The Reason Why You Should Stop Sketching Before Painting

The other day I was listening to a lecture by Ricardo Piglia on Borges. And Piglia said something very interesting. He spoke from his experience as a writer, but I think this can also be applied to painting without any difficulty. Piglia said: "We cannot do what we want to do. If we could do what we want to do, we would write the Divine Comedy or the Martín Fierro." If we could paint as we would like to paint, we would paint like Rubens, Rembrandt or Velázquez. He added: "We can't do what we want to do, but what we can do is not do what we don't want to do." And thinking about my work, what I would like is to paint like Sargent, Velázquez or Goya. I have always admired painters who have a loose brush handling. I cannot paint with their ease. But what I can do is avoid my stiffness. The stiffness of my painting is something I don't like. I relate the stiffness of my painting to a very precise preliminary drawing. When I start to apply paint on a very precise drawing I cannot paint outside the lines. No matter how hard I try to let go, the line holds me. Once I figured this out, I started making a much looser preliminary drawing. I started drawing with a brush instead of a pencil. And I immediately noticed a change. My painting started to look looser. And then I tried the exercise that you now see: painting without drawing. To build the shape little by little without a preliminary drawing. This exercise came to me while reading Richard Schmidt's book "Alla Prima". In which Richard Schmid describes his painting process. He does make a preliminary drawing. But then when he starts to paint, he puts a single brushstroke trying to get the color, tonal value and shape to resemble what he is seeing on the model. And then he puts another brushstroke next to it, taking care of the same things. And then another brushstroke and another, and so he builds the painting. So I thought I'd try something similar: Build my painting brushstroke by brushstroke and get rid of the drawing. To see if I could lessen the rigidity of my work. What you are seeing is my first try. And of course, there are errors in the proportions that I could have avoided by making a preliminary drawing. But while I was painting I noticed that these errors were not only due to the fact that there was no drawing, but because I lost concentration while painting. I remember feeling tired and continuing to work in a distracted way. And what I liked about this exercise was that it required me to be very focused. There is a Buddhism teacher named Shunryu Suzuki who wrote a book called Beginner's Mind. He comments that when we are learning a new skill: driving, cooking, carpentry or whatever. The first time we do it we pay close attention, we do it very carefully because we don't want to make mistakes. Then after repeating this activity constantly, we get practice and we don't need to be so focused. So we start to do it mechanically, without thinking and without care. And what Suzuki says is that we should always keep a beginner's mind. Whatever we do, we must always be focused and attentive as if it were the first time we did it. Of course, this sounds simple, but it is actually very difficult. It happens to me all the time. I've been painting for so many years that sometimes I realize that I no longer think about what I am doing. Painting becomes a mechanical process. I match the color, I put it on, I mix another color, I put it on, and I'm not even thinking about what I'm doing. I'm just filling in colors. That is something I do not like about my painting. But I couldn't find a way out of it. And this exercise has been very refreshing because I have to be attentive again. I feel like I've never painted before. Because I pay a lot of attention to how I mix the color, how I apply each brush stroke, to the shape, the edge, the tonal value and the hue. And something that seemed impossible, painting without a preliminary drawing, became feasible. Yes, it has some flaws. And of course I could correct them. But I decided to leave those mistakes, because they serve as a reminder. From that moment when I got distracted, I stopped paying attention and started to fail. It reminds me of being more focused on my next painting. And now my brushstroke seems looser. Anyway, I hope you find this exercise helpful for your work. That's it for this video, see you in the next one.

Channel: César Córdova

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Keywords: painting, art, oil painting, how to, painter, real time, maler, Dipingere, Peindre, curso de pintura, clase de pintura, pintura al óleo, acrílico, aprender a pintar, pintura, óleo, clases, curso, gratuito, como, como hacer, tutorial, cesar cordova, arte, manualidades, dibujo, dibujar, malen, Anstreichen, Verven, للصبغ, Mengecat, 作畫, pintar, 塗る, Peinturer, Рисовать, पेंट करने के लिए

Id: FimUA3CivTo

Length: 7min 40sec (460 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 18 2020