Falling in Love

Richard Schmid

   When you fall in love you don't just 'fall in love' and that is it. It is a growing process and the more you love the more you are able to love. That is just like painting with me. After spending the last few weeks really immersing myself in learning about art and watching some long demonstration videos from amazing artists like Morgan Weistling and Jeff Watts, I'm all caught up in this affair, which is going to be one which will hang on to me for the rest of my life I'm afraid...

   I've been learning so much and trying to put it into practice in my own paintings, which I'll share photos of in my newsletter next week. Sometimes it works and I'm on top of the world thinking I've finally getting it! And then a couple of hours of painting later I realize that this painting thing really is an impossible mystery and the great artists are just some extraordinary people with gifts that only they are born with. My love affair is elusive; hopeful and hopeless by turns, but when you are in love you never give up and everything is possible. I'll keep on going and one day perhaps I will be able to paint like some of the worlds greatest painters. Here are some of their works that inspire me and lead me on.

Susan Lyon

Mary Qian

john singer sargent

Matt Smith 

Scott Burdick 

Edward Harrison Compton

Tibor Nagy

Painting by Jeremy Lipking

Richard Schmid

Using a Brush Pen

Sometimes I get inspired from somewhere and suddenly try something different. This time it was pen and ink drawings copied from famous illustrations. I discovered the work of Howard Pyle, one of the best illustrators from the Golden Age of Illustration. 

All of these where sketched with a brush pen. That is a paintbrush which has ink inside. I suddenly discovered how fun this pen is to use. I bought it a year ago online and when it came I used it to sketch a couple of times but they didn't turn out well so I put the pen aside and didn't keep experimenting with it, until now. 

Here is a video[link] of someone using a similar brush pen, the texture of my drawings looks slightly different because the texture of the paper I used is quite rough. I"m looking forward to trying it out on a smooth paper on which I suspect it will perform even better.

I drew all of these freehand, not using any pencil before I put ink on paper. It's a great challenge because there is no going back on any mark you make.

Taking Risks...learning to...

   I finished, pretty much, my still life painting today. My rose had died so I picked a new one, ever so slightly different but it served the purpose. I will add a photo as soon as I have finished and signed it.

   I think I enjoy beginning a painting much more than finishing one. At the beginning I have a blank canvass and many ideas and possibilities in my head. I can paint anything, there is potential in it. But after I have begun I feel as if the further I go on it the more I am limiting myself, I feel as if I am committing myself to every brush stroke I lay down. Then I realized today that that is only because I'm not taking risks, or big changes that I feel that way. I'm scared to improve something because it's already passable and I'm afraid of ruining the little good I have. An artist I admire said, in words to this effect, that he would rather ruin a passable painting by trying something that might improve it than staying with a mediocre painting. That was inspiring to me and so with this last painting I did make a dramatic change that I wouldn't have done formerly. I would probably tried to keep going with the composition that I didn't like while all the time thinking about a painting I would do next and differently. But I changed it and got rid of one of my favorite parts entirely, and now I like the whole painting.

   So I'm learning to take risks and not be afraid (or too lazy) to change something if I think that it could be better. I try to believe that if I can see something that could be better, then I can make it better. And, this way, I will probably learn to like to come back to a half finished painting just as much as I like to come at a new canvass, because when the story is not yet over anything can happen!!