Gentle Breeze

Gentle Breeze


I call this painting, Gentle Breeze.

Like some of my previous paintings, this painting has taken a little bit longer then anticipated but, as always, the finished piece has been worth the extra work. I actually started this painting over my summer vacation shortly after I finished my painting, Ocean Wave, but I've only recently been able to finish it due to some difficulty I was experiencing with the painting. It didn't turn out exactly the way I wanted it to but I'm still happy with what I ended up with. It was an experiment and as an artist I believe that the key to growing creatively is by experimenting with new things and seeing how far I can take something that I'm already familiar with.

The intention behind my paintings is always to see what I can make other people feel and think of whenever someone sees one of my paintings. It's always interesting to me to hear what other people think of one of my paintings because what one person might see and feel in painting is almost always completely different then to the eyes of another.

What made this painting different though was that I tried to see if I could purposely try and stimulate a specific emotion or idea in the beholder by using certain colors and forms. In this case, the colors I used were mostly greens and the forms I used were mostly swirls and spirals. The specific feelings and emotions that I was aiming for, as always, will be left open to the imagination to interpret. I try my best not to influence whatever the beholder interprets from the painting by prescribing any specific ideas beyond just a title that I feel fits with the painting.

The process for this painting was frustrating but it could simply be a case of what happens when an young artist tries to work through their first creative block. As I mentioned before, I started this painting shortly after I finished my last painting, Ocean Wave, over the summer. During the process of my last painting I was experiencing a lot of creative block at the time, which I also talked about in the post I made for it, and after I finished it I was still experiencing some creative block. As an artist I've never really experienced a creative block before so this feeling was still new to me when I was starting this painting. I didn't know what what to do about the creative block I was experiencing so I decided to try and work through it because I didn't want it to interfere with the commitment I was now putting into my dream of being a true artist. I had reached a point where I wanted to get more serious about my art work and my dream as an artist by trying to be more consistent with my paintings and putting more work into how often I worked on my paintings. When I started this painting I knew I wanted to experiment with what kinds of feelings I could purposely stimulate in other people by using certain colors but I didn't know what kind of forms or colors I wanted to use. I decided that I would try to work with green again but I was running very low on my good vibrant green paint that came in little tubes so I knew that I was going to have to use my paint sparingly. I was down to only two tubes of dark and lime green paint and with two more as backups in case I didn't have enough or I accidentally made a big mistake. Mostly I tried to use up what was left of an old jar of gooey green paint I had. There wasn't much of it either so I did everything I could to plan something out before I started so that way I could save as much paint as possible.

After I planed the colors and forums I wanted to use and lightly sketched everything out with a pencil I began to have trouble while I was painting. It started out as a few small mistakes but after a while if I make too many mistakes on a canvas and I keep repainting over and over on something the canvas starts to loose texture because there's so much paint layered on to it. This is what I really wanted to avoid because I had this problem with last painting also. The reason why this is so frustrating for me is because once this happens to a canvas it then becomes increasingly more difficult to blend colors together without a rough surface to grab onto the paint. Long story short, this is why it took me a while to finish this painting. After I realized that I had made this mistake I knew it was going to be difficult to get the effects I wanted and I kind of kept putting it off because I didn't want to deal with it. I feel like the colors are a little more washed out then I would have liked but I did my best with what I had and to me that's what matters most.

Sometimes I like to try new things and experiment with something I've never done before. Sometimes I discover something new by experimenting with new things and sometimes I end up experimenting with something a little too much, but I've always believed that rather I succeed or fail, the point of continuing to experiment and try new things is to learn and grow from whatever I end up with. I'm still not entirely sure about "creative block" but I think maybe in the future I'll try taking a break between paintings the next time I experience a creative block.

Now let's make another one!

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Title: Gentle Breeze
Medium: Acrylic Paint
Year: 2017
Original Painting: For Sale

Ocean Wave

Ocean Wave


This painting, which is called Ocean Wave, was inspired by the idea of an ocean beach and watching the tides come in.

