Why Painting Sucks
Because I don't have enough angst in my life, I've set up a low-budget version of my art studio again in the basement where it can do no harm.
Art has always - ALWAYS - frustrated me, but every once in a while I do something that I think is cool. Fortunately, every time I back away from it, I step to it a little better. Unfortunately, I'm not even close to being able to paint as well as I do music or writing, and as time passes the frustration grows.
Writing is different, to me it's easier, no matter who you are. If you can talk, you can write. Why? Because people use language all of the time, we communicate, pick up new words and ideas, and we can then incorporate those things into writing without too much hassle, and certainly without the need for formal instruction (to get off the ground, anyway). You either know another word for "pissed off" or you don't, and in many cases "pissed off" is probably okay anyway.
But in painting there is no substitute for actually knowing how to paint, how to use what brush when, how to stack color, how to be patient, how to lay the idea out. When you look at a painting you've done you know whether or not you've hit the mark very quickly, and if you haven't there's little you can do about it except start over. Writing isn't like that. Yeah, you can see the problems, but they're so easy to fix compared to having to recycle or break out a new canvas and gesso it all up for another run.
And writing is cheaper, too. Depending on what you do as a painter it can cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars to play. I spent a hundred bucks on paint yesterday, then needed some more. When I write, I turn on the computer and boom, I start writing. For free.
Here's an example, live, in action:
As I type this, I have this idea. I want realize this idea as a painting. So I sat down and thought about its dimensions (I like long, big works) and what the look might be (contrasting colors, very bright but with lots of texture). I don't yet have a painting voice, so I have to experiment all the time to see what I CAN do to realize the idea.
So I sat down with my sketchbook and broke out all the colored pencils and started sketching this old black man realized in blue.
Now, already, I have a problem. I am horrible at drawing or painting people, and what I'ev done before wasn't realized in an off-color. So we have two challenges in one.
Because I'm a better drawer than I am a painter, I come up with a fairly strong sketch and I meditate on the colors some more.
Today I go downstairs and I make sure the recycled canvas I did last night is ready, and then I go for it: I do some cubist lines for background textures, then fade them way out. It's really light, but it's supposed to be so that when I drop this dude in it, he really pops.
So then I finish the background. REALLY nice. I do great backgrounds.
But I stall out on the dude.
I do some paint studies and the brushes are all wrong and the colors aren't what they need to be and all of my lines seem fat and childish and I think about how it's so much easier to draw the damn thing and how much I'd like to finish that fourth level of Dungeon Maker on PSP.
That's where I was at ten minutes ago.
Now, watch this. I take a look at the sketch of the old dude again and then I write the following (as you see it, no edits):
------------------------------
Gon' lose everything in this
world, you keep up this way.
World won't 'bide by your dreams,
way you leave 'em lying around
like dat.
One day, world gone up and swallow
all them dreams you done let slide,
peel its lips back and laugh
and gulp all at once.
Gonna' make good suppers out
your dreams, have leftovers.
Take it to work the next day
in lunchpails and sit around,
burpin' your dreams off,
sneak-cheekin' your wishes at his
buddies.
That's why no matter what I gots
to lose, I never give up the brass.
World can't have that dream.
I ain't nobody's dessert.
--------------------
Poem, done. What did it cost me? Nothing. I make it mean something, clean it up, and boom, done poem. Five minutes worth of work. The painting? The painting will never be what I see in my head. The poem might.
That's a very, very..............frustrating thing for me.
Art has always - ALWAYS - frustrated me, but every once in a while I do something that I think is cool. Fortunately, every time I back away from it, I step to it a little better. Unfortunately, I'm not even close to being able to paint as well as I do music or writing, and as time passes the frustration grows.
Writing is different, to me it's easier, no matter who you are. If you can talk, you can write. Why? Because people use language all of the time, we communicate, pick up new words and ideas, and we can then incorporate those things into writing without too much hassle, and certainly without the need for formal instruction (to get off the ground, anyway). You either know another word for "pissed off" or you don't, and in many cases "pissed off" is probably okay anyway.
But in painting there is no substitute for actually knowing how to paint, how to use what brush when, how to stack color, how to be patient, how to lay the idea out. When you look at a painting you've done you know whether or not you've hit the mark very quickly, and if you haven't there's little you can do about it except start over. Writing isn't like that. Yeah, you can see the problems, but they're so easy to fix compared to having to recycle or break out a new canvas and gesso it all up for another run.
And writing is cheaper, too. Depending on what you do as a painter it can cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars to play. I spent a hundred bucks on paint yesterday, then needed some more. When I write, I turn on the computer and boom, I start writing. For free.
Here's an example, live, in action:
As I type this, I have this idea. I want realize this idea as a painting. So I sat down and thought about its dimensions (I like long, big works) and what the look might be (contrasting colors, very bright but with lots of texture). I don't yet have a painting voice, so I have to experiment all the time to see what I CAN do to realize the idea.
So I sat down with my sketchbook and broke out all the colored pencils and started sketching this old black man realized in blue.
Now, already, I have a problem. I am horrible at drawing or painting people, and what I'ev done before wasn't realized in an off-color. So we have two challenges in one.
Because I'm a better drawer than I am a painter, I come up with a fairly strong sketch and I meditate on the colors some more.
Today I go downstairs and I make sure the recycled canvas I did last night is ready, and then I go for it: I do some cubist lines for background textures, then fade them way out. It's really light, but it's supposed to be so that when I drop this dude in it, he really pops.
So then I finish the background. REALLY nice. I do great backgrounds.
But I stall out on the dude.
I do some paint studies and the brushes are all wrong and the colors aren't what they need to be and all of my lines seem fat and childish and I think about how it's so much easier to draw the damn thing and how much I'd like to finish that fourth level of Dungeon Maker on PSP.
That's where I was at ten minutes ago.
Now, watch this. I take a look at the sketch of the old dude again and then I write the following (as you see it, no edits):
------------------------------
Gon' lose everything in this
world, you keep up this way.
World won't 'bide by your dreams,
way you leave 'em lying around
like dat.
One day, world gone up and swallow
all them dreams you done let slide,
peel its lips back and laugh
and gulp all at once.
Gonna' make good suppers out
your dreams, have leftovers.
Take it to work the next day
in lunchpails and sit around,
burpin' your dreams off,
sneak-cheekin' your wishes at his
buddies.
That's why no matter what I gots
to lose, I never give up the brass.
World can't have that dream.
I ain't nobody's dessert.
--------------------
Poem, done. What did it cost me? Nothing. I make it mean something, clean it up, and boom, done poem. Five minutes worth of work. The painting? The painting will never be what I see in my head. The poem might.
That's a very, very..............frustrating thing for me.