Experience ‘the ugly stage’ and keep going! Imagine me cheering you on to get through the other side.
Join me in the Shiny Happy Art Club and experience the joy of drawing and painting every single month.
Here’s the link for you – www.shinyhappyart.com/getartfit
Transcript
This is episode 14 of the Art Fit Podcast. Hello, I’m Anna Battle, Shiny Happy Artist and your host of the Art Fit Podcast. Now, just as physical fitness is good for your body, Art Fitness is good for your mind. And you don’t need to be an Olympics level professional artist to benefit from Art Fitness. But what is the point? How do you actually do it? How do you fit it all in? Well, I’m on a mission to help you get Art Fit.
This podcast is brought to you by my Shiny Happy Art Club. I send you a brand new high quality guided Paint Along each month, in acrylic and watercolour, as part of a lovely group of art friends from around the world. So, you can become a Shiny Happy Artist and get Art Fit.
Okie dokie. Here we are. It’s number 14. It is the last in this series of Art Fitness episodes. We’ll see if you’ve enjoyed this, please let me know because, I’d love to come back in a little bit of time, but I wanted to leave you in this series with another piece of advice that is something I bring it up very often actually. And really this series has been generated by me spending time with students and saying the same thing over and over again, as I’m reassuring people that yes, they’re on the right journey and yes, this is worthy of doing and yes, imagine sort of painting these subjects and how it can make your life richer and more enjoyable. So here we are number 14. And what I want to share with you today is, not to stop too soon.
So I have a theory. I have a theory that people who think that they can’t draw and paint probably just haven’t finished yet. So, hear me out with this one, every single painting or drawing has an ugly stage where you just think, oh, I hope this is going to work. It really, really does happen. And it’s just like baking a cake. You can’t judge the look of the final cake while the ingredients are still mixed up together in the bowl, and art can be exactly like that. You sort putting all these elements together, but until you do those final details, those highlights or those adding those extra darks be you’ve checked the tones or whatever it might be, until you’ve finished the job, you know, it’s not finished until it’s finished. It’s so important to remember that. And as your art coach, because here we are on this journey to Art Fitness, it is my job to push you through until your painting or drawing is finished and give you some tools and some techniques and some ideas as to things that you can add to your picture, so that you can really, really enjoy it.
So, when it comes to drawing, I would say, if you think you’re finished, just add two more things and a really good way of sort of thinking, what are those two more things. I always come back to spots and stripes. So, is there an area you can add some spots to, could be the dress, it could be the coffee cup, it might be the grasses or some sparkles in the sky or stripes and adding those extra textures can make such a difference to your piece. It just makes them so much more interesting. So, it’s just think, what are these two things that Anna would say that we could add in that list too you could be checking your tones and adding some deeper colours. You could be adding a border. There are so many different things that we learn about and certainly in the Shiny Happy Art Club we do a painting because I’m a big believer in learning by doing and the end of it, I’d say these are three things you’ve learned. You’ve accidentally learned by painting with me.
So it’s we get the theory in there, but we do it. We actually do something and then we figure out what we’ve learned. That’s the beautiful thing there and often those points are things that I’ve done in that painting to just push you through to a painting that you’re proud of and a painting, an artwork that’s more resolved. So remember, if it doesn’t look right, it probably isn’t finished and we are doing the opposite to what Coco Chanel said to do. I’m sure it’s her saying that she says sort of ‘before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.’ Well, I’m going the opposite way, probably more Iris Apfel than Coco Chanel. And saying, if you think you’re finished with this drawing, add two more things and it might be highlights. It might be quite subtle as you get better at it. And you’re happier with the results you’re getting. You might not want to add two more big things.
It just be two more little things, but hopefully you’ll still hear my voice in your head saying what two things can I add? It might be as simple as dating your page because you’ve forgotten to, but just adding two more things will really lift what you’re doing and you might add two more and still not be happy. And which case you might add two more things. Now the opposite side to this is when you overwork a piece and you just have to experience that. If you think you want to take up watercolour and have a go at watercolour? There is no way I can tell you when that painting is finished, until you have experienced overworking, a painting, putting too much detail in there and sort of losing the spark of it.
I know these are very general terms, but you can’t evaluate, well, I don’t have any interest in evaluating art. In quantitative ways I am sticking with the subjective and qualitative. Oh gosh, it’s hard to say that word, isn’t it? But I’m aiming with the aiming to study things with feelings when it comes to art. So you sort of get that feeling and the more practice you have with looking at other people’s work as well as your own you’ll know if that feels right or it doesn’t and I know that sounds very fairy, but please give yourself the opportunity to overwork a watercolour painting, spend a bit too much time on it, have some muddy colours and regret it because the next time you come into doing a painting like that, you will stop early enough. You’ll stop when it’s finished and you’ll keep those colours bright and you’ll have some interesting textures in there because you’ll get to a point and you’re just like, ah, just need two little things I think, oh, I’ll add a few more dots in the centre of those flowers and some extra shadows underneath something and it can be as simple as that.
So please, when you think you finish something, maybe you haven’t, if it doesn’t feel right, add two more things. Okay. Think of me as being the Iris Apfel the art coaching world and know that with your Art Fitness, we can just add two more things won’t hurt. You probably won’t even take any much time at all, but it will make you as so much more enthusiastic about the work that you’ve been doing. You will impress yourself out of the park as you learn different techniques and you’re able to add them in and before long you’ll be feeling so much more art like, oh, you can feel those muscles as you.
So doing your next sketch. You can feel those creativity, muscles just kicking in and the muscle memory, remembering all the things we’ve talked about today and the things we’ve talked about earlier in this podcast, when they all sort of come together on the page, it is magical. So that is the experience I want you to enjoy along with finishing and filling your book that’s another subject. We’ll talk about another time, but please do get out that pencil, make some marks on the paper, enjoy your journey to Art Fitness with me, by all means, please take a look at the Shiny Happy Art Club, because it is a wonderful way to get you making art regularly and enjoying it. In the company of lovely art friends, it is a wonderful way to spend your time on your Art Fitness journey. But thank you so much for joining me for this podcast series. I’ve so enjoyed putting it together for you. Hopefully these little bite size chunks of information and knowledge have hit home and you’ve been able to include them in whatever art practice you are doing, whether it’s the five minutes, a day-ish practice or big beautiful paintings and lots of learning in a shorter amount of time, because you have heaps of time, whatever it might be for you. I hope there is a way we make it work. And I will love to see you in my virtual studio. Bye for now.
So, you want to get Art Fit? We’ll find out when the doors to the Shiny Happy Art Club open next. There are 24 online Paint Alongs to choose from when you join, so you’ll definitely find something you love. And now, there are also $15 and $25 subscription options. So, go to www.shinyhappyart.com to pop your name on the waiting list. I look forward to painting with you in the Shiny Happy Art Club. And until then, I’ll be back in your ears with the next episode of the Art Fit Podcast.
So that is a wrap on this, the first series of the Art Fit Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. I really am excited to get these ideas out into the world. And the fact that Art Fitness is good for our minds is so important. So please don’t keep it to yourself. Tell a friend get the kids involved, tell a work mate, tell your mum whatever it might be, but it’s such a wonderful thing to give yourself the gift of freedom to get a pencil out and do a bit of a drawing and enjoy the mindfulness and the gratitude that flows from that sort of art activity. So, I’m really, really glad that you’ve spent this time with me on your journey to becoming Art Fit and I’ll see you soon.
