Paint with Purpose QUICK TIPS
Newlyn Art School’s popular Defining Practice course will soon be available online. Tutor FAYE DOBINSON shares 10 tips to help you become a more focused artist
1. NOTICE WHAT YOU NOTICE Whether you are a painter, a printmaker or even a sculptor, gently instigating a regular drawing habit will feed your practice enormously. Quick sketches of anything around you, whether in your home or out in the environment, will soon show you what it is that your eye is drawn towards and where your gaze naturally falls.
2. GATHER YOUR INSPIRATIONS Making time to research artists that resonate with you is both inspiring and validating. You can begin to think of yourself as part of a lineage and themes that you might not be able to see clearly in your own work may emerge in that of the artists to which you are drawn. Trust your instincts. Keep a sketchbook, a folder or a Pinterest board and collect inspiration from magazines, books or the internet.
3. CALM YOUR INNER CRITIC
52 Artists
& Illustrators
LAURA ADAI/UNSPLASH/EMMA GRIFFIN/NEWLYN SCHOOL OF ART
Our internal critic can run roughshod over our dreams and our enthusiasm, leaving us questioning good ideas when we have them. Before you dismiss your next idea, try to give it a form first – be that as a drawing, a gathering of objects, or a note in a sketchbook. In doing so, it is easier to look at the idea from all angles, so that you can ask questions of it, and decide whether you wish to pursue it further. Dismissing anything in its tender phase does the creative conversation a great disservice.
