Studio Insights - June 2024
CREATE: What I’ve created/done & what I’m working on.
INSPIRE: What art has inspired me.
LEARN: What I’m learning to develop my practice.
PLAN: What I’m planning next.
CREATE: Studies
June was all about experimentation!
I’ve been having a blast letting loose and creating a range of studies and painting challenges. With my two big art shows out of the way I have allowed myself some freedom to create ‘unimportant’ pieces and trial a more purposeful approach to improving as an artist. This is all based around the idea of ‘Deliberate practise’ which I will detail below in my ‘LEARN’ section.
Left to right -
Master Study: Caspar David Friedrich - The Grosse Gehege near Dresden
Master Study (Burnt Umber/White only, Oversized brush): Constable - Hampstead Heath
Rubber Duck studies - for an upcoming group exhibition (see PLAN)
INSPIRE: Adam Portraiture Award
The New Zealand Portrait Gallery - The Adam Portraiture Award
I’ve always found great portrait painters awe-inspiring - the way they capture the essence of a person’s unique personality is like magic to me. Portraiture offers a unique challenge due to our innate ability to pick out subtle details and discrepancies in the human face. If I were to paint a tree slightly wonky, you wouldn’t even notice. But paint an eye slightly off center… and suddenly it isn’t even the same person. Often the viewer (or even the artist!) won’t know why it's wrong, just that it ‘feels’ off. I have done some portrait work in the past and really enjoyed the challenge, and created some work I’m proud of. But it still falls short of the magic I can capture in landscapes.
This exhibition offers a truly impressive selection of portrait artists across a wide range of styles, and left me feeling quite inspired to try my hand at some more portraiture in the future… but also thankful to be painting wonky trees.
On now until 11th August
https://www.nzportraitgallery.org.nz/adam-portraiture-award
LEARN: Deliberate Practise
Once again this month Cal Newport has been guiding my learning and development, this time with the term ‘Deliberate Practice’ found in his book ‘So good they can’t ignore you’
It’s an embarrassingly simple concept - in order to improve my painting skills, I need to actually practise my technique with a deliberate plan that stretches my abilities. Practice makes perfect, who would have thought? For years my way of improving has primarily been just creating the next painting, and trying to make it better. I didn’t see the value in taking time to make something which won’t be exhibited, when I had so much else to create. But this month has been eye opening as I’ve seen incredible value from challenging myself going back to the fundamentals with various painting challenges.
I turned to the Youtuber ‘Paint Coach’ who is a big believer in practising the fundamentals and focusing on small studies and painting exercises. His channel is a great free resource which has guided my direction for practice. Some ideas include: painting with limited colours, restricted brush strokes, oversized brushes, and much more!
Creating these small pieces without any pressure has been extremely liberating. I’ve been applying these to a painting I’m working on for a Rubber Ducky exhibition, and the results have been quite surprising. I’ve been loving the process of painting more than I have in months… years even. I have found that more constraint actually made my studies better. It challenged me to paint with a more loose, expressive and considered approach.
PLAN: Online shop & Exhibitions
July is going to be a busy month for me! I’m about to send some work up to the lovely gallery ‘Quirky Fox’ in Hawera for my first ever gallery representation! I’ll be joining them for their birthday celebration exhibition, opening on 15th July.
I’m also working on the launch of my online store on the 12th of July, which will include my entire range of available prints (on sale!) so stay tuned for that. If you have been thinking about picking up a print of mine, this is a great time to do it!
Finally I’m joining DYED Studios for their ‘Rubber Ducky’ group exhibition, opening 26th July.