Oil Painting Tip Weekly: Inspiration. Don’t have it? Get it!!!

I guess the king of my relationship with art, the key to it is love. It sounds cheesy, I know. But there are no two ways about it. Art is my life. I cannot breathe without it. When I paint, it is done on one breath, on inspiration that takes all the techniques I know of and carries along with them in a whirlpool of passion: the paint is literally flying everywhere, things are falling around me, and I am just taken by the process like by some magical spell. I may actually levitate during this, I don’t know!. I’ve never looked down before. This is inspiration. A feeling, when an artist forgets about himself, or where he is. Forgets and trusts in himself at this moment – This moment – when it’s not a time to read, or listen to audio, not a time to check the Real Color Wheel for the tenth time, or watch Scrubs, and certainly not a time to think and analyze. That was your homework. You should have done your thinking and preparation by now. Right now is time to spend time with your painting – love it, give it your all, caress it, want to finish it, think about it and not anything else in the Universe.

A very commonplace mistake is to look for something that you think will be easy to paint. It won’t be, even if it seems so. Get that out of your system, right now. For beginner painters, it may be hard to get inspired at first. They are unsure. They are concentrating on the technical aspects, forgetting all about the aesthetics of painting: no matter how simple or complex it is, it has to trigger a strong emotional response – not from your mom, not from your dog, not from the most vigorous art critic, not even from David Letterman — from YOU! So the beginners are painting an apple, a rock, simple things that are “safe”. And then they are surprised because they are failing! Not at painting a beautiful apple, or other still life, whatever. No. They are failing to fall in love with it first. They are bored, trying as hard as they might to get the shape right, the values right, afraid of disappointment. If this is how you are, welcome to Failville. Seriously. This is not what art is all about. Anybody can eventually get the likeness right. Don’t kid yourself, even a child can do it. It’s all about the aesthetics, about what you want to express first, and as for the study, well, you will study for as long as you are an artist. Will your first painting be perfect? Probably not. But if you stop torturing an artist out of yourself and concentrate on the right things – you will be surprised by the results! So get a nice nude for your first painting, get the flames, get me the things that you KNOW you can’t paint , (but you’ve always wanted to!) – and I just want to see Fire in your eyes. Do you love what you see? Great! Now, eat that apple and get to work!

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