Advice from a Painter: Part 3 - Kaye Donachie

Kaye Donachie, "Myself I think shall never know, how far beneath the wave I go", oil on canvas, 61 x 45 cm – 24 x 17 3/4 inches, 2010

Kaye Donachie, "Without You", 2008, Oil on canvas, 27 3/4 x 23 7/8 inches

Kaye Donachie was kind enough to write a few lines of advice to new painters in my painting class, which I will also share with you;

"This is some advice given to me that I have always followed. 'equipment is very important before even starting a painting. Always use a glass palette, always use pure turpentine to dilute paint not the cheap cleaning turps.......it destroys the pigment. And always invest in good brushes.....( a tutor once told me that you would expect a surgeon to use blunt dirty tools, so a range of quality brushes cleaned every night is essential. Finally, I would say painting is really hard. When you first start out it seems easy and the better you get it the harder it seems.'”

Thanks Kaye!

Advice from a Painter: Part 2 - Eric LoPresti

This is part 2 in a series of advice from working painters to young art students- today's guest is Eric LoPresti who just wrapped up a solo show at Like the Spice gallery in New York and has been a regular guest here at "minutiae". Eric writes,

“I like to mix colors on my palette, which enables me to be get precise with the color I want before painting it on the actual canvas. When attempting to match a specific color, it helps to hone in on that hue incrementally, by gradually adding one color to another. For example, say I'm trying to match a specific light-pink. I'll probably start with the red out of the tube, which is likely to be way too dark, then incrementally add in white until the values match. Here’s the tip: when mixing your next color, always keep a bit of the previous mixture around for comparison. In fact, as I get closer to my target color, I'll often split the mixture into two batches so I can 'undo' if I make a mistake. Here’s an image of me mixing various shades of pink to match a color on the digital printout at bottom – you can see me splitting up various stages of the pink mixture into parts so I have choices about how to get closed to the color I want. ”

“When developing a body of work, do a lot of research and see what other artists are relevant to your work. This is easy if you break it down: first you want to come up with a good set of descriptive words about your work, e.g. ‘etchings of contemporary buildings and decay’, or ‘paintings of post-apocalyptic western deserts’. Google image search that description, and start digging through the results for practicing artists. Be prepared to go through a lot of images -- good artwork isn’t easy to find. Leaving aside whether you like/dislike the works you are finding, ask yourself:

• Is this artist’s work similar to mine?
• How exactly is my work different (and would it look different to a disinterested 3rd party)?
• How can I make my work more specifically match my vision, so it doesn’t look like theirs?
• Is this artist someone I want to ‘keep tabs’ on as I go forward?”

thanks Eric!

Advice from a Painter: Part 1 - Gregory Euclide

I have been preparing for teaching painting this summer - researching processes, organizing projects, and putting together power points. While doing this it occurred to me it might be more meaningful to students to hear advice and quotes from living, breathing working artists. This starts my (hopefully) weekly blurb from a painter in the form of a tip or advice. First off is Gregory Euclide. Euclide has shown in Denver several times at the David B. Smith gallery as well as the Foothills Art Center as part of their "Habitat" exhibition. Lately he's been getting a lot of buzz because of the artwork he did for the upcoming Bon Iver album (pictured above). I asked Gregory for advice to young artists and he said,

“Read as much as you can about what you are interested in. But don't let that allow you to lose the feeling for what you are interested in.”

- Gregory Euclide

Thanks Gregory!