The Workshop is Over, Now What?

The beauty of painting is this: as you progress and improve the more demands you’ll place on yourself and this craft. You’ll never get to where you want to be. I say this is the “good news” and “bad news” of painting. So let’s get started! Spend some time thinking about some reasonable goal setting relating to your painting. Set this in writing and review weekly. Make your goals doable (is that a word?). Decide on a time limit; next three months, six months, etc. Starting out, short term is better. Be specific, i.e. I’m going to explore clouds for the next six paintings. You’re list shouldn’t be exhaustive; they should be something that you can reasonably do. The temptation is to attack everything at once. Don’t fall into this trap. The purpose of goals is to organize your efforts spending time addressing areas you’d like to improve. This sounds very easy but, trust me on this, it’s not. Again, we tend to think of painting as somehow different but it’s like learning anything that’s difficult, a disciplined and focused approach works fastest. I also suggest that you consider setting up small still-lifes and working from life. These can (and should) be very simple arrangements. All the information is there to work from. It also eliminates the compulsion to paint something “dear” and frees you to focus on mixing and applying paint.