Vermeer: Young Woman with a Pearl Earring
David Hockney reckons that Vermeer used a camera obscura to get his incredible images.
Scan by Mark Harden
Recharging Your Creative Batteries
We all get stale and unable to think of new ideas. Stuck doing the same subjects again and again. How do you break out and start your creative processes going again? Here's some ideas. Try some, they might work for you.
Have a Break. You don't have to always be painting or drawing. Many people find that taking a few days (or a week or a month) off from painting allows them to return to it full of new ideas. You will produce more good work in one week after taking a break, than you would otherwise have produced in a month. Don't feel guilty about not working. Farmers leave land fallow for one year in every three because they know they'll grow more crops in the long term. Fallow periods are an essential part of your artistic life.
Take up knitting, or embroidery, or pottery, or anything creative. Refocus on an activity that's creative but unrelated to painting. You'll continue to exercise your artistic muscles (so no chance of getting flabby) but will still get the benefit of a break. You might even find that it opens new opportunities for mixed media.
Just Do It! Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and ruin a perfect piece of paper. Don't get too precious about your work. Spoil canvases and waste paint until you start producing good work. Throw the worst paintings away. Producing bad work doesn't make you a bad painter. A good general is happy to loose a battle if he thinks he can win the war.
Listen to your Inner Critic, then tell it to get lost! That voice in your head that tells you that you'll never be an artist, that your painting is rubbish? We all hear it, so ignore it.
Go see what other artists are doing. Visit exhibitions, talk to artist friends, visit the library and take some art books home. Its hard to be creative in a vacuum. Cross-pollenate your ideas with other artists, past and present.