Eva im Bad VI, Pastell,
2010 © Astrid Volquardsen
To all my readers, I wish you a happy new year and all the best for 2011.
It was really interesting to see all the different feedback I got for the last Eva post, because I wasn’t happy with the hands.
So here are some thoughts that came to me.
First,the spectator doesn’t necessarily dislike a certain part in your painting, but the painter himself certainly does. Maybe he or she recognizes it, but it doesn’t do any harm to the general liking.
So this leeds to an important rule, when exhibiting. Never, ever mention, that you don’t like your own pictures or parts of it.
What’s the reason, why artist sometimes have problems to like their own paintings and seem to be dissatisfied with them?
I got a new idea from Daniel Coyles book »The talent code«. He has the theory, that there aren’t special people born with a talent, but that it comes down to put in the hours to become a master. (Take any field you like). It is a combination of putting in 10.000 hours, having good teachers and most importantly to stay in an active learning zone. It is this active learning zone, where our dissasisfaction often derives from. You are setting a goal, try to get there, see the difference,between your goal and what you achieved and you start all over again. Concerning the faces people make when they are in this zone, it doesn’t seem to be a comfy place.
No, it is not always a comfy zone, but a place where it is worthwhile staying in, because you can often feel, how you are moving forward, even though you feel bad about certain parts of your painting.
Because it is new year and don’t we all like new year resolutions, here are some of mine.
- Drawing hands on a regular basis (geometrical forms only)
- Study other painters and how they managed their hands.
- Painting hands in pastel with a very limited color range.
