“The artist must work so hard, so long, that a brain develops and lives, all of itself, in his fingers …. The artist must not think of critical rewards or money he will get for painting pictures. He must think of beauty here in this brush ready to flow if he will release it.”
-Ray Bradbury
It’s odd, when you think about it, that so many beginning painters assume if they can’t produce a decent painting on the first, or second, or even tenth or twenty-fifth try, that they must not “have the talent” and should take up origami instead. So wrong!
Finding your way as an artist is no different from learning to play the cello. You wouldn’t expect to pick up a cello and be able to play Brahms, let alone compose beautiful original melodies the first two, three, or who know how many times you played it!
No, you would work and practice and practice and work, and eventually there would come a day when the instrument seems almost to play itself. And that is joy, and that is how one learns to paint. With enough work and dedication, creating fulfilling art is within virtually anybody’s grasp.
Cesar Santos, Farfalline Della Notte
Getting Into the Flow
Ray Bradbury, the writer, proposed the following three stages for what others have called flow – WORK, RELAXATION, and DON’T THINK. It doesn’t really matter which one you start with – if you just keep going (work), eventually you will encounter the others. If you just start drawing with nothing in mind (DON’T THINK), and stop worrying and let yourself be free to follow every whim (RELAXATION), you’ll find yourself starting canvas after canvas (WORK).
What’ll happen is you’ll enter the flow state, where you do not have to tell your palette knife which color to mix or your brush what the nest stroke should be. “The surgeon doesn’t tell his scalpel what to do. Nor does the athlete advise his body,” Bradbury says. “Suddenly a natural rhythm is achieved. The body thinks for itself.” And so the artist’s hand. It’s kind of like gardening: you have to plant the seeds (WORK), water the whole garden without worrying about each sprout (RELAXATION), and let nature do her thing (DON’T THINK).
Cesar Santos, “To the Letter,” acrylic on paper, 100 x 70 cm
And you have to plant a lot of seeds. To a certain extent it’s a numbers game. Quantity leads to quality. You have to leave a mile of canvases behind you until you can reliably make something good. But we shouldn’t think of it as “work” in the negative sense, nor look down on the paintings that didn’t shine as failures. The only failure is giving up. As Bradbury says: “To fail is to give up. But you are in the midst of a moving process. Nothing fails then. All goes on. Work is done. If good, you learn from it. If bad, you learn even more. Work done and behind you is a lesson to be studied. There is no failure unless one stops.”
“We are working not for work’s sake, producing not for production’s sake…. What we are trying to do is find a way to release the truth that lies in all of us.” (from Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing)
As all Zen archers know, it’s when we’re able to do a thing “without trying” that excellence and creativity really begin to flow.
Beginner’s luck aside, you do not get to routinely enter that state without having to work. It’s possible to make friends with work though, to buddy up to it like a partner, trusting it’ll help you get where you don’t yet know you need to go. There’s no way around showing up and doing the work. And this, of course, means frustration, dashed hopes, isolation, and self-doubt … and epiphany, connection, and flow.
Cesar Santos, “Roots,” oil on linen, 102 x 70 cm
Cesar Santos, whose paintings are featured in this edition, teaches mastery of the figure in his video Secrets of the Figure, available here.
“The mind likes to play with matter, animals are informed without written language.” ~ Cesar Santos / @santocesart
If you’re in awe of the color harmony you see in museums, learn to re-create it in your own paintings with Cesar’s “Secrets of Figure Painting” workshop. Cesar is known as “The Man Who Conquered the World Through Painting.” In fact, he’s not only one of the best painters on the planet, but he’s also the perfect person to learn from. He remembers learning all of the methods and techniques that he’ll teach you. He knows what artists struggle with and can teach you how to get past challenges.
“I think he does a great job of explaining his thinking and knowledge of his art,” said Alice Broughton in a review of the workshop. “I have both the drawing dvd and the painting dvd which make a full course load of teaching. They are lengthy, but do not leave out much as opposed to many dvds which are over-edited. Of course, this artist’s personality comes across – his friendliness and caring about what he’s doing.”
