Hoq to Get Good at Art After a Long Break

Getting Back to Art

Before diving into fine art-making full fourth dimension, I dabbled on and off. Mostly off. For decades. Getting back to art has been one hell of a journey.

In my early twenties, I painted and doodled, and kept art journals.  In Rockport, Massachusetts, while renting a converted chicken coop/cottage (below) for the summertime with a friend, we filled journal pages and covered the ceiling with watercolors. We gushed out paintings with unfettered abandon, and tore pages from sketchbooks to tape them up, all effectually u.s..

In photos from that summer, art is pinned up everywhere effectually u.s.a.. It's all a bit garish, but we had a great summer simply making things. We weren't concerned with how the art came out. We were busy with the sheer delight of creative output, while surveying the opportunities and challenges of each new medium we played with.

A summertime in Rockport, MA, circa 1980, in a converted chicken coop-cottage, working at a glass blowing shop, and making art every day.

Art Interrupted

Then, I stopped making art for a long fourth dimension. I worked a variety of regular, non-art jobs, while wondering if one could really make a living in the arts. Everyone I consulted said no, there was no "existent" job for artists, unless I wanted to be 1) a commercial illustrator, which required skills I didn't believe I was blessed with, or ii) an elementary school instructor, where I might have time to pigment a little during summer breaks.

Eventually, I got a degree in Liberal Arts, with a modest in Education. Studio art classes were my favorite role of college, and making things with my hands again was a salve against the stress of finals & ii jobs. (The encouragement I got from professors in the fine art department during those years was a grateful first, and it has stayed with me to this day.)

1980's sketchbook fodder

Dust on the Art Supplies

I moved to California, and worked another non-art task for a little more than a decade. My art supplies festered in the garage. Work was consuming, rewarding and so very united nations-artistic.

But I was surrounded past some of the very height of the visionary gene pool; painters, illustrators, designers and world-class thinkers. The proximity to that brain-trust was wonderful, and I didn't realize it so, but I was on soak-cycle, watching, observing and taking subliminal notes.

Trying to become an artist: testing my plein air painting skills in Valencia, California (Photo: Nick Smirnoff)

Returning to Art

By the time I came back to art, with hopes to brand a living with information technology, I was out of practice, and utterly unsure of myself. Which media should I focus on? Did I retrieve how to depict? How do artists manage the business end of fine art these days?

I had no thought where to start, and I was overwhelmed to be attempting an art career and so late in life.

I researched in earnest, and attended art festivals and gallery exhibits. I subscribed to art trades, read books, joined art associations, wrote to my art professors for suggest. I cold-called local artists to ask if I could buy them lunch and quiz them.

I took workshops and filled journals with notes. I printed business cards, started blogging and shadowed a seasoned fine art festival exhibitor equally her "roadie" to observe the endeavour and supplies required to present like a pro.

There was so much to learn, and that was merely the logistics; the marketing, venues, sales and business organization end of the art earth. I however had to make the art.

Learning to talk to art patrons near my work at an early fine art festival (yous can't see it, but my knees were quaking) Gulp.

One time an Artist, Ever an Artist

When it came to greasing the gears of my fine art-making brain, everyone told me – unanimously –  that the best affair to do was draw and paint, all the time.

So, when I finally picked upward my drawing pencils and paint brushes – I was amazed – after just a week or 2 – at how much I had learned while I was away from art-making. I still had [have] a whole continent of practice to hike over, but once I started making again, I was floored. I could communicate, artistically, some of the accumulated observations I'd made over the previous decade.  Somehow, I got better with age, from merely observing.

Is whatever of this familiar to you? Have you taken a big, long hiatus from art? Are you lot wondering how to get back in the art-making swimming, to swim effectually a little?  Aye?  Oh skilful, because this rambling, convoluted story is for you. Yes you . Please keep reading…

Getting dorsum to fine art: shoring myself up with instructional books, preliminary sketches, and photos of paintings I dear (British watercolor artist Lucy Willis).

This Art Chat is for Y'all

Fifty-fifty though you might not have touched a brush for a few domestic dog years – it doesn't matter. Trust me.

Your innate, Notice-the-Loveliness-Radar for dappled sunlight across a table, reflections of a cityscape in a pool, or the softened edges in a veil of coastal fog – has been hard at work all this time. You are a Noticer. And yous know, deep down, that this is the truth.

You lot've been observing, and stacking details about color and shape and nuance from the start solar day y'all opened your eyes. You've been taking notes and stashing them in your brain-cranium, even though yous haven't made a affair (likewise those post-information technology annotation doodles while talking on the telephone). Once an artist'due south centre, always an artist's eye. You lot have a National Treasury of observations in your brain trust.

Productivity over Perfection

Artistic Conviction

Now, you lot but accept to let the observations you've nerveless out of the attic. Beginning slow, and small. Take a class, or just a weekend workshop. Sign upwards for a brusque fine art workshop online and put it on the calendar in ink so y'all'll finish it. Follow artists on Instagram. Join art groups online so you'll have company and communication on the first hike up the loma to return to your honey of fine art.

Buy a book about the kind of art you want to make. Listen to a podcast virtually making art, and spotter some youtube videos of artists doing demos to get your art game on.

Don't delay any longer. It'due south time to pick up a artistic tool and make something. Your brain is fit to burst with all the imagery you've been collecting. Really, I'm non kidding. Stop reading this, and become go a sketch pad. Kick your inner critic to the adjourn, and just make something. And generally, have a lot of fun. 🙂 I'm rooting for you, and I believe with my whole heart that Yous've Got This.

Thanks for your visit, and I'll run into you in the next post –

Belinda

Art Quote

Happiness is the effect of personal effort. Yous fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. Y'all have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your ain blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining information technology. You lot must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Entry Window 12 ten 6 Watercolor (sold)

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Source: https://www.belindadelpesco.com/getting-back-to-art.html/

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