I am a messy painter. I use way too much paint when I start to fill the canvas, and later I put layers and layers on the original paint in an attempt to get my desired effect.
![IMG_9989[1]](https://www.pubwages.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/IMG_99891.jpg)
In the painting above, I started out with a black background, and then built on that. Because the black paint was so thick and splotchy, it took several layers on the face to make the black not show through. I used the fact that that anything left unpainted would remain black as a way to indicate shadow. Even lightly applied paint tended to allow the black to bleed through. You can see that clearly in the body of the wide collar.
Now some modern painters might just stop there and consider their work done: a kind of abstract of a girl in a choir robe. But I wanted my painting to be a little more detailed than that.
![IMG_9993[1]](https://www.pubwages.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/IMG_99931.jpg)
It takes more than one layer to arrive at the desired base skin tone. Notice that the redder hues are bleeding through a little into the whiter upper layer.
![IMG_9996[1]](https://www.pubwages.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/IMG_99961.jpg)
Gingerly, I can then dig out the facial features by running a paintbrush through the paint. Sometimes it feels as if there is a person trapped in the paint on the canvas, just trying to come out. Painting like this is a little like sculpting.
![IMG_9998[1]](https://www.pubwages.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/IMG_99981.jpg)
If you look too closely you can see all the imperfections of the artistic effort, the thick splotches of paint and the tell-tale signs of how it is done. But paintings arre meant to be looked at from a distance. I back away from my paintings in progress many times, trying to see what they look like as whole, when the details are blurred.
![IMG_9999[1]](https://www.pubwages.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/IMG_99991.jpg)
A person seems to peek out at me from the drawing, familiar but different.
![IMG_0005[1]](https://www.pubwages.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/IMG_00051.jpg)
She even has eyes! What are her eyes saying?
![IMG_0008[1]](https://www.pubwages.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/IMG_00081-1024x576.jpg)
To me, the fact the paint is so messy creates an illusion of reality, like a found object, where the gestalt is discovered rather than made.
![IMG_0009[1]](https://www.pubwages.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/IMG_00091-1024x576.jpg)
But the downside to this method of painting is that like all found objects, the image does not look the same from different angles and distances. From up close it looks very splotchy, and one almost feels the need to cover up the blemishes with an extra coat of paint.
Should I try to smooth out the paint? Or will the disappearance of the blotches ruin the effect of light and dark and depth that we currently have in this sculpted painting?
I think you are pretty neat compared to many painters. Also, I have seen people selling paintings that are essential just a black background and three little paint stripes on it. Wayne Tulley posted something the other day about a man who had drawn a beautiful cheetah with no sales, but how some artist in a gallery in New York was selling a canvas for a million dollars, and it had three stripes on it. I prefer your kind of art over what is sells as “high end art”. Your painting is a lot less messy than some people.
Thanks, Julia. There is something especially odd about this particular painting, as the white color that I mixed in to make the flesh tone seems to fade with time, and then all the reds come through a little too loudly. I think maybe the paint was meant as a high gloss finish that becomes transparent with time, and that is the reason for this strange effect. I will have to do most of the face over again, due to this problem. It’s too bad, really, because I like the intermediate effects that the fading left. It’s a good thing I got photos of it while the white had not completely faded. I am going to try to get the same effect with permanent white paint.
I saw the post that Wayne Tulley made, and I agreed with him and with you that the black and white detailed sketch of the cheetah was much better than the colored stripes of the painting. But it was interesting to read Joshua G.’s dissenting comment — about how we do not appreciate the design effort that went into those stripes.
I am trying to keep an open mind and try to see what Josh was talking about. I can see that sometimes designers, as opposed to artists, use specialized skills to create wall decorations that go with a certain style of architecture. This might have some value to interior decorators, but is a completely different issue from creating meaningful art, I think.
I did not read what John G said, but I am going to dissent with him based on something a graduate art student once told me. I took an introductory art history class, and since the lecture hall was so large, they used to like to break us up with graduate students who did a weekly discussion. For most of the undergrad courses the graduate student would grade our papers and tests as well, and discuss the weekly lectures with us. I really appreciated something she told us once. She was also interning at the Getty, and told us to trust our own judgement when it came to art. She pointed out as an undergrad that she used to think once she had more training she would appreciate certain pieces of art more, but that she learned over time that we are entitled to our visceral reaction to art. So I am not saying that someone cannot enjoy the striped art, or that it would not make a nice design piece, but it is also okay to say that it is beautiful and more profound than a composition that took time and talent. There are some artists who talk about how they were trained to know what good art is, and that is fine if they believe this to be true, but on the same token I see people denigrating what they consider to be folk art. It was this mindset that actually kept me from being a double major in history and art because my high school art teacher had actually encouraged me to do so. However, in college the two art teachers I had were not very inspirational, and I realized over time my high school art teacher actually did more in the arts then they did. She actually had art pieces in exhibits, and one art professor who taught an introductory course on art talked about how his teaching credential was mailed to him, and he did not do much art wise. He also threatened to once pawn my watch when I accidentally left it behind in class one day, and I said oh you are joking, and he said no. I know there are a lot of talented people who pursue higher degrees in art, but my experiences with college art professors made me realize that you can be a talented person without purusing academic career in this. No pun intended, but art is certainly not rocket science. I am more inspired by regular people who keep at posting art over those who just talk about their expertise.
I agree with you, especially when it comes to academics and art. Similar experiences I had in college literature classes convinced me that I did not want to be an “English professor”, because I would much rather write my own novels. But then again, I had bad examples of linguistics profs in my undergrad years, too, who only knew one language, and thought things were language universals when they were just common in one language family. The academic world is often not well represented in undergrad classes.
I am glad you had good experiences with the art grad student who was teaching your section of the class. The art professor who wanted to pawn your watch sounds a little insane.
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