Re-new Your Artistic License

Canal Living
Acrylic on Canvas Panel
9 x 12 in/22.8 x 30.4 cm
Copyright 2014

I'm not so sure all those painters who are/were famous or all those painters you read about in their blogs or whose DVDs you purchase actually follow all the painting rules. By that, I mean those lists of do's and don'ts, those must's and must not's, those things we're told that are the correct way to paint. They are promoted as the only way of doing things in instruction books and painting DVDs and on YouTube videos.

However, I have noticed more often than not that unless you are actually in attendance in person at a painter's workshop or demonstration, then you don't really know exactly how they accomplished some of the things you see in their books or in their videos. Even then you may not be able to follow their example.

 I have noticed that the camera almost never shows the painter mixing up his or her paint on the palette either in photograph in a book or a shot in a video. If they do, it is for the briefest of moments when they first begin. You almost never see the amount, the viscosity or how the various colors are mixed from their own color palette--or which brush or brushstroke they use when. You just see them putting their brush to the canvas.

What I would like is for them to show me how they really paint. I can almost guarantee that no else will be able to paint exactly like them so what does it matter. It's call style, technique, and artistic license and every painter has his or her own way of accomplishing that.

Why keep on trying to paint a certain way over and over and over again. Use your intuition or your artistic license to discover your own unique look-and-feel. Maybe that's how your favorite painter discovered their own.

Time to re-new your artistic license