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Learn to Fly!

First - The traditional ...

Unlocking your potential as an artist is as much about self-confidence as it is about raw talent. Most of us allow ourselves to at least suspect that we have a basic talent, but allowing yourself to be thought of as an 'artist', to say more than 'Sort of ...' when asked 'Are you an artist?', or to hold out your work for critical appraisal moves you on up a gear or two.

Confidence starts with results that show you that you have potential, and that means being willing to experiment and mess up - a lot! For my part, I have to say that art lessons at school taught me precious little, and casting an eye over the shoulder of my three daughters as they went through the same routine many years later, just served to confirm my view that giving a youngster a bucket load of different media and saying little more than 'Get on with it' or 'Just experiment' is hardly going to make masters out of many.

I have had no formal training whatsoever beyond those school years. What I know I have learned from reading, from looking and from trying. My favoured media are Pencil, Water Colour, Inks and Airbrush. It was a long time before I realised with pencil work that evenly applied pressure to a surface with a wide range of soft to hard pencils is the best way to achieve professional looking results. It was a little longer before I found that with oils you start with the darkest colours and build up to the highlights and then that exactly the opposite rules apply to water colour work. Start with the palest of colours, all white should be the paper itself. On a female form it feels like painting a pale clay model at first, then add subtle colour, and later the depth.

... and now for something completely different!

( well ... it was for me any way! )

I saw the image on the left in a magazine and was amazed by the quality of the skin tones and the realism of the soap bubbles. (You can click it to view it larger) I leaned the work was by the artist Boris Vallejo and I bought a book of his work. Reading the text brought me, for the first time, to the word 'Airbrush'. Investigating what an airbrush was, changed my art forever. For that reason I want to share my findings here with the uninitiated ...

So, to learn more about this amazing divice ... click here It could change your art forever too!

And always remember - very little changes.

If you are lucky enough to create something which is wholly new then WOW!
but if not yet  - Hey - You can have a lot of fun while you're waiting!

To see how the 'old' and the 'not so old' can be so very close - and a million miles apart ...

And finally, itscritical to know that confidence is key to success.
To gain that you must find your own favoured media and style.
It's all part of the fun (and the pain) of getting to grips with your art ...

So, like I said ... Learn to Fly!

Given the talent, the patience, and the will, you can unlock your true potential. Let your imagination take flight. Remember, there's no harm in travelling roads others have trodden before you, in the end, 'YOU' will come through. But please, in the early days especially, just do what ever it takes to get an image down, trace it, freehand it, throw buckets of paint at it - whatever! You'll only get where you're going by producing an awful lot of junk. Hopefully, not too much of mine has found its way onto these pages! Image (left) : Hajime Sorayama - another master of the airbrush!

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