Want To Be An Artist…Or A Copier?

If you want to be an artist, to truly develop your creativity, how do you do that?

Is it simply a matter of technique? You know, learning to apply pencil or paint to paper?

And getting better and better at accurately copying what you see?

Or does an artist do more than that?

Is anything wrong with drawing or painting exactly what you see?

Absolutely not.

In the beginning, doing that is great training.

I will admit that in my beginning years just trying to capture what I saw in front of me was a big enough challenge. I didn't venture too far from reality.

It wasn't until I decided to become an illustrator and attended one of the last Illustrators Workshops that I began to change.

Those yearly workshops were offered by six of the top illustrators in the country at that time.

The message they repeated over and over was, "Ideas count more than technique. There are better painters out there than us. Our ideas are why people come to us."

I took that to heart.

I found that focusing on ideas improves art skills. It improves your creativity.

Now this is the really exciting part.

I gradually found that changing what I saw and putting more of me in my art was much more fun than only trying to copy something.

That doesn't mean I didn't occasionally fall back into just copying.

I did.

But, overall I became more and more hooked on the rush from completing something entirely my own.

In this regard think of me as your local internet drug pusher.

If you want to be an artist, I want you to become addicted to the rush you get from the chemicals your brain produces when you create successfully.

And that starts to happen with more regularity when you learn ways to change what you see to what could be.

You find out what could be by taking a scene like the one below.

Then you might sketch different ideas for how you could create a drawing or painting that's different, better and more interesting than reality.

You come up with ideas for how to do that by asking yourself: "What would happen if I….."

Moved some boats over here… or changed their colors …or put a castle in the background or ….

When you begin to do that you're on the path to freeing your imagination.

And discovering how to be an artist by putting more of you in your art.

Best Wishes,
Gary Gumble
Founder of BeginningArtist.com
Without art the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. (George Bernard Shaw)

P.S. Do you want to know how to put more of you in your art?

I ask, because we often unconsciously impose limits on what we think is possible, what we believe we have the ability to do.

When we do that, we create artificial limits on our own creativity. And, believe me; I've caught myself doing this a number of times.

The answer is to learn how to push through those self-imposed barriers and learn to release more of the creativity that is in each of us.

To help each person who wants to be an artist is the main reason I started BeginningArtist.com. 

And it's a primary reason for developing the webinars I'm working on.

The question to think about is: Are you ready to skip years of struggle, and learn how to put more of you in your work?