Artistic Process

Shepaints!
Shepaints,


YOU! go first!

<wink~wink>


Great topic for discussion.. Thank you Shepaints!

fatima10

Well I here tell so!
My friend that writes heaps of music - does his best when he's under emotional stresses.

art
Yes, Shepaints. Thanks for a very interesting topic. I hope people take advantage of it. I for one like to think that I paint in stages. My beginnings are almost always done very impulsively. This is the way to overcome the paralysis of the blank canvas. I can do this now because I know that--in most cases--no matter how the painting starts out it will end up being something VERY DIFFERENT. Very often it will end up up-side-down. I can do this easily with acrylics, which permit me to paint over and over again. It's SO forgiving and flexible. And with retarding agents I can even take my time in mixing colors and making textures on the canvas, almost as with oils.

1 I start with an idea and immediately write it in my idea book. then I periodically sort through to decide on how to follow

2 i choose and plan. many paintings involve projections, others only vague sketches (so far Im as focused as a jockey)

3 I get my materials soak the paper, get some beverages and stock m y little frig


4 Somewhere after this I lose consciousness cause I can be painting all afternoon and lose total sense of time or space.

5 I try to finish in one sitting , when i dont, sometimes the painting may sit for weeks till i can build up an arts titer again for that subject

Picasso suggests that he offers himself up almost
like a spiritualist medium..."I see for others. That is to say
I put down on the canvas the sudden visions which force themselves on me. I don't know beforehand what I shall put on
the canvas, even less can I decide what colours to use." (p. 136..
same book).

This is the complete antithesis of the way I work. I research, I
take photos, I think about composition. I pre-plan, by the time I start to paint, it is usually upon some sort of cartoon drawing which I have transferred to the canvas.

Transcendence for me, takes place in the manner Farmer suggests,
when one can get so caught up in the drawing or painting that
time disappears. But it is not always the case, sometimes its just a hard slog to get something finished.

In looking at Picasso's work, I find it hard to believe that he did
not plan anything.

remember she paints, picasso and Frank LLoyd Wright were two of the biggest self promoting BS artists besides being talented.

All of the great jazz improvisors were/are asked how they do it. They almost always seem to respond that they don't know -- but that's not true. They might have the occasional moment of inspiration, but most of the time I'm positive they know how they did it. They may not be able to verbalize it, or they may want to retain a sense of mystery around their work, or they may be bored discussing technical details with somebody who's not going to understand them anyway, or they may feel it is a private matter -- or they may be resistant on letting things out to all of the stylistic imitators who really don't have "it"...

Anyway, what about that hundred and something variations on the painting of that family (God, I'm ignorant!) -- that seems like a very, very deliberate action on Picasso's part, to me.


But I don't have "it," either, so p'rhaps I just don't know...

art
I am willing to take Picasso's word about spontaneity with respect to his more abstract work, mainly because this is how all my abstract efforts start out. His representational works, however, had to involve some planning, just as it does with the representational works of Farmerman and Shepaints. To say that one does not know how he or she does their work is tricky. When it comes to jazz--which is what much abstract painting is like--one knows and doesn't know what he is doing. Much of the "knowledge" and the "awareness" is unconscious or semi-conscious. This is why, for me, I'm almost always surprised at the way my abstracts turn out. Yet I "was there" every step of the way in their development. But in another sense I "wasn't there"--just as Farmerman blanks out. Is that common when the right side of the brain is dominant?

When I start I have an image in mind and put it down but often it changes direction and takes me somewhere else and I end up with something totally different.

Sometimes I am not even aware of the passage of time while painting until my back hurts and I realize I have not moved for some time and need to stretch a bit.

Color is my thing and like JLN I use acrlyics and often paint one thing over and over until the canvas weighs a ton.

I would suggest taking everything Picasso had to say with a very large grain of salt!
While I am not a large "P" fan, obviously much of his work is of great importance, and if one doesn't find Guernica fascinating, then I would suggest (whith ugly elitist overtones) looking for "portraits on black velvet", or perhaps watching more Jerry Springer. However Picasso was nothing if not a marketer, and much of his commentary was little more than that.

I have a very simple definition of "art" which has served me well over the years; art is "emotional communication". This does not preclude intellectual imput into a work of art, by any means, but when the smoke clears, and the work stands finished, it must communicate on the visceral level without the need to offer specific ideas or ideals to earn its keep.

This is, to me why art is eternal; one can look at cave paintings, and get a sense of the emotional space occupied by the artist as easily as one can today experience the most recent virtual offerings which relate to the society in which we are imbedded.

The method of approach is insignificant; it is the level upon which the message is realised which renders it a valid artistic statement, or not.

...I like your definition Bogowo....and am in complete agreement.....If it doesn't move you in a significant way, check its pulse, it doesn't sound like art to me.

I think Picasso's statement could be a half-truth. I have a
friend who calls me sometimes from work. While we chat she is SIMULTANEOUSLY typing information into her computer ....After working as a secretary for a couple of decades, her sense-memory is such that she can type at awesome speed without being entirely conscious of each letter or word.

