Road into the Mountains
In rare form I've been able to come up with another couple of paintings for you! Hooray!
Doing the last couple of paintings wore me out mentally. I am now well aware that architecture and man-made textures are a weak spot for me. And, that's a good thing really... Part of the problem when it comes to working toward mastery of any subject is the problem of knowing what your weak spots or blind spots are in order to work on them and correct obvious issues. Unfortunately, unless you are pushing yourself to try out things that are uncomfortable, its really hard to find and identify them.
At this point I would usually advocate for a mentor or teacher. I am one of those odd self taught artists and I agree with myself that I am doing this the "hard" way. If I were to give advice to my younger self I would say, "save some money and invest in a teacher that you admire and work your butt off for the short time you get their mentorship!" But, I have not done that, yet! I will say that it is on my list though. Some mentorships can be upwards of 1000 USD and that is an incredible amount of money for me. I won't be able to save that for a while. But, I do believe, with the right teacher you may save yourself month or even years of hard work just by having a professional point out all the places where you struggle and give you an idea of what to work on so that you improve faster.
There's something kind of sweet though to the long road. It's not like getting "there" or improving faster is necessarily what life is all about. In some ways I think I've had to reason with my need for progress and strife for success (what ever that means...) in a way that has made me appreciate the time I have in this life. I will, eventually, be a very accomplished painter and eventually I will paint buildings and textures with incredible ease. By taking the long road I have been learning how to be okay with myself as I struggle with things that will eventually be so easy I won't even notice them anymore.
Problems are kind of what life is about I guess. Without them there wouldn't be anything to worry about fixing. Or something like that. I'm sure some wise guy said something similar in a more eloquent way.
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Of course, my friend, it would be good to have someone who directs you to correct and continue advancing, but I think you have your personal touch and you can be someone's teacher, you have a beauty of paintings, I congratulate you, for the experience and your own critical judgment is an artist.
Greetings!
So very kind of you to say. I really appreciate your thoughtful comment. Of course, you're right. I have been at this for a good while now and I could probably help along plenty of junior artists and I plan to. I always try to show off my paintings in a way that can appeal to a younger artists in a way of showing my vulnerability about how I don't have everything figured out yet. Who does though? haha!
I agree with what you wrote, in my case I learned to strum the guitar in a self-taught way, and although I thought it was the easiest way, the end result was always the most difficult. Finding the notes of a song without knowledge sometimes makes me need professional advice. There is an Internet page called Coursera.org that brings together many universities from around the world, offering free studies in almost any subject. I hope this information is useful for you. Happy and long life.
Thanks for the advice! I agree, I've been using youtube tutorials as a resource as well as brainstorm school and schoolism. Thankfully there are lots of available gumroad tutorials directly from artist whom I admire so I haven't been completely alone in my studies.
I do think that guidance would cut out a lot of the wandering but I enjoy learning new things so the wandering has been fun for me. :)
I'll check out coursera, maybe there's something cool to learn there for me, thank you so much!
I understand your doubt. If you doubt your perfection, then you are growing. And this is the best of all options.
Not every person/artist you admire can be a mentor. Now you are going your own way and looking for yourself, your style, your identity. What you find is yours.
There is one danger in a mentor - the danger of imitation. By learning anything from anyone, you can start following the teacher/guru. You will learn to make beautiful pictures, but it will no longer be you in your pictures, your teacher will be there.
Maybe I'm not expressing my thoughts very clearly, but I think you understand me.
What classically can be judged as a mistake can turn out to be an invaluable find :)
Hmmm the counter point. I'm glad you bring this up because it is definitely the other side of the coin. It's really tough to split the value here. On one hand a teacher or mentor might accelerate your progress in an area but in "their" way. On the other hand you may struggle much more to find solutions to problems but in the end they will be distinctly "your" solutions. Art is after all unique because it is an expression that is very specific to the individual who is making the art. In some ways you might muddy the waters of expression by leaning too hard toward another artists solutions.
I think I would still advocate for mentorship though. Eventually it is not a choice anymore and the things that are made by an artist always end as a direct reflection of that individual's experience and point of view. For better or worse I think we can't help but say what we need to say. That is the power of one's own expression. I believe you when you say there is the danger of imitation but I also believe that one's internal voice will always overpower those limitations... At least I'd like to think so.
I'm glad you've added to the conversation it's something to consider before embarking onto a journey of mastery. The worst case scenario would be that you end up being a cheap copy of a master artist without ever learning how to speak for yourself.
I'm glad you understood my point. Yes, mentoring is definitely useful. But here everything is like in medicine))
Any substance can be medicine and poison. It's all about dose and measure.
A conscious approach will help to avoid mistakes. The main thing in my opinion is not to lose your originality.
" que ni siquiera lo notare más, " esa frase fue súper profunda.
muchas gracias!
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