painting-a-days
The steps towards being a skilled artist and draftsman often come from the discipline of a regular practice, but recently I have discovered a rather bustling trend towards "painting-a-day", in which artists do one painting or drawing a day, publish it on his/her blog, post it up for bidding on Ebay, then email and bulletin everyone in his/her myspace about how they just posted their drawing - and then get a Gold Star. Just do a Google search, and you'll start to get the idea...
Don't get me wrong, my beef isn't with painting every day, nor is it with sketching or practicing, or even sharing your work with a community. If anything I am one of the biggest advocates of experimentation with different styles and mediums, sketching and painting, doodling, making three-dimensional works, etc. Whatever gets your juices flowing.
Let's differentiate painting every day from a-painting-a-day right here and now, and especially for the sake of my arguments posed. Aside from my annoyance with all the narcissists out there who make it out to be some kind of amazing feat that the world must be alerted to at once, my argument against painting-a-day isn't as venomous as you readers are starting to think....
When one sets out to a painting a day, they have already acquiesed to the fact that they are neither prolific, nor are they disciplined so in order to overcome their insecurities with their past artistic endeavors they put themselves through some sort of self-imposed artist's boot camp.
But it is flawed in that I've rarely encountered any one individual, who after taking on this boot camp, has followed through for the entire year, and more importantly who has gotten any better with their draftsmanship. It is unrealistic to hope that your are going to come out of this endeavor and be better off than you were before you started, and so, it all just comes down to time wasted. It has diluted your chances for actually producing interesting and ambitious projects. You come home from work, reluctantly work for ten or twenty minutes on your daily painting or drawing, which is probably small, and you veg for the rest of the day. And after a hundred days or so you burn out from the practice all together, taking months to recuperate, only to feel defeated and insecure about your art practice all over again.
So my response and rebellion to the painting-a-day trend is to take an approach much like that of Weight Watchers:
and now I leave you with one of my sketches from my website:
Don't get me wrong, my beef isn't with painting every day, nor is it with sketching or practicing, or even sharing your work with a community. If anything I am one of the biggest advocates of experimentation with different styles and mediums, sketching and painting, doodling, making three-dimensional works, etc. Whatever gets your juices flowing.
Let's differentiate painting every day from a-painting-a-day right here and now, and especially for the sake of my arguments posed. Aside from my annoyance with all the narcissists out there who make it out to be some kind of amazing feat that the world must be alerted to at once, my argument against painting-a-day isn't as venomous as you readers are starting to think....
When one sets out to a painting a day, they have already acquiesed to the fact that they are neither prolific, nor are they disciplined so in order to overcome their insecurities with their past artistic endeavors they put themselves through some sort of self-imposed artist's boot camp.
But it is flawed in that I've rarely encountered any one individual, who after taking on this boot camp, has followed through for the entire year, and more importantly who has gotten any better with their draftsmanship. It is unrealistic to hope that your are going to come out of this endeavor and be better off than you were before you started, and so, it all just comes down to time wasted. It has diluted your chances for actually producing interesting and ambitious projects. You come home from work, reluctantly work for ten or twenty minutes on your daily painting or drawing, which is probably small, and you veg for the rest of the day. And after a hundred days or so you burn out from the practice all together, taking months to recuperate, only to feel defeated and insecure about your art practice all over again.
So my response and rebellion to the painting-a-day trend is to take an approach much like that of Weight Watchers:
1. Remember that there are no short cuts to success, no magical marathons, no rough and tough boot camps to "shape me up", just genuine effort and interest.
2. Be happy in my own skin. I know my inclinations and I trust that I will follow them.
3. Incorporate artistic practice into my whole life, and realize that without it, I could not be fullfilled as a person.
4. As I realized that I must exercise regularly for the REST OF MY LIFE, I realize that I must make art for the rest of my life if I want to be happy. And when I think about it in that long term way, I let go of any panic or need to accomplish everything in one year.
5. Customize my routine. I personally, do better with a few long days in the studio every week, as opposed to some little time every day, so that's what I do. I will fit figure drawing sessions in when I can, and I won't punish myself for not making it.
and lastly
6. If I paint every day, that's what I do, but I don't have to label it as painting-a-day.
and now I leave you with one of my sketches from my website:
Labels: art practice, painting a day
posted by narangkar at
1:06 PM
1 Comments:
Just be about it right?
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