 Whenever I make a painting I want people to be able to look at it and feel something. I like the idea of people being able to be taken to new places in their own minds and awakening their imagination whenever they see my paintings. One thing this painting makes me think about is walking on a beach watching the tides come in and feeling the soft salty breeze from the ocean on my face.

 The process for this painting took a little more struggling than usual but as always it was worth the hard work. The first part of my creative process, when it comes to creating a new painting, basically involves me trying to decide what colors I wan't to use and what feeling or mood I want to give the painting. For this pice I wanted to challenge myself again and try something I hadn't done before and I was thinking a lot about colors and what colors I hadn't used yet. I wanted to create something using new colors that I hadn't used before but it seemed like I had used just about every basic color I could think of at least once in a painting. I thought really hard about all my previous painting that I had done and I tried to think of some colors that I hadn't used yet but I couldn't think of anything. Then I tried actually looking at the paintings that I had already done and I still couldn't think of anything so after a lot of frustration I decide to go back to my mental color wheel. I like to start with the three primary colors when I begin a new painting because that's where all other possible colors come from. It seemed like I had use every color of the rainbow at least once. I felt like there just weren't enough colors in the rainbow. I wanted more colors. For the first time the colors of a rainbow never seemed more colorless and dull. I wanted something that was completely impossible and I wanted brand new colors to simply be added to the color wheel.

 I was at creative block and then it hit me; Blue! I had used a lot of blue in my paintings to mix with other colors so that I could get the color I wanted but I haha never really dedicated a painting to just blue! So as I started to think about the color blue I immediately thought about the ocean, and the slow tides coming up the beach, foamy pools of water, and a soft salty breeze.

 The form I wanted for the painting only had to be redone about two times so it came pretty easily. The specific colors I ended up with on the other hand where a lot harder to come up with. I had the idea and color that I wanted to use so I got some blue and white paint and I started experimenting with the color blue. I started mixing the colors to see what types of blues I could get and I realized that getting the right types of blue that I wanted wasn't going to as easy as I had hoped. I spent nearly two weeks in frustration because I just couldn't get the right blue I wanted. At this point I started to get very nervous about rather or not I would be able to finish this painting. I'd never given up on a painting before a definitely didn't want to start now. I could get the colors I wanted and it seemed hopeless but I just couldn't bring myself to give up on this painting. I was committed but I started to questions my talent as artist. The thing that kept going through my head was, "what would this mean if I couldn't do this?" I didn't like the idea that my abilities as an artist could be limited. I had hoped that all the other paintings I had done had been completed because of talent but what if I just got lucky on all those and all my luck had just run out?

 I was about to give up when I realized that I had two really small tubes of light blue paint  and it was exactly the color I wanted but the thing was I wasn't sure if it would be enough for my whole painting. I didn't want to give up on this painting and the small amount of paint was my only chance to finish this painting so I decided that I would just have to ration out what I had to finish my painting. I didn't want to accept the possibility that I've just been getting lucky with all my paintings. In the end the two small tubes of paint turned out to be just enough paint for me to finish my painting and I ended up using every last drop of the paint for my painting.

 It looks like hard work and commitment really does pay off.

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Title: Ocean Wave
Medium: Acrylic Paint
Year: 2016
Original Painting: Sold

Radiance

Radiance


I am very excited to announce that I am now a high school graduate of 2016!
It definitely wasn't easy but it's nice to finally know that after all these years my hard work paid off.
I also won the Art Department Award at this years awards ceremony!

