What media to pick. - Oils.

I guess I should start off by mentioning that just reading through my postings may give you the idea that this process of getting back into art and deciding what media to paint in was something that took place over a brief period of time, like a few months.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I suffer from the problem of having way too many hobbies and if something gets to be problematic for me, I put it away for another day. At least for my creative side that is. Sometimes that "another day" didn't come for 6 months or more.

Once I started playing around with oil paints I realized that it was exactly what I was looking for. The control, the texture, the smell... I also learned that with some proper care they are not dangerous, just don't go tasting the cadmium red no matter how delicious it looks.

I decided to jump in with both feet and start painting pictures. I started on a copy of a Monet, one of my favorite Impressionist painters, then tried to copy a landscape from a magazine, then another from a tutorial on Wetcanvas... One by one I was running into road blocks and getting frustrated, I just ended up with a number of unfinished paintings:


As these stand right now they don't look so good but I think they are good starts for someone with such little experience. Why haven't I finished them? I guess it comes down to being afraid to fail. I have had so many starts and then stops because I was afraid to screw something up or even worse - What if I found out that I don't have any talent for this at all.

I know logically this is ridiculous, nobody is able to create great paintings right from the start. I've heard people say that you need a good mile of wasted canvas behind you before you should expect to start making something that looks good.


One of the art blogs I enjoy reading is by David Rourke. He has a great posting on getting started with oil painting that I love to look at from time to time for inspiration. I like his way of looking at the first things you paint:

Your goal, to start out, should be to do some bad paintings that no one will want to look at. If your goal is to make bad paintings, it won't be too hard to get there. After ten of those, you can start to think about paintings that are...less bad. You'lll learn more, in the same amount of time, by making several simple bad paintings than by making one complicated bad painting.

I find myself so worried about making "art" that I have trouble learning how to paint. Why can't I remember all those hours of learning to play the guitar when I was younger. If you don't learn how to do something first how can you expect to do it well? Once I get a grasp on the fundamentals of painting such as, paint consistency, holding the brush, making strokes, judging values, mixing paint, seeing color temperature, then I can work on making art.

During these first fewexperimentss with oil painting I also started a slightly larger piece (16" X 20") for one of the Wetcanvas.com monthly "MOM (Master Of the Month)" postings. Each month they would feature a Master artist and people would try to copy one of their paintings. The month I joined but never finished was for the artist "Caspar David Friedrich" and you can see the forum posting HERE if you wish to check it out.

This was back in the start of 2004.

I actually think of all my "unfinished" pieces this one looks the best at its current stage. Just as a reference below is a picture of the original piece called "The Wanderer" by Caspar David Friedrich:


It's a beautiful piece, though not my favorite style of art. I lean more towards the loose painting style of the impressionists. I do like many styles of art as well as music but I have my favorites.