THE POWER OF TIME

THE POWER OF TIME

Paint, post, paint, post, paint, post…

This is the pattern we see in Beyond the Brushes for most members. I get it. Painting is exciting! I really, truly LOVE how excited our members are to paint! However, this fast and feverish paint/post pace is hampering a very important part of artistic development. Retrospect.

In some ways, this is a failure of the media we as Photoshop Artisans use. We don’t have to wait for paint to dry. We can fully express our initial thoughts about a piece without the paint slowing us down. It satisfies the “gotta have it now” part of our brains that our modern society cultivates.

However, working slowly has its perks. An unintended benefit of working in oil is that it forces artists to slow down. Truly exceptional artists don’t paint in a single sitting and immediately put the artwork out to the world as complete. The simple act of working slower unwittingly teaches the art of

retrospect and this is a skill that should be coveted!

“Listen to the paint.”

I say it all the time to students. However, it’s difficult to hear what the paint is saying when you are painting at a feverish pace. When you slow down the creative process, that is very often where the magic happens.

A recent example of this in my own work is the charcoal style image you see above with our farm dog, Frost and our most recent litter of piglets.

If you’re a member of Beyond the Brushes, you may have been watching live on Zoom as I began this painting… in color. Because I have practiced the art of retrospect for

many years, I could feel that something wasn’t quite right in the initial painting. I ended the live demonstration by saying I didn’t think the painting was complete and I’d come back to it at a later date.

I put the painting away for a month — something almost unheard of in the Photoshop painting world.

After a month’s break, viewing the painting with fresh eyes, I could see clearly what I needed to do. The media was all wrong. I should have created this piece in charcoal! As any instructor worth their salt will do, I admitted my error and allowed members to watch me live on Zoom as I pivoted the work to the final piece you see above.

Had I chose to work at the feverish paint/post

pace that has become the norm with Photoshop artists, this final outcome would never have happened. I would never have given myself the time to see it with fresh eyes. The time away from the piece made all the difference in the world!

How can you add the practice of retrospect to your own work?

It is a skill that should be yearned for and refined to make you the best artist you can possibly be!