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Letters to Students #9
---- As someone who has taught and mentored for many years, I'm well acquainted with how counter-productive it can be to let the knowledge in your head get too far ahead of your eyes and hands. Also, my own experience in trying to grow as an artist has taught me that. Having the knowledge of what you should be doing and then still not being able to accomplish it can be an exercise in frustration and that is being quite understated about it.
------ I consider an important part of my job as a teacher to explain what it is I'm thinking and focusing on as I'm painting. It's important to outline the reasoning and I do this extra step because I don’t believe anyone should be following along simply because I said so. As much as any of us might admire the work of someone past or present, the ultimate adventure for each of us is to learn to paint in our own voice. Once you find a teacher you can have confidence in, it’s important to go ahead and soak up every bit of information they can give, but if you also grasp the principles behind the instruction, that is what will enable you to ultimately reach the goal of teaching yourself. No one person or persons can give you everything you will ever need. In the best sense , this journey of learning to paint is a very personal one, and more than anything else, the results will be determined by what you are willing to put into it.
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There are quite a lot of benefits to the mentoring approach to teaching. While it's true there is less direct contact with the instructor, I believe in terms of learning this can be a valuable thing because it takes the students in a direction that ideally they should be working toward anyway, which is learning to evaluate their own work. I'm often dismayed in my workshops when I stop by somebody's painting and offer suggestions--only to realize that they are treating what I say as a laundry list of things to do to 'fix' just that one painting. No trying to understand the principles or learning how to apply the knowledge to future paintings or avoid mistakes in the first place. To someone like me, that is missing the whole point!
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It is so very easy to spot problems in other people's paintings but so difficult to see them in our own work. Nonetheless, if an artist ever hopes to paint with their own voice that is exactly what needs to happen.
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Much of it is repetition and trial and error --- most students make the same errors over and over before it finally sinks in.
The reason I encourage people to do simple studies is that in my own work, to this day, that is still where I concentrate my energy --improving the first few notes of paint. All of the finish work and all of the decisions about the painting from there on out are totally dependent on the exact same seeing skills that are essential to capturing form and light and creating a strong center of interest --the things I'm going for with the first notes I put down.
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As for your painting, you are hitting the right basic notes ---ones very similar to what I might put down first --- but the difference is that I'm transitioning those transparent and opaque areas more than you are. You're keeping them very separate and that's OK but now you need to start bringing them together. The red glass looks pretty good but the pear shadows don't look believable compared to the light side. In order to accomplish that I would probably add one of the cadmium yellows but avoid adding any white. If those shadow areas don't get built up too much that mixture will still be relatively transparent compared to the light side. Don't despair. It's really pretty common to go to extremes at first and then pull back from that.
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I so wish all of my students could be as pleasant and industrious as you are! You are so right on the pears and mastering those lessons on something simple will pay off when you go on to more complicated subjects. Focus on getting the exact relationship you see between the light and shadow -- taking into consideration the limitations of our paints and that we have to be careful to use our precious value range in the areas where it will pay off the most.
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Even though you felt it was overworked , I do like the changes you made on the background of the eggplant painting. Other improvements too--the ends of the leeks look better. It's not easy getting everything correct and also have it look as though it was "blown on in one puff". That's why we all admire the work of artists who do it well but often a lot of work goes into that effortlessness. Keep focusing on values. One area I spotted when I looked back over these was the yellow squash at the back of the bowl. In the reference it looks just a bit darker in value. Noting a subtle difference like that can make a big difference in terms of depth.
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With images of figures or animals in a painting, what I try to do is avoid arranging them so their gaze seems to be heading out of the picture plane with nothing to bring it back in. Usually if a face isn't right on the edge looking away from the center of interest it's something I can work with but it can depend on how prominent the face is, etc. It's easier to arrange if they're facing toward the center, but like all rules, I've seen it done where I thought it worked OK.
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