The other day I was told that I was blessed with God given talent. Sorry to disagree, but in my case and it was all about hard work. In fact, there are very few successful artists that haven't worked very hard at learning how to draw and paint the hard way....by practice, then more practice, and even more practice.
Take the painting below. I was middle aged, desperate to become an artist, and was starting out with abysmal drawing and painting skills. I thought to return to art school to learn how to paint and draw. Huge mistake. Art schools do not teach, they simply encourage by assigning problems. I should have known, I'd attended art school years before when still a teen. So, I left art school once again, and began to teach myself, not how to draw and paint, but to learn how to see. Seeing, interpreting what you see into shapes and lines that make sense is step one on the road to becoming an artist. I stress "becoming" because one never actually succeeds in becoming an artist. It's an ongoing, never ending process. It's not enough to fudge over what you see with shape and shadow, one must know, have an intimate knowledge of what you're attempting to portray.
The painting below is a portrait of a birch tree that has seen better times. This painting evolved over a series of sittings. To teach myself how to draw and paint birch trees I trundled my equipment into the forest located near our home, and endured sitting amongst biting flies and mosquitoes, drew, then painted scrubbing out mistakes, until I was satisfied that the depiction was an accurate portrait of birch tree. In the process I learned how to draw and paint birch trees. I also learned a great deal about painting with watercolour.
Learning to see and interpret what you see into lines and shapes involved years of practice. Some attempt to shortcut the learning process with photographs, which negates the concept of art entirely. Art is all about personal interpretation. Canada's iconic Group of Seven Painters' sketches are a good examples of not only the learning process, but personal interpretations of the Canadian landscape. Sometimes it's impossible to make a sketch on site, in which case a photograph may be necessary to capture a moment of inspiration. However, I do believe that the photograph should not be copied, and should be used to simply rekindle the inspiration back in the studio.
Art is all about hard work. There's no way around it. Mistakes are part of the learning process. We learn from our mistakes....and motor on.
Here are a few of my early landscape sketches......
The sketches above but a few of the hundreds that I've made over the years. They don't represent the true progression of my drawing skills, as believe it or not, I've actually become quite good at rendering landscape. If you've just landed on this site while doing a random search you may wish to view some additional postings. There's quite a bit of my wildlife pieces included as well. Should you be interested in reviewing some of my books, for which I should mention I receive no financial considerations, search Blurb.ca and then search books by Ernest Andrew Somers......
