How Was It For You

I often wonder if other artists go through the same processes and emotions as I do when I paint. Before I start a painting, I have to want to paint. Sometimes the urge to paint can come a couple of days after I finish the last one. Sometimes it can be a couple of weeks. Once I've got the urge I need to get on with the painting. If I am prevented from doing so by other commitments, then I feel like I'm going to explode. I start by sketching in as much detail as I feel I need, which can vary greatly. Some of the sketching might even be left visible to be part of the painting. The next step is to put in masking fluid as required. After that the painting can begin. Depending on the subject and the amount of sketching involved, the painting might not look good from the start. I might start to worry that I've done something wrong. The better they look as I'm painting, the easier it is to paint. When I think I'm finished, I hang the painting up in my kitchen (that's where I paint). I will scrutinize it, looking for errors. There's usually something I've missed or masking fluid I haven't removed. Usually I will be pleased with my work, but one or two, I've not liked because I felt there was something wrong. I spot the errors in the end and put them right. It could be reflections that don't match properly or something that is too light and so on. Once the painting is to my pleasure, I will leave it hanging for a week to admire. I will get a feeling of satisfaction and that I've painted one of my best ever paintings. It's a wonderful time and there is no longer a need to paint, but after about a week something strange happens. The painting that I thought was so good, stops being a brilliant masterpiece and is now just ok. When I finished it I thought I could do no better and now I feel that I must paint a better painting. Not only that, but it's been a whole week since I last painted! How can I call myself an artist? The urge to paint is back with a vengeance! 

Getting Noticed

If anybody ever reads this, they might wonder where I suddenly disappeared to after my last post. I never meant to disappear like that, but one thing leads to another and before you know it lots of things have changed. I found myself spending much more time promoting my work and the work of others on Fine Art America. I started to use social media to promote my work too. However, after I had ploughed hours of my time into all that and my blogs, I was left wondering what exactly I had achieved. Apart from over stretching myself, there are several positive things which have come from all this. Firstly, I have made a whole lot of new friends on the Internet through Fine Art America. They have been a huge support and encouragement to me. Secondly, I can now search for myself on Google and find quite a few of my paintings and photographs. The most important positive to come from all this, is that I managed to keep painting last year, having had a break from painting of eight years. I think the final total for 2013 was 26 new paintings. Even more important, I'm still painting in 2014. Only 4 so far this year, but 3 of them are as good as anything I've done before. It's only the second time since my childhood that I have painted in two consecutive years.

So where do I go from here? Well, most importantly, I need to find a real job because being an artist will never pay enough to live on. I also want to keep painting regularly, finding new subjects and improving wherever I can. Finally, I want to get noticed. I would at least like my paintings, many of which are of my town, Borlänge, to come up when searching the Internet for pictures of Borlänge. At the moment they do not. Now I'm going to disappear again and try to 'make it happen'.