, it would seem too much like punching a clock for Mr. Charlie, drudgery. As an ADD role model and human whippet with the attention span of an insect, I need to vary my tasks all the time. That is one of the things that makes painting such a great business for me. I am always working on something different and making projects that have a beginning and an end. I hope I haven't been too harsh, let me know if I have and I will post a picture of a baby animal as penance.
.........................Stape

P.S.
If you are in California and would be interested in a potential workshop there in the early fall, please e-mail me and let me know.

Ask Stape

Dear Stape;

A burning questions I had was regarding “design”. When I attempt to paint a landscape in an unfamiliar place for the first time, I start painting with what I think is a good plan with “soaring” inspiration at the beginning but falls flat midway with no plan B or for that matter much interest in really following thru to completing the painting. What is my problem and how do I fix ?

Signed:

Arduous Normalcy

I am going to load some bullets and begin by trying to diagnose how you got to be in that position in the first place. When that happens to me (it doesn't) it is because I:

• hurriedly set up and started to paint without really scoping out the location. I just set up anywhere because I had come to paint and now it was time to do it.
  
• allowed some joker to pick the location for me and was too nice to say" I am not happy here".
• chose a location with no foreground.
• failing to select what you are there to paint, instead filling the canvas with descriptive detail of everything before you with no particular selectivity or emphasis.
  
• Chose the scene because I thought it would be "easy"
  
• chose a location that was good in a verbal description but not composed of attractive abstract shapes.
• didn't ask my self "what is the reason I am painting here? What is it that appeals to ME about this place? Why is it special?".
• Made a matter of fact, literal description rather than a poetic evocation of the location.
• tried to paint in the style of another artist or make a kind of picture that I thought was commercial, but about which I personally had no feeling or interest.
  
• Didn't design the scene in an intriguing way, so the viewer glanced at the painting rather than being hauled in, beguiled.
• Failed to design interesting shapes that were different from one another and had varied interesting shapes rather merely an accurate but mundane transcription of the scene.

The solution, besides avoiding all of the errors above.........
is to do thumbnail sketches, at least for a while. Do 2" by 2" sketches in a little sketchbook using a pencil. Each one might take two minutes. The first several will probably average, matter of fact descriptions of the view, what you would get if you just plopped your easel down and painted the "usual" thing . But in the subsequent sketches you will get the treatment that you might have used had you done several picture there. Try to do a few sketches emphasizing different aspects of the view. One might emphasize the trees, another the mountains in the background and another just on part of the view. Spending a little time searching for more interesting ways to view the same scene will often pay off when you get a "take" on a scene that is a little more considered and less obvious.

The world is full of average paintings. It doesn't need any more. You need to look for ways to make each one special.

I will return to the Homer history tomorrow or the next day. I felt this question was to good to ignore. Keeep those questions coming. I can serve you all better if I know what it is you want to learn.

Dear Stape, from Samantha

Below is an actual e-mail I have received. I have changed the name to protect the identity of its sender. I never imagined I would get a real Ann Landers sort of question, (cause I'm wicked edgy, just look at the picture!) but I will take a shot at it!

Hi, Stapleton...I know this may not be the type of question you'd like to address, but it's something that deeply concerns me at this point. Please consider responding on your blog. Here it is:

How can an artist cope with the loss of their inspiration? Especially...what do you do when you have lost contact with the one person who deeply moves and inspires you and your work? I have been encouraged to not let that person go...in whatever form that takes...Have you ever lost someone who motivates and pushes you in your art?

I guess I'm asking several things...I have recently been cut off from the only person I have ever loved deeply. I want to continue creating work, but I feel so saddened...I'm at such a loss that I hardly know how to move forward. I want to win his heart back...that may or may not happen, but I know that as times goes by, I still need to be living life and creating. I know it's what I'm meant to do. It's a struggle without him beside me. Art and God have healed my heart before...so I'm hopeful! I'm just wondering your thoughts on the matter....Thank you for your blog; I have enjoyed it to the max!

Samantha

Dear Samantha

I can tell you are hurting. I don't usually do personal advice but I will make an exception. I have been there.

I know also that you can find the world is full of other fine people and that one of them is looking for you. Perhaps you already know them. Train yourself to smile every time your eyes meet those of every man you see. Most of them will be dorks, but you will also smile at the right ones too.

As for the artistic side of the problem, that is easier. You own that. Get up and do it every day. Inspiration is an outgrowth of continual effort and not the other way around. Do your art and the inspiration will follow. Earl Nightingale said "you wouldn't stand in front of a wood stove and tell it, give me heat and then I will put in some wood! You need to load lots of wood in there first".
You can't wait for inspiration, you must go about your work as a discipline. Sometimes you will be inspired. But working will breed ideas that become inspiration. I am always excited when I go to bed at night knowing I can paint the next day. I don't like it when I have an appointment that prevents me from doing that. The more I work the more inspired I get.

.............................Stape