Hallo my friends,
I hope you are all happy and healthy.
On my journey to getting an artist or better said to get the artist I want to be it’s a long way to go with a lot of questions to ask – questions that mostly come from the inside but sometimes also from the outside.
A few days ago I was writing with a fellow artist about her art and then she asked me if I am more interested in decorative art or if I also enjoy sketching.
I have to admit that I felt offended in the first step and I thought a lot about this question since then.
Today I felt like understanding something both concerning my approach to art as well as to the point of my journey. So, in the second step it helped me that I was asked this question.
But why did I felt offended in the beginning?
I would like to divide the question in its two parts, the sketching part and the decorative art part to explain.
A lot of hundreds of years sketching was just the preparing part of the main part of the artwork: the painting itself. After the great Leonardo da Vinci started to make sketches that stood for themselves, sketching recieved step by step its autonomous existence. Sketching is now of the same value as painting and that’s great!
Why do I tell you that?
First, because I studied history of art and want to share at least a little bit of my knowledge with you and second, because I indeed am not a sketcher. This is no bad thing, but I sometimes feel like a “real artist” had to be good in sketching.
I sketch as part of the process and now I know that it is okay. 🙂
And am I interested in decorative art more? What is meant with decorative art? Is not most of the art people like and hang on their walls decorative?
In the past few months I have simplified my paintings. I really love realistic paintings but I often had the feeling that there was no creative act in just reproducing reality – even though a painting is never 100% reproduced reality and even if it takes at least knowledge to paint realistically.
But for me there was something missing.
In the past two weeks I created simplified flower motives – inspired by the golden flower challenge – for my Flower Power Project and I was happy and also proud.
Maybe the technique is easier to paint but I am creating the pattern, that’s a big deal for me. I like this idea and will hopefully elaborate a lot more of patterns in the next weeks. If you are interested you can download the daisy pattern here: https://theademilos.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Daisypattern.pdf
You see, one question generates a lot more but also an understanding in the end. I’m slowly finding my way and I’m very happy about it!
I would be happy to hear your experiences, too, so please share them with me in the comments below, on facebook or instagram.
Have a great time and stay creative – in your very own way!
Yours, Thea
I just love this post. And love the fact that you studied history of art. Sketching , and drawing has een something that I appreciate more than any other skill in art. My first art teacher told me so many times: “A painting cannot be good if the drawing under the paint isn’t good itself.”
And then this:
Titian was one of the most famous painters of the Renaissance. He and Michelangelo were contemporaries but their conceptions of painting had little in common. They met once, under the arrangement by Vasari. Titian showed them his latest picture—a nude Danaë—and “naturally, as one would do with the artist present, we praised it,” says Vasari. Then afterwards, on the way back to the hotel, Michelangelo and Vasari, with their masks off, shook their sour faces and said it was a pity Titian didn’t know how to paint. Or rather, didn’t know how to draw.
“I like the man’s style and his coloring,” Michelangelo told Vasari, “but it is a great pity that in Venice they don’t learn to draw well from the beginning and pursue their studies with more method. I tell you, if Titian had been helped by art and design as much as he was by nature—for the man has exceptional talent—no one would have been able to beat him, because he has a fine spirit and a captivating style. Really.”
And Vasari agreed. “If an artist has not drawn a great deal and studied carefully selected ancient and modern works, he can’t work from memory or enhance what he copies from life, and so give his work the grace and perfection of art which are beyond the reach of nature, some of whose aspects tend to be less than beautiful.”
Then this:
Disegno, from the Italian word for drawing or design, carries a more complex meaning in art, involving both the ability to make the drawing and the intellectual capacity to invent the design.
From the Renaissance this ability to invent, or create, put the artist on a footing with God, the ultimate Creator, and was a means of raising the status of painting from craft to art.
In Renaissance Italy a dispute arose between the partisans of Michelangelo and those of Titian as to whether disegno (Michelangelo) or colorito (Titian) was superior (see the entry for Colorito).
These go through my head all the time 🙂
And it has nothing to do with my art, or your art in particular.
But I do feel like the drawing is the core , we come down to it as a football player starts with a ball. That’s why , even though I am in love with islamic pattern and geometry , make regular excursions into drawing because I strongly believe it is necessary.
We will never be neither Michelangelo nor Titian, but we can improve, the importance is not to loose the faith and the track of ourselves.
Personally, I love your drawing skills as well as your drawing approach. Don’t change anything, just go on.
Love, Bojana
I am very happy to read these lines my dear friend, it’s just like I got back to university and the seminars I had concerning disegno! 🙂
You’re right, we have to improve our art, to give our best, to be confident and faithful.
Thank you so much! I love your approach to art as well, maybe because I feel like it is similar to mine! <3
Lots of love, Thea