I often have self doubts about the merits of my work but know that many of the greats also had the same inner questions, so, in that way, feel that I’m in good company. I have been reading a biography of Matisse recently and he was quite tortured by the attitudes of his contemporaries toward his early work. He was not respected by his father and even his primary art dealer, Vollard, treated him shabbily. Matisse doubted his own abilities for many years, as his work did not sell well and was often derided by the art critics.
That said, I cannot for an instant compare myself with Matisse, or indeed any of the great artists, but it is interesting to watch how I delight in a bit of positive feedback from someone who has seen my online gallery at www.artbyinglis.com and sometimes feel a little sad that I haven’t sold anything from the site yet, despite lowering my prices 30% in January. Maybe I’ll just blame the recession. Yes, a globe-spanning scapegoat!
However, nothing will prevent me from continuing to paint for the rest of my days, even if no one ever sees my work. I sometimes think there must be a deep vein of narcissism in me because I love looking at my paintings, over and over. I have more creative ideas than time, and sometimes wish I had an agent or even a secretary who could do all the slogging for me. So painter’s block really never comes up as an issue. Quite the opposite, in fact I feel I will never realize all my potential. Makes me almost want to give up blogging and get to the “real” work.
Where do I find inspiration? From looking at others’ work, obviously, and, since there are few utterly original artists, I don’t mind being lumped in with the non-geniuses. I love experimenting with various digital programs and may start out with a pattern created in a CAD program, which is then altered in a graphics software, then colored with Painter. End result is often absolutely unforeseen!
The drawings you see here derived from an original pencil sketch, I call Up Against the Wall, with some shading slightly altered in Painter. Then I took one of my linear mandalas and, using the cloner brush, painted the color pattern into the drawing. So here we have a truly mixed media drawing/ painting. I also cropped this work several different ways, enjoying the process immensely. So here are two different versions:
Up Against the Wall 4
Up Against the Wall 5
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