rediscovering painting
Archive for July, 2010
Digital grunge
0573 days
Digital Grunge, 640px x 400px, digital image created with The Gimp
I fancy myself a Linux aficionado. I also like The Gimp. Lemme set something straight – The Gimp is like Photoshop but doesn’t seek to replace Photoshop.
Lemme set something else straight: I used The Gimp in a graphic design class that required Photoshop. And I got an A in the class and the instructor (and everyone else) was none the wiser.
Now that I got that out of the way, I have to say that about 9 months ago I discovered that The Gimp had brushes, and that was the way to do the best stuff. Forget importing images and tweaking them – brushes have it down pat! So I messed around and my first image was a halloween drink menu for my wife (she’s a private bartender when she’s not in nursing school).
I got a new laptop at work so I had to reinstall my apps… along with The Gimp, obviously… so here’s what I did today after grabbing all the new brushes I wanted.
I’ve been eager to paint again but my time has been consumed with my main job at a Fortune 100 company, with my side job working for my mother-in-law, with my side job as the CIO of a startup with my Navy buddies, and, finally, as a painter. I’m pretty fucking busy, to say the least, but what I really want to do out of all this is to make art. So today was slow at work… and I used the time to do this. Not a total waste of time, mind you, because I use The Gimp all the time to whip out a quick graphic (logo, banner, icon, etc.) at work, so I do need The Gimp up and running well so I’m ready when called on, but the image started as I was playing with my new brushes and sorta blossomed from there. You artist types know what I’m talkin’ about. Dig.
Find your style, make a living off Etsy?
0581 days
Etsy. I just opened a store. But I used a bad name that I thought was just a user name, not my fucking STORE NAME. For chrissakes. No matter. I’ll fix it.
But I learned something. If your art sucks, you probably won’t sell it, even on Etsy. You fucking retard.
First, make art.
Second, make GOOD art.
Third, steal a carcass for me. Mmm.
But the point I want to make is that I found several artists by searching the Etsy profiles of artists making a full-time living and/or have quit their day jobs. It’s inspiring. It makes me want to slam my face into the wall.
So I went to the galleries … the SOLD galleries of these artists to see what they were selling. Guess what? LOTS of crafts and jewelry. Painters were few, and of those, most were just coloring in drawings with acrylics. A few were doing oil paints. Many were making wonderful niches, like the lady that will make a woodcut-looking portrait from your photograph.
A couple of key things here…
- Successful folks on Etsy tend to produce a LOT by making smaller, cheaper derivatives from their larger pieces – prints, art cards, even their images inside pendants, on teacups, plates, and a massive array of shit
- Make small shit
- If you can’t do that, make your big shit into small shit
- ?
- profits!
- Successful folks on Etsy tend to have a strong visual style. Make cartoonish, doe-eyed dollish girly paintings? Stick to it. People eat that shit up. Doesn’t have to be earth-shattering, new, trendy, or anything like that – just have one! I know I struggle with this myself.
- Okay, well, if your style is bad, you won’t sell anything
- Come up with an idea that YOU like and run with it
- Successful folks on Etsy tend to not just put up a store and expect people to flock to it. You have to utilize your other venues: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, your personal blog, giveaways (postcards), mailing lists, newsletters, etc. It’s a fucking business, in case you didn’t know
What Lies Beneath
0587 days
What Lies Beneath, 4″ x 6″, oil on canvasboard, $100
It’s been 6 months since I painted, and I didn’t even finish that painting. I got tired of it. I didn’t like the way I couldn’t post about it. I got busy. I got fat. I got tired. I got dull. I got a life. I didn’t get a life.
Secretly, though, I have to get beyond myself. I don’t really like showing my work. It’s scary. It’s like opening up my brain and REALLY letting people peek inside, maybe test the fit on the spark plug boot and blow some dirt off the manifold. I don’t like it. But, as I’ve said, if I want to do this – and I do – then I have to shut my fucking trap and get over myself.
Don’t we all?
So I’ve been seething, I’ve been Jones’in’, I’ve been building up this pressure until I couldn’t take it any more. This morning, I had a tube of Venetian Red on my desk. A really nice tube from Old Holland. I got it for myself around the December holidays (xmas, if you like – I don’t). It’s been there, doing its thing… which is nothing, really, except the symbolism. We’re into symbols, aren’t we, silly humans. A symbol, a metaphor, a reddish brown bitch taunting me and mocking me.
I couldn’t take it. I had to do it. I’ve had no less than 4 paintings completed in my head in the past few weeks. That’s how I know it’s time. The paintings never really come out onto canvas how they are in my head, but that process itself is part of the magic of painting, the magic of poring through the vast recesses, the nether regions of the brain and unsetting the carabiners.
“What to call this one?” I thought. When I think that, I always remind myself that “red on white” is actually mentally retarded. So is “study with Venetian Red.” Who the fuck CARES about that shit? Nobody. It draws about as much passing interest as my dog shitting on the lawn. So reach down and really name your painting. Really give us some oomph, some gut-punching, soul-tearing name that’s likely to give you at least a whimper of a thought to everyone that’s evolved past Homo habilis.
I briefly considered a longer name, such as “bursting through from the depths” or “a torrent of pent-up desire breaches the surface” or something along that vein. But TOO wordy is also bad. You lose people after only a few words. People can’t even wait to get out of their cars before they’re fucking texting each other, for chrissakes. So I let the former ideas steep whilst I went out back and photographed the painting. True to form, that slush between the ears came up with “What Lies Beneath,” a more apt title hinting at the inner struggle of a calm countenance, a struggle that’s been raging beneath and just now burst to the surface. And that’s pretty close to how it is to go 6 months without painting for me.
This painting wasn’t a choice, it was a bursting through, a necessity, a respite, a power grab.