The true artist paints for himself.
- A.C. Leighton
Wet-on-wet mountain landscape - watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - 12" x 8" - Maree©
The other day I was reading the article "When can you call yourself an Artist?" -
- and doing this painting, for the first time I felt like an artist! Standing in front of the easel, arm outstretched with the Rigger, creating a beautiful masterpiece!
For this wet-on-wet scene, after wetting the paper, I sketched the main outlines of my scene using my Rigger and Cerulean Blue, a "trick" I picked up at my watercolour workshop with Angela Eidelman a few years ago. I'm sure many of you use this technique (I know West Coast artist Marie Theron does), but I always used to be somewhat of a sketchy person, using my pencil, going into great detail with a lot of erasing happening. It's only been the past couple of years since I started practicing painting with no sketching beforehand that I feel confident enough to consider doing this.
I didn't use any reference material either, just my imagination.
By the way, to answer the question above, I think the best reply was as follows :
“You are an artist when you make art. Many artists spend their lives not selling their work … One of the first requirements for an artist is to ignore those who would define whether they are artists. The only real measure is the person making the art or, if need be, posterity.” -- Jon
Framed print in Small, Medium and Large available from my portfolio on RedBubble.
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