Do you get stuck at the blank canvas? Do you want to paint but don't know how to start? As your art practice evolves you will develop your own go-to strategies for beginning, but if you are new at painting, here are a few suggestions. Don't start a painting. Start multiple paintings. Do start with an inexpensive, low-stakes, substrate such as Bristol or 80# Cheap Drawing Paper Do focus on the practice, the process, not the 'finished' painting. Don't try to finish a painting. Do give yourself a time limit if that helps. Here is a video on The Five Minute Painting (this is an old one, not great quality): A group of 9"x12" five-minute paintings I made these 9"x12" five-minute in one session, which was a total of one hour. Be assured that there are infinite ways to start a painting, so you can't find the correct way, nor can you start the wrong way, in terms of the first marks you make on the painting surface. You can start with an attitude that will facilitate beginnings. Your measure of success is: you showed up and applied paint (or collage or drawing) to a surface. You made marks on a substrate. That's IT. Omit the habitual evaluation and self-criticism. Just leave it out; it is totally irrelevant to this part of a painting practice. Let the painting practice be an ongoing inquiry, not a production line. You are discovering what the paint can do, what is in you, who you are as a maker of images. It is a long, slow, ongoing process. A practice. If you set your expectations accordingly it can be extremely engaging and fulfilling. If you begin with the expectation that you will Learn How To Do It Correctly, it can be very frustrating. You will make good paintings - your paintings - when you make a lot of paintings, with attention and focus on process, and with curiosity. Enjoy! Cat Bennett has several books that are encouraging and helpful for making art as a practice. There are many other books and resources on practicing art, but the real learning is in doing the work. Get the paper out, put some paint on it, pay attention, repeat.
Often composition is equated to planning, as if you could compose first (i.e. plan out the painting) and then paint, or execute the plan. Some artists and teachers use the terms Design and Composition interchangeably,both meaning to plan. And this approach works for many artists, but not for me. Take a look at my Technique Takeaway coming up, Composition as Process. Pink Shape, 9x12" This sense of composition may be analogous to a piece of music that is written out before it is played, a music composition. The way that I paint is more like an improvised solo - I make it up as I go along. But that does not mean that it not a composition. Stripe Collage #4, 11x14", "You can't make this stuff up"; well, yes, you can. What you can't do is plan a piece that ends up like this one. You have to find it in the process of making it. Throughout my process of painting, I am engaged in the act of composing. The visual elements and their relationships to one another change many times during the course of creating a painting. The composition is in constant flux until it isn’t. The composition of the finished painting (if it finishes, which not all my paintings do), is an unknown until it reveals itself through the process of composing. Sunshine Stripes, 11x14", Even a very structured composition goes through many changes in its evolution towards a finished piece. Sometimes people mistake structure for planning. 18"x24" Rising by the Second, 20x20"
Hello there! Welcome back to the vocab page where we take some of the arty art terms from the week’s interview and talk about them in more depth. Take a listen to Jane Davies’ interview here.
I am currently teaching my Mini Collage class online, and in the second lesson I have the participants cut out shapes and arrange them free-form without gluing them down. The images are so FUN I ju…
0 Artworks by Jane Davies, Saatchi Art Artist
As you may know, I recently released a book of collage papers that you can cut and use in your own work. Here is a little video of me making two collages, inspired by Rex Ray, using my papers. Find the book here. I hope the book will inspire you to make your own collage papers as well. Mix them with found papers like book pages, discarded maps, and ephemera for a truly eclectic collection. Use to wrap small gifts, decorate gift tags, and other paper crafts. Happy Solstice Season! Find Collage Papers HERE. I was going to crop these to squares, as you saw in the video, but in the end they looked better as rectangles. Using a viewfinder, though, can be really helpful in deciding on a final composition.
Jane is recognized nationally for her amazing talent and we are thrilled to be able to publish her art as in-stock prints and Print on Demand.
This is on the same theme as my previous post, “Pre-enjoyed Art”, in that it is about cutting up art and re-configuring it. Here are a couple of approaches to reconfiguration. The first…
I've been working on these 20"x20" wood panels, playing with color and pattern, in between teaching sessions. Here is a video: For me,...
Today I worked with lines and scribbles, inspired by a few of my students who were in the 100 Drawings class. My goal was just to see what ...
