Every artist eventually needs to find out who he or she is artistically and what he or she is trying to achieve as an artist. This may not seem all that difficult, but it is, and, to make matters worse, it is a long, ongoing project that changes all the time.
Let me explain a little bit about how it works, at least from my own experience.
When you start out, you just want to be creative and learn to express that creativity in some form. You have no illusions about being an artist. You just want to satisfy your craving for creativity.
First, you usually pick a media to try out, like photography, or oil paint, or watercolors, or acrylic, or any number of other artistic possibilities. That is your first step towards definition…I want to explore this media.
Then you start learning all you can about your craft and how to improve with every step you take. You start exploring various subjects like landscapes, or still life, or portraits, or abstraction. You find out what areas interest you the most. You are now tightening up your definition. And, as each step progresses, you find out if you have any talent in that area. If you think you do, you then strive to get better and better with each new work. And along the way, you learn more and more about the fine details of your craft and how to make it better.
You read about other artists or techniques, and then try some of them yourself. You experiment, adding new techniques on top of old ones. You learn new tricks that you never new existed.
You get better and better and people start commenting about your work. At this point you are well on your way to being…A CRAFTSMAN. You are not an artist yet. There is a big difference between the two. Being a true artist comes later, only after you feel some confidence as a craftsman.
(To be Continued)
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