Sunday Painter

Art Lesson: Getting Your Painting Chops Up after a long hiatus.
Today I'm humbly breaking out my oil paints. I probably should sacrifice a chicken or something, my last paintings (over a year ago) went well, but they were mistreated (I left them at the School of the Art Institute--and my school ID has lapsed). There is likely a muse of visual art who has got a rusty switchblade tucked into her toga, just for me.

Taboret: Make an inventory of your paints, brushes and other supplies, which are usually stowed away in a tackle box or other shameful coffin in a misused corner.

1. Order your tubes, I like to go from warm to cool. Earth tones, white, and mediums have their own areas.
2. Do likewise with brushes and palette knives, according to size.
3. Start a rubbish bin to throw out any dried out paints or miserable brushes. While you're doing the inventory and painting, you should write down what you think you'll need to continue being a productive painter after your return to the fold.
4. Perform whatever organizational rituals you're comfortable with.

Easel and Pallette: Set yourself up for a no-stress study.

1. Tape off some canvasette or whatever you like to paint on. Maximize real estate with one big piece or separate into little vignettes. I usually paint with a medium-value ground, today I'm letting myself be lazy.
2. Pour off your mineral spirits into a glass. If you haven't painted in a few days (or many months), all the pigment will have settled to the bottom of your spirits container. You can swish these mud spirits out with newspaper and toss it. I like to draw out my lines with it, so I keep it around. It's like recycling.
   
3. Pick a sampling of brushes that will work. I picked one thick, one medium, and one teensy.
4. Squeeze out a useful range of paints onto your palette, after you've designated your real estate for your mineral spirits and mud spirits (from #2.) If you know exactly what colors you're going to paint with, use what you think, but err on the side of inclusion, because squeezing out paint is a bit of a buzzkill in the middle of painting. If I am painting monochromatically, I'll use white, and burnt sienna and ultramarine blue, which you can combine to make a rich black. If I'm painting in color, I use those plus cadmium red, alizarin crimson, windsor yellow, pthalo blue, yellow ochre. You don't really need much else to paint with a general color range. I have many others in my box right now, and I wish I could trade them for more of the basics that will soon be empty.
5. Pour out a little bit of Liquin or whatever medium you're using.
   
6. Locate some paper towels near your work. They are the only thing keeping my hands from turning every other color of the rainbow.
   
7. Have some relevant subject matter nearby to paint from. I had a Burne Hogarth book (Drawing the Human Head) that I've been paging through. But I also had some sketches nearby, they work. Or a familiar object. It's good to have a subject that you've got in your spatial memory. Don't sweat this one, but having stuff nearby helps you not stress about it in the middle of a painting.

Painting Tips:

• Paint away, while you try to regain the logic that you work with. Don't break your own rules, though you may likely be impatient to. With oil paints, remember to paint from thin to thick, gradually decreasing the amount of medium you add to the paint. It is basically impossible to put thin paint on top of thicker paint.
  
• Recapture your ability to mix color. Sometimes it helps to paint color swatches only. Or, if you're diving in and trying to paint something, you can pre-mix a color range.
  
• Don't worry about the whole picture. If you do get irritated, try to identify specifically what's not working for you. Then try to fix it. This is where the learning comes in. If you do this each time you have an issue, you'll get better quickly. The only other way is avoidance. And unfortunately, you can do everything else here and paint each day, but if you don't identify and tackle your problems, you'll be in the same place. It is likely why you put down the brush in the first place. And I'm familiar with all that.