Sometimes the best advice for artists comes gift-wrapped as advice for some other audience. Randy Cohen says...
Your object is not to compel your students to assimilate into the dominant culture but to equip them with the knowledge to excel in it.
Sometimes the best advice for artists comes gift-wrapped as advice for some other audience. Clem Martini says...
Here are three things one can safely say about playwriting.
I'm unpacking and moving into a new studio. That sounds exciting and fresh and lovely, doesn't it? Um, no. God, no. Moving a studio means dusty boxes and stairs. Moving a mixed media studio means one of those boxes contains nothing but 36" long cardboard tubes, and the box beside it holds bags of thrift-shop Barbie dolls, used chopsticks, and broken wristwatches. Moving a teaching studio means that I literally have enough chairs, tables, easels, scissors and paint for ten people.
I miss the old studio. I can't find anything in the new one. I'm sure I will eventually settle in. Meanwhile, though, the studio envy is fierce. I console myself by paying virtual visits to other artists' studios.
First, and always, Matisse's glorious painting, The Red Studio.
Emily Carr's studio frightens me a bit with that wood stove near the oil paints. They say she hung chairs from the ceiling and only deigned to lower one if she especially liked a guest. Here's Jacob Lawrence at work. Frederic Bazille painted an image of a 19th century studio. And if this is really a painting of where Vermeer worked then my studio envy is unbounded.
You can visit Cezanne's studio in Aix en Provence. The Norman Rockwell Museum includes Rockwell's working studio. If you're making pilgrimages, Frida Kahlo's studio is a museum now. The Museo Morandi includes a reconstruction of the modest room where Giorgio Morandi did most of his work; follow the link for The Study Room.
Oh, the sixties... Here's a picture of Willem de Koonig in the studio. How about Lee Bontecou relaxing in her studio and wielding a touch in flipflops. How about the crowded workspace of Eva Hesse?
I respect the authentically Grungy Studio. I long for the late-career Well-Equipped Studio. But I get all misty-eyed over the Lifestyle Studio. Monet was the master. See the gardens at Giverny. In town, he used to paint on a charming little boat on the river. I've shown it here in a Monet painting because I could borrow a photograph from Wikimedia, Le Bateau-atelier (1874, in the Kroller Muller collection, Netherlands)
. But there's an even more charming painting of Monet at work on the deck, as painted by Edouard Manet.
I'm still looking for an online image of a studio Monet used to paint some of the huge water lily panels late in his career. I've seen a black-and-white photograph in print, and I think you could have landed small aircraft in this joint. I hate to see all that cubic space frittered away on a painter when so many sculptors are going space-hungry!
What's a portfolio for?
A portfolio is a collection of your best art. It shows off your skills, strengths, interests, work ethic and creative process. Your portfolio is also a conversation piece. It gives you and your interviewers something relevant to talk about while all of you try to figure out if you'll fit in, contribute to and benefit from the opportunity on offer.
A. The best way to develop your first portfolio
Not only are you finished preparing your portfolio, but you have an answer for everyone who ever said "Why do you still have that mountain of stuff under there?"
B. The worst way to develop your first portfolio
C. A realistic way to develop your first portfolio
*** Portfolio submission guidelines may, for example, set a maximum number of pieces of work to include, or ask you to bring photographs of your sculpture rather than the original. They might want to see a focused portfolio dedicated to a particular skill (e.g. figure drawing) or medium (e.g. photography), or they might ask you to show breadth with a lot of different types of art. They may have specific assignments they want to see (e.g. "Bring a drawing of the cross-section of a cabbage") or types of art that they don't want to see (e.g. "No Disney characters").
If they ask to see a sketchbook, the interviewers are hoping to leaf through authentic examples of your creative process over a recent period of time. They want to talk with you about how you approach projects and try out ideas. They are not expecting to see a bound volume of perfect finished little school assignments, so don't feel obliged to glue in good copies and tear out the working drawings. TIP: Bookmark three or four great pages that showcase your creativity and skills; now you're prepared to flip the sketchbook open and talk without dread or delay.
D. Surviving a portfolio interview
Before the interview:
During the interview:
At the end of the interview:
In Conclusion
Best of luck!
You might get turned down. Remember that a portfolio interview isn't a test to find out if you're "good enough" to be an artist. It's to find out if these interviewers think you'll get something out of the opportunity, contribute something to it, and be interesting to spend the time with. If you get turned down after a portfolio interview, it doesn't mean you're a bad artist, or a bad person. It means you weren't the best fit.
Take heart. Take notes. Try again.
If they say no, keep making art anyway. There will be another opportunity. If they say yes, keep making art anyway. There will be another opportunity.
