My last few posts have all been getting around
to one thing: Confidence. One of my favourite artists, the master
watercolourist Joseph Zbukvic is quoted as saying “Trust your watercolour, and
trust yourself. Lack of confidence destroys.” I increasingly agree.
Confidence in mark making is key in any
medium. The bold stroke, line, mark or curve is a thing of great beauty, and,
while seemingly effortless, is the hardest thing to achieve. The marks we make
in our work should contribute to the feel, emotion or communication of our
drawings and paintings. I refer you again to a quote from Katsushika Hokusai circa 1800 that I
cited in my January post Ever the Learner “. . . by
one hundred I shall perhaps truly have reached the level of the marvelous and
divine. When I am one hundred and ten, each dot, each line will possess a life
of its own."
Many things can knock our confidence but
only one thing – continual practice can achieve it. We have to go through
stages of training in our work, similar to the Scales of Training in schooling
horses, and depending where we are at in those stages may dictate where our
focus lies. Gradually we start to
achieve confidence in one area and our focus is free to move on. This is not a
straight upward line. It is more a series of steps, plateaus, leaps, set backs
and falls but all is experience and experience leads to confidence.
I find that working on my drawing enhances
my painting and vice versa. Working in different mediums gives me the
confidence to experiment in other mediums. Life drawing, en plein air work
(painting outside from life), sketchbook work, learning to look, all contribute to my work's development and my confidence. My life
drawing mentor Andres Jaroslavsky described me as “confident”. Well Andres, in
some things yes, but there are many strands to art, confidence can be fragile, and that confidence soon disappears if I don’t practice for a
few weeks. In art there is LOTS to practice. Always. Drawing, control of various
media, colour mixing, tonal balances, proportion, composition, perspective….
The list goes on and it is a mighty task to be confident in all.
And then one day there is suddenly a seed
change - a seminal moment, and not one necessarily in the studio. I am more naturally a draftsman than painter. I have had to learn, read
and practice at colour and application of paint. One day last summer I was
fetching horses in from a summer paddock - a bit of a walk from the yard. I was
leading two and following another leading two horses as well. Idly musing about
the lovely shadows cast by the trees over the horses’ backs and the track surface,
I suddenly realised that I was seeing and thinking of the shadows not as
‘dark’, ‘black’, ‘purple’ or ‘grey’ but ‘oh, that is a mixture of cobalt blue
and vermillion’. Like learning a foreign language, you know you are getting
there when you start to think in that language and there I was, confidently
thinking in the language of colour. You can’t bluster or force that, and there
are no shortcuts. That confidence comes from time, experience and practice.
Getting it wrong (a lot) but knowing that the leaps forward are worth it in the
end.
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