Date: Fridays, April 9-May 7, 2021 Time: 10:00 AM-12:00 PM Pacific Time / 1:00-3:00 PM Eastern Time Level: Intermediate to Experienced Medium: Mixed Media Supply List PDF Our live online classes are taught via Zoom. Students have the opportunity to interact with the instructor and other participants, watch live demos and receive feedback and instruction. You will have access to a class chat forum on our website where you can share work, comment and ask questions. You will also have access to recordings of the class that will expire 60 days after the final day of the course. You may be carrying around assumptions about composition that you are not even aware of. Rules, principles and guidelines that you think you know might be the things getting in your way, rather than being the things that facilitate your art making. I often hear composition put in opposition to spontaneity or improvisation, or even in opposition to simply following a particular direction I give in a workshop: “Are we supposed to do this freely and spontaneously, or are we supposed to make a composition?” My mind goes blank: where do I start with this? The question assumes something about what a composition is and what it isn’t. Show me a painting that is not a composition, I want to say. In this workshop we will open up the concept of composition to examine possibilities – of scale, value, color, arrangement, etc. We’ll take a look at what we do by habit and by assumption and put those into a context of broader range of options, of conscious choices. In order to become fluent in visual language, you need to become aware of what you do by habit and what you can do by choice. The more fluent you are, the more spontaneity and freedom you can bring to your art practice. Compose as you go like an improvised jazz solo. We will be using acrylic paint, collage, and drawing materials. The workshop is for intermediate and experienced painters, not beginners. Though I will demonstrate some techniques, this is not a technique workshop; it is about seeing and compositing, so you should be reasonably comfortable with your materials. Jane Davies is a full time artist working in collage, painting, and encaustic. She offers workshops at her studio and nationwide, focusing on helping people to find a personal and playful approach to art. Beginning as a potter in the early nineties, selling her colorful hand-painted ceramics at craft shows, Davies gradually transitioned into freelance art, designing tableware, fabric, paper goods, stationery, and other products, using painting and collage as her medium. For the past several years, Davies has put most of her efforts towards teaching, writing, and making art.
I was having a minor meltdown the other day, and looked through some notes I had written to myself recently. I vaguely remembered making notes on What To Do in a meltdown. I found this note: Something about making marks with crayons to see what emerges. Making marks all day on a stack or a roll of cheap drawing paper. Mining whatever is in there, the subconscious, the hand and eye, or the hand without the eye. So I got out my crayons (Caran d'Ache NeoColor II) and started scribbling furiously over marks I had made with paint. Layering the crayon marks and less frantic lines in paint drew me back into the process. 18"x24", acrylic and crayon on paper 18"x24", acrylic, graphite, and crayon on paper 18"x24", acrylic, graphite, and crayon on paper 18"x24", acrylic, graphite, and crayon on paper Of course, the Caran d'Ache crayons are water soluble, so they can smear when you paint over them. My trick is to apply a GENTLE coat of matte medium or matte acrylic gel to the crayon marks, CONTROL the smear, and let it dry completely before painting over. For graphite scribbling I like Lyra non-water-soluble graphite crayons. I also use ordinary pencils. You could add colored pencils and paint markers to this scribbling tool box. Avoid Sharpie Permanent Markers (they will bleed through subsequent layers of paint), and oil pastels (unless they are the last layer - they will not adhere to subsequent layers of acrylic paint). DO explore chalk pastels, charcoal (use fixative, outdoors, between layers), and various kinds of brushes with your acrylic paint. Golden High Flow acrylics and be fun to scribble with too, especially opaque ones. You can mix Titanium White High Flow into other colors to make them more opaque and lighten the value. Let each layer dry before adding more marks when using wet media. Work on several at one time. Here are a few examples of last week's scribbles: Black High Flow Paint applied with a brush. Spray paint on the left (black) Black spray paint, turquoise crayon Paint scribbles applied with brush and palette knife This feels like Scribbles Part 2. You can see some of my 2021 scribbles on this page, along with some stripes and florals. One of the many themes or explorations I seem to circle back to is this layering of marks. Great way to loosen up, and lots there to discover.
Hello there! Welcome back to the vocab page where we take some of the arty art terms from the week’s interview and talk about them in more depth. Take a listen to Jane Davies’ interview here.
Because collage is one of my most frequently used techniques, I think a lot about shapes. A shape does not have to have hard edges, but collage is a great technique for creating very clear, well-de…
In Santa Fe at Valdes Art Workshops one student asked me to demonstrate, start to finish, how I would approach a cruciform format. We were...
