Tag: drawing challenge

Art of Schmidt Newsletter: What I Learned at Art Pops!

Click on the following link (below) to read my latest Art of Schmidt Newsletter! This newsletter has some thoughts about my latest art project, 100 Faces in 100 Days, which is an “almost” drawing challenge which I have been participating in since June of this year, and some thoughts about what I learned from an Art Fair I recently participated in called Art Pops! at Everedy Square and Shab Row in Frederick, MD, organized and hosted by Leslie Ruby.

Art of Schmidt Newsletter, September 2017

In Search of “White Space”

 

I’ve been working at a hectic pace these last two weeks preparing for a one-day art event called Art Pops! At Everedy Square and Shab Row in Frederick, MD.  Last Saturday was the big day to kick off this event and hopefully make some new connections and sales of my art work. The weeks leading up to this event were jam packed with activity and tasks such as weekly social media marketing campaigns, packaging and pricing my art works for sale, creating an inventory list in Excel, researching how to create an art booth display on Pinterest, etc.  And I learned a lot from this show, such as the importance of making in person connections with people to sell my art, how to read people, etc. In fact, I sold more art work in one day at the art show, then I did from months of posting about my art on Instagram, Facebook, and Etsy, and I am thankful for that.  However, all of this activity really took a toll on my energy and motivation to create art.

In all the business of preparing for the art show, I have really struggled to make time to create new art work. I feel that I have reached the end of my creative resources and knowledge, tapped out, so to speak. It’s been several years since I took an art class, and I haven’t read any new art technique books in several months. And this state of affairs is not like me. I am usually restless when I am not making art or coming up with some new ideas for a series of paintings or drawings. The last few days since the show ended, I have made a concerted effort to at least draw one portrait a day for my drawing challenge which I started back in June called, 100 faces in 100 days. Some days I have made some decent portraits, other days I have really struggled or been disappointed with

The Artist at Art Pops! event
Frank Sinatra singing, As Times Goes By
Cary Grant
Grace Kelly
Sean Connery
Creative Block: Waiting ( with Gesso added). The composition was getting too cluttered so I decided to cover up the distracting elements with acrylic gesso.

the results. If you would like to follow my progress with this project, you can view my 100 faces in 100 days drawing challenge on Instagram. I am listed as jsjschmidt2 on Instagram, and I post almost every day. Pictured are some sketches from this week including Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Grace Kelly and Sean Connery.

The paintings I wanted to work on, however, are not coming together. Instead of posting the finished product as I had hoped to do this week, I have to take several steps back and ask myself what isn’t working with the composition, values, colors and the drawings in my art work. For example, in my Creative Block: Waiting, watercolor painting, I feel there are too many elements battling for precedence and not enough quiet spaces to allow the viewer to contemplate the scene. The composition feels cluttered and overwhelming and the message of creative block feels “lost” in the muddle. So yesterday, I painted over several spots in the painting with acrylic gesso. And the Civil War soldiers fared no better. So out with the gesso again. I am struggling with the drawing and the tonal values in these acrylic paintings. I have discovered that the acrylic paint dries much darker than it looks when I mix it up and put it on the brush, which is really throwing off the values. So I may re-do the painting in oils after the gesso has “cured.”

The paintings seem to be a type of metaphor for where my life is these days. Overstuffed and empty all at the same time. I feel I have lost the wonder I used to have about making art that keeps me motivated to get into the art studio ever week to see what new ideas I might “cook up.” Meanwhile, I am realizing that my workaholic tendencies are not conducive to making art work. I must create and seek “white space” to re-fill my creative tank, so that I have something to draw from when I go to make art work.  Meanwhile, I will be be seeking out this “white space” in its various forms, whether it is taking a walk, journaling, going to an art gallery, reading an art technique book, etc., to try and regain my sense of wonder for life, and for making art.

Do What You Love, and Make it a Habit

I started this blog late this week for a variety of reasons. One of which was that I wasn’t sure what to write about this week and how to connect that theme to last week’s theme. In the meantime, I have been taking my own advice from last week and doing what I love to do most, which for me is to draw and paint portraits. This week I have been working on a mixed media portrait of Emily Dickinson, to illustrate her poem, Hope is the Thing with Feathers. Here are a few lines to give you an idea of what this poem is about:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm – (Source: Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/42889.
The two main themes of this poem are the personification of hope ( as a bird), which lives in the soul and a metaphor for life challenges, which is the storm  (Source:http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/dickinson/section2.rhtml . In my portrait, I painted a stormy sky with a rainbow shining through the break in the clouds. The former symbolized hardships, while the later symbolizes hope. Other symbols of hope I included in this portrait are the soaring doves in the upper left clouds, and the author herself, Emily Dickinson, who has written about what it means to hope. I am planning to submit this painting to a juried art show at the Crestwood Women’s Center this April. If all turns out well, I will post about the opening night and art exhibition details.
Okay, so back to my main statement of Do What you Love…It sounds good, right? Kind of like the phrase, Follow Your Bliss. Let’s say you really enjoy, cooking every day, but want to get better, or you enjoy painting, but find it difficult to make time to finish your artwork. And lastly, how do you maintain the motivation to do that thing you love most in the world to do? I got curious and started doing some research about how to be a better artist, and that led me to an article by artist, Noah Bradley. The article is called:   21 Days to be a Better Artist (even if you’re terrible), by Noah Bradley and is available on https://medium.com/@noahbradley/21-days-to-be-a-better-artist-48087576f0dd#.fj77c5nel.
According to the artist, Noah Bradley (2015), if you want to get better at something you have to practice it on a daily basis (Source:https://medium.com/@noahbradley/21-days-to-be-a-better-artist-48087576f0dd#.fj77c5nel.)  Bradley (2015) recommends that if you want to get better at drawing that you should draw 1 hour for 21 days with no excuses, (ibid). And finally, he references a Ted Talks youtube video that explains the power of habit, which is based on “cue, behavior, and reward” (ibid) and  (The Power of Habit: Charles  Duhigg at TEDx Teachers College, http://www.youtube.com). Charles Duhigg, an author and Pulitzer prize winner, states that a cue is anything that makes you ready to start the behavior, while the behavior is the habit you engage in, and the reward is any action that you take after you complete the behavior which reinforces the habit (Source: ibid). For me, to start off my day of painting or drawing, I will play my favorite music by Coldplay or listen to a book on cd on youtube, set up my art supplies and set up the coffee maker to brew. Then I set my timer for 30 minutes and get to work setting up my supplies, photo references and start painting. When the timer goes off, I do something relaxing like reading a book to reward myself and reinforce the habit. Most important, I pencil in studio days on my calendar and try to do artwork before all the other to-dos on my list compete for my attention. So here’s my challenge, I want to start working in my sketchbook on a daily basis for 20 minutes, 5 days a week to get better at drawing. I will be posting the results on my Instagram account and on Facebook if you want to view them, and of course, here on the website. If you want to learn more about Duhigg’s Power of Habit speech

, you may watch his presentation on youtube by conducting a search on the power of habit, or you may look up the book, The Power of Habit your local public library or on Amazon. For this week, I am posting my progress photos of the mixed media portrait, Hope is the Thing with Feathers, featuring Emily Dickinson.