I lost a friend this summer. It
was sudden. It was grim. It was unfair—as if death could be anything else. It
made me sad, as it should, and I carry that grief around, as one does. It
unexpectedly derailed my writing because somehow everything I did in the studio
seemed to be about Bob, and, for a while, I couldn’t bear that. Now, it
comforts me. I think it’s time to reflect on why that’s so, and how I became a
better teacher of art because my husband became a student of kung fu.
Jim takes kung fu & Linda finds a mentor
When I left town for graduate school, my husband, Jim, took up kung fu. I shouldn’t have been surprised—he’d been attending martial arts panels at science fiction conventions for years—but I was. Jim’s a writer, both of vivid fiction and of crystal-clear technical documentation. He lives in his head. He bruises like a peach. He bumps into stuff a lot and he doesn’t seem to be too concerned about where the edges of things are. I’ve never seen him lose his temper, let alone come to blows. Kung fu?
By the time I came home, Jim had found a new aspect of himself. He was seated in his body in a meaningful way. He had a deeper sense of discipline. He had a lot more bruises. He was better balanced, in many senses of the word, than I had ever known him. Kung fu.
I am, at best, peripheral to the club, but I found time at every Christmas party or grading I attended to seek out the teacher, Sigung Bob. We had a lot to talk about, from the plight of a small business placing ads in the Yellow Pages, to the attention span of eight-year-olds around Hallowe’en. I still don’t know anyone else who runs an art teaching studio; Sigung was the best mentor I could have found. Here are some of the practices of his kung fu club that resonated for me in my own teaching. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to make the analogies.
Push-ups are penance, not punishment
A student who’s late, slow, disrespectful, or makes a mistake is assigned to do push-ups immediately. Like enlightened coaches and trainers everywhere, Sigung stressed that you mustn’t use exercise as punishment. But when students screw up, they not only need feedback but they need a way to make amends. The kung fu club has one standard and no one’s exempt. Everyone does push-ups when they mess up: kids, adults and instructors. After the push-ups are finished, the slate is clean again. No lingering guilt. No harbouring grudges.
Sign in for yourself
Class attendance is an important part of qualifying for promotion to the next sash, so students have to sign in before every class. That leads to a recurring skirmish between parents and teachers at the club. Parents want to help their kids by signing in for them, hanging up their coats, stowing their boots on the shelf. Sigung wouldn’t let them. How will students learn discipline and self-sufficiency if they can’t practise by accepting minor responsibilities?
Never sit down to tie your shoes
Class starts when you walk in the door of the club. Students stand to put on their shoes. They don’t look for a comfy place to sit. They practise keeping their balance.
Respect the club
When students walk onto the training floor of the club, they bow. As they leave the training floor—even to get a drink of water—they turn and bow again. When no one’s watching, they still bow, and every time they do, they demonstrate their respect for the club. The bow is a commitment to the club, to kung fu, to their teachers, and to their own development.
Put full effort into everything
Students run. They run to get into line for drills. They run to get a drink of water on the break. They run to get equipment from their bags. They put full effort into the small tasks around kung fu, not just into the forms and sparring.
Acknowledge your limitations; work to them
Before a grading, students are asked to declare any pre-existing injuries so neither they nor the instructors will cause further harm. On a daily basis, students are expected to push themselves to their limits, but no further. Breaking a wrist doesn’t exempt you from class. It means you get very good at one-armed push-ups.
Kung fu students spend a lot of time in a bent-knees standing posture called “horse stance.” In horse stance, you should be balanced side-to-side, front-to-back, with your butt as low to the ground as you can get it. With practice, you get lower and more stable. When Jim graded for his black sash, he was required to maintain his horse stance while senior club members did their best to destabilize him: shoving, punching, even kicking him soundly in the abdomen.
Students at the club still talk about another grading where, after the participants lined up in horse stance, Sigung told them to drop their stance an inch. Then, to the confusion of many, he sent them all to the floor for push-ups. Back to horse stance; drop the stance an inch. More push-ups. This continued mercilessly, frustratingly, until, when Sigung called for everyone to drop the horse stance an inch, nobody moved. Each of them was already as low as possible—working to their own limits—as they should have been from the beginning.
Play safe
In sparring, Sigung’s students all wear their safety gear on the outside of their clothes. Yes, an athletic cup looks conspicuous over black pants, but when boys and girls, men and women, novices and senior students all wear visible helmets, mouth guards and pads, nobody’s “too cool” for safety, and forgetfulness is conspicuous. Bonus: nobody has to leave the floor to change.
Get the small things right
Kung fu is a Chinese martial art, and when the Chinese give money, tradition demands that the bills come in a lucky red envelope. Sigung’s students submit their grading fees in red envelopes. Have you tried shopping for red envelopes in a small German-Canadian city?