I've never been the best at school because of my learning disabilities. I've always been a little slower than everyone else and it's always been a little harder for me to grasp certain concepts. Throughout middle school and even into high school I would always need a little extra help in some of the class. As a result of all these obstacles I always had to try harder than everyone else. So in way, my greatest weakness is ultimately my greatest strength because no matter what I'm doing I always have to try harder than everyone else.
Although, no matter what grade I was in, I always enjoyed being in my art class! Throughout middle school and most of high school I was definitely not the best artist in school by any means but it was what I was best at so really cherished it because it what the only thing that made me feel like I was good at something. However, throughout my entire school career everyone always recognized me as an artiest.
I always knew that art was what I loved doing and I knew that whatever career I went into one day would have to be art related so for a long time I kept searching for an art style that I thought I was good at and worked for me. I tried every art medium I could get my hands on like pencil, pastels, watercolor, chalk, wire, ect. Although I loved and enjoyed all of them, they just weren't what I was looking for and it wasn't until an art project I did at the end of my junior year of high school that I finally found what I was looking for.
I was getting ready to paint something a very large square sheet of thin wood that almost went up to my chest and I was trying to decide what to paint on it and I thought about the Starry Night painting by Vango because there was a large model of it it in the art room made up of small square canvases that had each been painted by different people from a previous art class in the past. I was thinking about how all the colors flowed together to make the painting and I really liked it so I thought I would try something like that. Long story short, I really liked the way that project turned out and it inspired me to explore painting which led to me finally discovering a style that worked for me. That discovery then led to my first real painting, Aqua, which then led to the beginning of new series of painting that I decided to start which I'm still continuing to this day! It's hard to believe that it's actually been a year since my great discovery and how much my style has has evolved with every painting.
It wasn't an easy journey to graduation but I am happy to say that I will be continuing my education in the fall and I hope that I will be able to college to learn to be an art teacher so that one day I can help open up other young artist to the world of art and creativity. Some of my success as an artist, that is how I have decided to define success, might have been the result of a good art teacher that I had in high school and I think that it is important for anyone no matter what career they want to go into and not just for artist to have someone in their lives who knows what they're doing and who has the experience to help guide the process and I think I would like to help bring some of that into other people's lives one day because I definitely remember times throughout my high school art classes where I wouldn't listen to directions because I thought I could do it on my own and I couldn't and then the art teacher would have to come along and help guide what I was doing into what it should be. So I'm thankful that I was able to have the art teacher that I had because I don't think I would be doing what I do now otherwise.
Although my journey is still short, from the experience that I do have I think the advice that I would give to other artist trying to find their own style or anyone aspiring to be an artist would be to keep practicing what their doing and most importantly keep trying new things because you never know where you're going to find the thing that just clicks and resonates with you. Let there be no boundaries to your creativity and explore everything you can. Also, when it comes to trying to find your own style it's not something you can force to happen either because sometimes it just happens. Sometimes you might even have a style and you won't even know it or recognize it. The most important thing of all is to do what you love and don't do something just because it makes someone else happy. Don't let anything stop you from doing what you love because that causes you form boundaries for yourself and it is important for the artistic mind to have no boundaries.

This is the first painting that I've finished during my first summer vacation as a high school graduate and, although there are still some other things that I still have to get into order so that I can go to college in the fall, I've decided to take this summer easy and once again continue to focus on my art and grow as an artist.
I call it, Radiance.
The idea for this painting was to try doing another painting similar to what I had done with Beautiful Fire using similar colors except this time I wanted to use more yellows and oranges to create more of a defined glowing effect because last time I didn't have the luxury of being able to blend the yellows with the reds and still have plenty of yellow left to work with because I was working with a lot less paint at the time. It's not as elaborate as some of my other paintings but it still wasn't any easier because all the real work actually went into trying to blend the colors together correctly and when I comes to a painting I don't call it finished unless I am absolutely happy with it. At first I just thought that I would do another painting where I just played around with the colors but I ended up redoing the main part that flows through the middle of the painting almost three times. I started the painting by just playing around with the colors but I quickly realized that I wasn't going to able to do that with this painting because the red ended up being so dominant and I wasn't achieving the glowing effect that I wanted so I had to use white to clear that part off and start over. Overall I really like this painting and I'm happy with the way it turned out and I think I does express the radiant glow that I was after.

Now let's do another one!

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Title: Radiance
Medium: Acrylic Paint
Year: 2016
Original Painting: For Sale