The blank canvas syndrome

This article was first published in "Frequency Magazine" – December 2011.

Writers have blank page issues and painters may encounter the blank canvas syndrome: a dry spell where we lose the energy to paint, the appetite for creating or the habit of drawing. We become too busy with our life or feel in a rut, making again and again the same painting.

A period of rest from the easel is not a bad thing if it’s not for too long. I find pauses necessary to incubate ideas or assimilate new explored territory. However, there is a risk that you break your good habit of creating daily. One way to take a break without really stopping is to explore a different medium or a new technique.

If you have stopped painting for some times and you feel down because of it, the best way out is not to ask yourself “why?” but just to take small steps to get back into it. Artists are “makers” and it’s by making that we find again our artist way. Here are five suggestions to end a dry spell:

1. Start small: do a small sketch or a small study in oil, watercolour or acrylic. It will only take you ten minutes to an hour – not much time really. The main obstacle is often to get started and if you tell yourself “I am just going to make a small study, nothing much really”, your brain stops worrying about it and you passed the first hurdle.

  

2. Go plein-air. Painting plein-air (i.e. on location) offers a different sensation. As you are outside of your house, distractions will not get on your way. As you go on your painting expedition, you carve out painting time in your schedule. The change of scenery is also good for your morale and feed your inspiration.

  

3. Visit a museum or an art gallery. Looking at art always gives me the urge to paint. Seeing art works “in the flesh” is different from browsing mere reproductions. You can see the texture and feel the touch of the artist.

4. Read art books and art magazines. Read widely: artists’ biographies or correspondence, artists’ writings, art instructions books and articles. Read for 30 minutes and then start a small work.

5. Consult your idea file. If you don’t have an idea file, it’s a good time to start one. I have a notebook that I carry around and make notes of ideas for future paintings. It can be anything from subject matters, a particular location where I could paint on site, a quick thumbnail of a composition or a possible title for a future piece. Going through your old paintings may also prove a valuable exercise, by bringing you ideas on where you want to go next.

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10 pieces of advice to oil painting beginners

This is my last article for Frequency Magazine. Since March 2008, I have covered many topics and I thought it would be good to circle back to some fundamentals of oil painting.


1. Composition is the key: Avoid the obvious focal point stuck in the middle of the canvas. Think how you can create more interesting compositions by using inbalance, patterns, grouping shapes and using light to lead the eye of the viewer where you want.

2. Paint from nature if you can: Photography is a marvellous invention and can be used in many ways in your art, but sitting on the spot and capturing a scene as you see it has no substitute. It does not matter how many mega-pixels your camera has, your eye is better still and it is the door to your creative brain. This is your reality, not cropped or distanced by the lens of a camera.


3. Play with the light: The light is a key element in paintings. It is the cement between composition, colours and tones. The light models every object. Shadows give direction. The same subject will look totally different depending on the time of the day and the time of the year. Morning light and light at the end of the day will give you long shadows and softer colours and edges. Mid-day light in summer will bring hard edges and erase colours. Visit places you want to paint at different times of the year as the changes in the light will change the mood of the place.

Ice and fire - Oil on canvas board (6" x 8") by Benoit Philippe

4. Your best subject may be behind you. A variation of this is: your best subject may be on your doorstep.

5. Paint fat over lean: There are not many rules that you should stick to, but this one is an imperative. The first reason is conservation: this principle prevents cracks to form on the surface of your work when the paint dries. The other reason is practical: if you start to paint lean, you can layer richer paint on top without getting muddy colours and work longer this way.


6. Use a limited palette: If you do so, you will get to know very well the colours on your palette, their texture, and the way they mix together. This will also force you to master colour mixing. And yes, you can buy a tube of this very special colour that you saw at the art shop, but only after you tried to mix it and realised that there is no way to create it from your limited palette.

7. Refrain from using white as long as you can: Mixing white into your colours will add body to them but also mute them. Too often you see dead pictures because the artist included white in all the colours.


8. Block-in your dark areas first, then your mid-tones and then the lighter areas. There are two advantages working this way: in oil, it is easier to make darks areas lighter than the reverse, so you can adjust tone balance by lightening your darkest areas; in addition, it makes sense to get the dark areas first in because the light areas will appear even lighter when contrasted with dark areas.

9. Use the biggest brushes you can: this way, you won’t be tempted to put too many details into your painting.


10. Use telling details: This last point goes hand in hand with the previous advice. The idea is that you do not need to put in every detail or paint every single blade of grass on the canvas. The viewer’s brain will fill-in the gaps. So, if you draw a few bricks on a wall, this is sufficient information to create the impression of a brick wall.


These are just my views and, after you try these rules, you should break them (except the “paint fat on lean” rule) or only keep the ones that work for you.

Painting as poetry

“Painting is poetry and is always written in verse with plastic rhymes, never in prose."

                            Picasso (in “Life with Picasso by Françoise Gilot – English translation by Carlton Lake)

Sculptures at the V&A museum

This is the last post in the series on the Victoria and Albert (V&A) museum in London, England.

The sculpture gallery on the ground floor mix sculptures from different periods.

Peasant woman nursing a baby by Aimé-Jules Dalou (designer and maker)

Rodin

Head of Iris by Rodin

This is an enlarged version of the head of the Crouching Woman. According to the notice, it was probably enlarged by Henri Lebossé, Rodin's associate, before being cast in bronze.

A surprise in the post

I received a thick envelop from Mexico covered with 15 beautiful stamps. As I could not remember ordering anything from Mexico, I was intrigued.

I opened the envelop and found the book “Las pitahayas en las artes plásticas” (Dragon fruits in visual arts) by Adolfo Rodríguez Canto.

And on page 76, the "Dragon fruit" oil painting I did in 2008, together with my bio and part of my artist statement.

The book features many other artists from around the world who painted dragon fruits.

Adolfo Rodríguez Canto was born in Maxcanú, Yucatán (Mexico) in 1959. He is an Agricultural Engineer specialist in rural sociology. He has been teaching at the Autonomous University Chapingo 1982, now in the Regional University Center Yucatan Peninsula.

This book was a nice surprise and it will be a good occasion to refresh my Spanish. And now I know that “pitahayas” means “dragon fruit” in Spanish.

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