I assume this is the same sort of skill which a jazz musician uses to improvise as Patiodog suggests. Perhaps an artist as prolific,
experienced and so entirely consumed by work as Picasso, mastered the language of art to such a degree that his later works WERE improvisations.

I remember hearing Michael Jackson being interviewed about dancing. He said he just had to FEEL the music. Once he consciously thought about the moves, his dancing was ruined.....

art
Shepaints, I gather you've finished moving. Good. I like your reference to Michael Jackson's dancing as "muscle memory." As you know I play the violin in chamber groups and community orchestras. All musicians, I believe, know that, like typists, they must learn their music at the level of "muscle memory." This is particularly true with fast moving passages wherein if you stop to think of a note or a finger, you experience a muscle burp that can throw you off. I recall the centipede who was asked which foot he moved first and thereafter suffered paralysis. Artists of all sorts perform with their entire selves, their muscles as well as their minds, and regarding their minds, with both their right and left brains AND their conscious and unconscious minds.

Shep......(I tend to abreviate; no farmyard slur intended) and jlN;

While I concur with the total body immersion in performance concept, I would suggest that in the case of the typist friend, her intellect is controling the task, while her emotional responses apply to the phone; and with the musical performance, the intellect is overseeing the memory/motor control of the muscles, while the emotions fine tune the emphasis of the output. A concerted (pun intended) unision that takes years to integrate.

pICASSO WAS AN EXCELLENT DRAUGHTSMAN AND AS HE EVOLVED IN STYLE, HE REVIEWED AND INCLUDED HIS PAST THEMES IN HIS NEWER WORKS. HE WAS ESPECIALLY FOND OF MORPHING HIS WOMEN INTO MORE AND MORE GROTESQUE BEINGWS AS THEIR RELATIONSHIPS SOURED. hE DEVELOPED A FAIRLY STANDARD PALLETTE OF SHAPES WHICH HE CONTINUOUSLY USED, UNTIL, BY THE TIME OF HIS DEATH, I DONT SEE ANYTHING REALLY NEW. SO MAYBE HE COULD MAKE A COMMENTARY WORK WITH COLOR SCHEMA(B-1) AND FIGURES OUT OF ANOTHER COLLECTION.
JUST AS SOMEONE SAID
"GENIUS DOESNT EXPOSE ITSELF IN EVERY WORK"-I THINK THAT WAS SAID ABOUT MOZART.

My artistic process doesn't involve a change of consciousness since I am always this way. I'm only half kidding. My artistic process is one of call and response, and could be described as reactive...and that is a bit true of my day to day self.

I paint landscape paintings, at least lately, having painted in a loose figurative, and sometimes abstract, way for years before. I use my eyes to find subjects, which is to say I take photos of a place I am drawn to, or snip photos from magazines, and save them possibly for years. When I forsee time to paint I go through what attracts me lately and pin a few of the images up on my wall. I cover the canvas with a base coat, usually, although not always. I work wet and put streaks or masses of color in what might be their expected places if I would follow some portion of the image I look at. At this point I paint with my shoulder, elbow, wrist...loose, big. I will start to narrow it down to an at least a breakdown of horizon/sky, and from then on I pay less and less attention to the starter image and more to what is on the canvas, responding more to what I like on it than the starter. I make space, rearrange space, develop a mood. So my planning, such as it is, is elementary, although as we have discussed before in other questions, I am in the thrall of design and play as I continue.

I do often stop before finishing in one session as I usually paint fairly big, and I have an old habit of killing a painting with too much - so for years I try to stop and back off before painting-death. As I make decisions whether to go on and if so how, I move toward smaller thicker paint strokes, although my paint is still never all that thick on the canvas...

I do mix the colors occasionally right on the canvas or in small dollops on my tinfoiled tray - it has been years since I have mixed a batch of one color for much canvas territory. I like colors showing under colors and use that on purpose.

I am in a continuous battle with medium drying time and canvas absorption since I have gone from cheapo canvases to well made ones by a local supplier
at the same time I switched from using just turps subtitute to special mediums; am going through a learning curve.

aart
"...in the thrall of design and play..." THAT'S IT! That's what I've been trying to say for a long time now. I must remember it for later use.

Yeh, well, that is me and me is it, design and play, I understand them well. Not so good in explication of art history etc. but interested, of course, as to where all those people got into it.....
osso

Excuse me, JLN, I didn't mean to be quite so dry about design and play being me. As much as I would like to take credit, it is the way of any design process for a given project....fooling around on paper, or now on computer for those that do. One can also wave one's arm in the field, but it it is apt to be misinterpreted sans drawings.

There are two key funs for a designer, by whatever name and signifying degrees, that is - concept and fulfillment. Fulfillment occurs usually quite late and usually quite modified. So the bloom is on the rose, the beginning. This is fairly true of painting too.

It has been my experience that the "art" of design is that of the discarding of ideas; it is knowing when a direction has reached its terminal point, and time has come to move on........