The Secret of Good Artwork

Let’s take a moment to talk about what it takes to produce good art. Many of you began studying art at an early age, maybe you took a class in high school or college, but later quit to get a job that pays well for as we all know, it’s tough to make a living as an artist. Or, perhaps you were busy raising a family and didn’t have time to pursue it.

Like a lot of people, I waited a few years, but I always knew I’d return to painting someday. Twenty-odd years ago, I began taking courses and began to draw and paint a lot. Over the last few years, I’ve had people ask me, “How long did it take you to paint that?” And I would tell them, “About twenty years.” Of course, they would frown and say, “Okay, but right now, how long did it take?” The thing is, there’s no way to convince someone who doesn’t understand that creating a pleasing piece of artwork didn’t just happen when I first picked up a brush. I have a lot of paintings that never saw the inside of a frame, and some that shouldn’t have. It took me more than twenty years and more than three hundred paintings to learn how to paint the way that I do. And I’ll never stop learning. In another five or ten years, my style will probably change and the same picture would look completely different.

Slash by Marc R. Hanson.

During those twenty years, I studied with some of the best painters in the East, including Don Demers, Stapleton Kearns, Mark R. Hanson, Richard Schmid and Albert Handel. The reason that I chose these artists is that I admired their style of painting and I wanted to learn how they accomplished their work by watching and listening.

20010637_Big by Stapleton Kearns.

After a few workshops, I noticed that there was a pattern to their information, even though they each had their own individual style. Just about all of them said that, with some knowledge, you will mostly learn by producing a lot of work. The more you do, the better your art will be.

I may have discarded some of this class information, or replaced it with something else, but a great deal of it has stayed with me over the years, and I find myself repeating their instructions to myself as I go about creating art. I highly recommend taking workshops or classes with those artists that you admire, pay close attention to what they say, read and reread their books, and buy their videos. Watching demonstrations is a great way to understand their process, and if you can do it in person, that’s even better. It is much harder to learn on your own. And don’t expect to remember everything in the beginning. There’s a lot to think about.

The Wisdom of Ira Glass

Ira Glass is the host and executive producer of the popular National Public Radio show, This American Life. Each week, This American Life is broadcast to more than 1.7 million listeners across 500 different radio stations. But it wasn’t always this way.

Glass talks about the process of learning creative work very eloquently:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years, you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past this phase; they quit. Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work, they went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know that it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is DO A LOT OF WORK. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or month, you are going to finish one [story]. It’s only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just got to fight your way through that.”

Read more about Ira Glass...

Consider Yourself Challenged!

Okay, I've heard from a few of you, but I'd like to hear from those who have kept silent while enjoying my emails. So, what are you waiting for? If you've been drawing, painting, doodling, etching, coloring with crayons, sewing, knitting, embroidering, sculpting, making origami or any other type of creative art, send me a photo. Send your photos to pmeglio99@gmail.com and I will post them in my next challenge email.