Near Do Well

I am a self taught artist. I have never lacked artistic vision. As a teen-ager I had a head full of ideas that I wanted to bring to fruition, but felt I had too much trouble to get into, and serious attempts at producing quality art could wait. That doesn't mean I didn't do art when it suited me, I just wasn't very prolific. Over the years, I've made myself and my friends plenty of hand-carved pipes of a fancy nature, and hand-made jewelry. I did a pastel butterfly a year for a number of years as a x-mas gift. I always felt I had the talent to make a living as an artist, but was too busy trying to keep junk cars on road, and dinner on the table working menial labor.

The butterfly pictures were what got me doing art with regularity. I've always had an affinity for pastels, and a pension for photo realism. My first love is surrealism, but I believe one must master reality, before they can master the unreal. With each butterfly I did, my skills improved. My confidence was bolstered, and I began to think that it might be time to pursue art with a little more ernest. I think there is a tendency for artists to be poor self promoters. If that's not true across the board, it's at least true of me. I could think of plenty of things I could do to promote my art, but it was hard enough to find the time to do the art, let alone promote it.

That was the other problem. One must have art available for sale, in order to sell it. I had graduated to pastel dog portraits, and was pouring between 60, and 100+ hours into each piece. Things came to a head for me last year when I took a commission for a portrait of a Welsh Terrier. I did a photo shoot with my new digital camera, and high intensity light. I had such a good photo to work from, I obsessed for hundreds of hours, going over every hair on that dog over and over. How would I ever make it as an artist, if it took me a year to do one piece?

Recently I became aware of the daily painters movement. Artists dedicated to doing a painting a day, or there abouts. I never doubted I could do it, but how could I do it? My forte is minute detail, coupled with pain-staking accuracy. Those would suffer, but I would be creating an undeniable body of work. Could I live with a body of work that might be below my standards? Perhaps I would develop a quick, but good style. I suppose the answers to these questions and more may become self-evident. I hope you'll take this journey with me, and I'll try not to disappoint!