Speaking of Art Blog

I was recently reading a discussion on Facebook between some artists.  The subject sort of meandered, but at one point a few artists claimed that using a drawing grid to accurately create one’s initial drawing before adding color on top was somehow less desirable and more amateurish than free handing the initial drawing.  A few other artists pushed back and stated that using a grid is simply using a tool, a means to an end that helps an artist get to the meat of the painting faster.  I agree.

What I suddenly realized while I read the discussion is that there is a different point to consider, a much larger perspective that some artists are missing altogether: WHEN DOES MY PAINTING ACTUALLY BEGIN?  One might say it begins when I start making marks on my chosen surface, but is that really when my creative process begins?  I would contend that my painting starts way way before then.  Let me explain.

I have been creating a series of paintings in the past couple of years that include one or two hands in the composition.  Call me crazy, but I love rendering hands.  One artist friend told me recently that I have become an “art star maniac” with my gorgeous hand renderings.  LOL, I’ll take that as a compliment. If you would like to read my recent blog post about my hand series, follow this link to “Rendering Hands”: https://www.maryannpals.com/blog/179610/rendering-hands   

Let’s take a closer look at my most recent hand painting, The Meeting.  Did this painting begin when I drew the initial lines on my pastel paper?  Oh no.  I drew a thumbnail value sketch before I started drawing on my paper.  It helped me to see how the simple value contrasts would add drama to the scene.  So, was my value sketch the beginning of my painting?  Nope. 

Before I did the value sketch I sat for hours in front of my computer and fooled around with my image that I took at the Butterfly Pavilion in Denver while I was on vacation this fall.  I cropped and tweaked the image until I was satisfied with the composition’s overall look and the placement of each shape.  On my computer, I also tweaked the colors and I made the background very different, much more interesting than the boring concrete path that the original photo showed.  Some artists can pick up a reference photo and visualize all the changes they plan to make.  I cannot do that.  Yes, I do make a LOT of changes while I work from a reference photo, but I need to see them in place first before I can proceed.  So, did my painting start when I sat in front of my computer and played with the reference photo using Photoshop?  No.

How about when I snapped the picture?  Surely that was when my painting started.  It could be argued that that is when I started my painting.  In fact, there are times when I snap a photo and stare at the image and I know in my bones that it’s the perfect reference photo to use as is for a future painting.  That’s why I feel it’s important that I take my own reference photos when at all possible.  Otherwise, the resulting artwork isn’t really authentically completely mine.  But when I stared at my reference photo for this painting, something stored in an old file cabinet of my brain made me remember a few things that hark back to years before that point.  One of those recollections was of when I saw images of a series of paintings by one of my art mentors, Ron Monsma.  Years ago, Ron created some still life paintings that incorporate a background of puffy white clouds against a beautiful blue sky.  The clouds and sky make each scene look magical.  I remembered thinking that I’d like to try that sometime.  So, when I looked at my reference photo on my computer for The Meeting and was playing with photographic elements of its composition, I realized that this might be the perfect opportunity to add a Ron Monsma sky back there.  So, I guess it could be argued that the sky part of my painting began when I studied Ron’s still life paintings years ago.  If you want to read my backstory blog post about this painting’s title, click here:  https://www.maryannpals.com/blog/190071/the-meeting 

But then I remembered something that goes back even further in time.  My parents took care of foster children as I grew up, almost all newborn babies, 28 of them to be exact.  We would care for each baby for just a few months until a court date came and the new adoptive family would bring their adopted baby home.  Babies with every color of skin came and went from our house.  And since I have always been an artist at heart, I remember studying each baby’s skin color, trying to determine how one baby’s coloring was different from the next.  I also remember studying the shape and sizes of their fingers and the width of their little palms.  BTW, a sleeping newborn baby is a great model.  When they are asleep there is nothing that wakes them up or makes them move.  I could hold their little hand in mine and study it for a very long time, uninterrupted.

Sweet Dreams, charcoal and pastel

So, is that when my painting, The Meeting, began, when I was 10 years old and studying a baby’s hand?  Yes, I think it was.  And that is why, when artists want to discuss whether using a drawing grid or Photoshop or a reference photo at all is legitimate or not, my contention is:  That’s minutia; it’s just a means to an end, a tool.  That’s not where the painting begins anyway.  The painting begins in the artist’s mind, in their careful studied plein air observations of reality, like sometimes when they are only 10 years old while they hold a tiny baby’s hand in theirs and try to name all the colors in the skin that they see.  That’s when the real creative process for a new piece of artwork starts.

In closing I want to repeat what one instructor once told me years ago: “With art, it doesn’t matter what methods or tools you use to get to the end of your creation.  All that matters is what you have produced when you cross the finish line.  How you get there is not important.” Also, Goya once said: “There are no rules in painting.”