Losing painting skills!

[Cerridwyn1st]

Compare, but don\'t obsess

Originally posted by Dragonsreach
Cerridwyn1st

There will always be people who are better or worse; the only true measure of your ability to improve is your own work.

. That is a very good point. But If you don\'t make a comparison to another painters, better work how can you set a standard to aim at achieving?

It\'s OK to compare yourself to others as a way to find the means to improve. It\'s not OK to invest your feelings of worth as an artist in that comparison.

If you measure your worth as an artist off the work of someone else, you will feel good about yourself when someone is worse (or you can find some way to bring them down) and bad when someone is better.

Invest your self-opinion in comparisons of your own work.

The study of the work of others is necessary to improve and update your own skills. Putting yourself on an emotional rollercoaster over that comparison is not.

 

[Dragonsreach]

That is a very sensible and worthwhile philosophy. I wish that there were more poeple who could use that and move on instead of the infantile behaviour evidenced of late.

I know that I\'ve looked at other peoples work and wished I could achieve their standard and by trying to, I\'m getting better myself. I know that I will never paint in the same manner as the likes of Elouchard, ZaphoD, SaxonAngel and others of the same calibre. But it won\'t stop me from trying to get better and as I\'ve recently seen, I seem to be getting a certain style of my own developing, which I like.

 

[Cerridwyn1st]

Well, it took years and a lot of eating my own heart out to develop that attitude. It isn\'t maturity, it\'s self-preservation. You can\'t function if you compare yourself others all the time and take it personally.

I don\'t know that Glyn would agree that you are not his caliber.

 

[tooshy]

Reach for the stars...

CMON is a real shock to the system. You\'ve been quite happy in your own little world of \'excellence\' and then *BANG* you see the talent on here.

However, without seeing the talent on CMON, how can you improve? It\'s a tough test and very disheartening at times, but I know I have improved since CMON became a part of my painting life. It\'s just the improvements I\'ve made are huge compared to my previous models, but still nowhere near the likes of Cyril etc

I do notice that I tend to \'stall\' a lot more on painting figures these days. I start off all hopeful and then I spy something on here and *poof* my \'get up and go\' gets up and goes! lol

I agree with the various comments here - don\'t bite off more that you can chew. No matter how much I practice - my next model will not look like one of the Top 10\'s here - but I know I\'ll be that little bit closer to improving on my last figure.

 

[airhead]

Tooshy, you nailed it. I used to \"could paint\". I could drybrush, I could wash, I could dot an eye.

Now, I can blend, I can still wash, but I wet blend instead of drybrush. I even glaze a little. I still have trouble with eyes, but I am getting better. I won\'t be in the top 10 for a long time (if ever) but I have improved and am improving (the latter is very important to me).

But mostly, I am enjoying painting again. I can outpaint most of the stuff I see at the local hobby shop, but I have a lot of room for improvement. I am challenged to improve but not disheartened.

 

[Chrispy]

I like to think of the times I feel I\'m doing worse than before like a ball bounicing. You let it down softly, it won\'t come up that much. You throw it down hard and it\'ll come up and smack you in the face..

 

[Braveheart712]

The problems with knowledge..

I read this whole thread and you made me think of something I was once told by someone far wiser than myself, that is knowledge is only good in the right hands and that too much knowledge can be a bad thing. Here at CMON I have found myself exposed to a wide variety of techniques that I have tried to encorporate in my painting as I stuggle along the path of self improvement. When I paint (not nearly often enough) I try to keep in mind better ways that I have seen and read about here but my primary focus still reamins on having fun and enjoying the hobby. Relax when you paint, enjoy what you are doing, maybe you will produce a Golden Daemon, maybe not but no matter what the final result is should remain fun. You will improve, maybe to the level of a Golden Daemon winner, but if you paint for pure enjoyment, you will never be disappointed with your results.

\"Of course , that is just my opinion, I could be wrong...\" -Dennis Miller

 

[Cerridwyn1st]

Developing a different range of skills

This reminds me of something I saw on the Reaper website. They have a really good article on how to thin paint.

Here\'s the deal- when painters start learning, they d evelop brush skills that are appropriate to using thicker paint, because (not knowing any better), that\'s what they paint with.

When they learn about the \"advanced\" techniques and start thinning their paint, the old brush skills don\'t work anymore. So in addition to learning new painting techniques, he or she has to re-learn brush techniques.

This can leave the painter feeling like he or she has lost skills, when really he or she is beginning to learn new ones.