"Paintings With Personality"

Here is my finished painting done from a notan value sketch. It is of Dresden, Germany, 18x24 with both transparent and opaque watercolor.

Below is a detailed, mixed media painting, with pattern on which I am working. The plan is to get it finished and do another, hopefully more creative, pattern painting that I will post next week. I say hopefully, because I have to be in New York on two separate occasions this week. The painting below is not of a pattern I created, but one from a photograph I took last summer. I zoomed in on the subject and removed a serving plate, but that is the only change I made. So, I am in the process of doing something I dislike – copying a photograph. It is a lot easier, slower, and less interesting, than coming up with my own composition.

This is the result of my first session 0f meticulously drawing and painting.

This is after my second session with the salt and pepper shakers. I hope to finish after one more session.

If you have been following my blog, you know I don’t consider copying a photograph deserving of the title "creative art". The dictionary definition of create is: 1. to cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes. 2. to evolve from one’s own thought or imagination, as a work of art or an invention. Based on that definition, copying a photograph that is already there is not creating or being creative, nor is copying a scene being creative.

Therefore, time permitting, I will try to paint a loose, original design created by me, not the camera, using pattern. My biggest problem in attempting this project is wondering if I have enough experience and ability to pull it off. I am an intuitive painter who attacks an art work and hopes for the best. The result of that method of painting is… a lot of failures. I generally let my years of learning and experience carry me through without actually really thinking the thing through. This time, in order to include the pattern, I have to plan the whole thing out. I’m going to fall back on painting a person because that is the subject with which I am most comfortable.

I have bits and pieces of an idea floating around in my head. The hard part will be in capturing those bits and pieces, organizing them and getting them down on paper using the elements and principles of design. Wish me luck.

Please leave a comment below. What do you think about copying what you see? Is it a valid creative expression?