Evaluate the whole student, not just the
grading
When students grade, there’s more being judged than their performance on the day. They’re evaluated on their attendance, their improvement, their discipline, their contribution to the club, their attitude, their willingness to learn. That reassures the student with performance anxiety at a grading, but it’s also a warning to students who save their best effort for when there’s an “audience.” Everything counts.
Grow leaders
As kung fu students grow in experience, they expect—and are expected—to contribute to the club in time and energy according to their skills and the needs of the kung fu community. They run a phone tree, organize get-togethers, lead warm-ups, clean up after class, or give public demonstrations. Senior students teach classes, help with gradings, mentor junior students and meet regularly as a leadership team. A kung fu club isn’t just a teacher and students. It is many teachers, many students, growing into a community of dedicated, responsible, co-operative leaders.
Bob Schneider, founder of the Waterloo Kung Fu Academy, died in an accident, June 2006. The paper reported that he had no children. But in the kung fu community, he was Sigung Bob, teacher/grandfather, and to his black sash students he was Sifu, teacher/father. Sigung Bob’s extended family cried, embraced one another, and recognized themselves as his legacy. The black sashes and the leadership team held the club together, teaching and administering the club the way they had done whenever Sigung went on vacation. By autumn, Sifu Dave—who had been Bob Schneider’s student since Dave was in elementary school—emerged as a homegrown successor with the full support of the club. Sigung Bob Schneider built a school that outlives him.
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his
influence stops.”
Hans Hofmann
(And if you wonder how all this relates to teaching art, start
teaching. You’ll see.)
Congratulations on having someone interested in buying your work. The first thing you want to do is get good photographs of the piece. Then you'll still have the work in your portfolio, even if it's in someone else's living room.
Pricing is difficult, and I cannot give you an exact figure. Art isn't something you price according to the cost of materials (although you can usually set a higher price on anything that incorporates unusually expensive materials) or by the hour (although you can usually set a higher price on anything that's obviously labour-intensive). The price of art is market-driven, and that's about expectations. People expect drawings and prints to cost less than paintings. People expect small paintings to cost less than big ones. People expect student art to cost less than pro stuff. People expect art by unknowns and outsiders to cost less than work by Famous Artists. People expect art-in-the-park to cost less than gallery work. People expect to unframed work to cost less than framed work.
If your buyers are new to art-shopping, they may have some unreasonable expectations, too. A surprising number of people expect original art to be priced similarly to mass-produced posters, but you can't afford to be in a price war with IKEA!
Where did the buyers see your work? If it was in the company of other work that was clearly priced, you will be able to set your own price in that context. Is it more important to you to make a sale or to make money? If you'd like to make that first sale, set the price low. If this is a valuable piece to you, set the price high but be prepared to lose the sale; another buyer will come along. Friends and family get a deal for supporting your career, but it's okay for you to ask them to keep the discounted prices confidential.
The most important advice I can give you on pricing your art is to imagine how you will feel after the sale. Set the price high enough that you will think, "I'm proud that my work earned enough money to buy that bag of art supplies," rather than "I still resent those people for having my great painting for so little money." Set the price such that, if someone actually antes up the money, you won't feel cheated.
I'm always happy to help someone who wants to learn to draw. I don't know who's teaching in your city these days, but I'll tell you exactly how I'd find out. I'd visit the art gallery, the main library, and the art supply stores. Ask them who's running classes in the city, and check out their bulletin boards. Call your municipal recreation department. What's on at the local community centres? Check with nearby colleges and universities. Sometimes they offer community courses not-for-credit, and they are always a nexus of artists. In a small town, I might start my quest at the regional high school.
A small community, or one that's been through some tough times, might not have a well-established suite of teaching artists. But somewhere in town there are artists. Track them down. Ask them if they've considered teaching a class. You're probably not the only person in town who would like to learn to draw!
Then offer to pay at least as much as the local piano teacher makes. Everybody has a local piano teacher.
Like a lot of artists and art classes, I hire life models. They're not all thin, they're not all young, and they're not all women. They have to be fit enough to do the job, but it's not a bodybuilding contest.
You are right to be careful about finding a legitimate situation, but most of the time your biggest worries will be the cold, boredom, and losing all feeling in a limb! In Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, in 2006, the hourly rate runs from 15 to 20 dollars. For purposes of comparison, that's about what it would cost to see a first run movie (with popcorn and a drink), or buy two paperback books.
A typical booking is two to three hours. Even if you're terrific, you probably won't be asked back often to the same class. Most instructors like to use a variety of models and show their students a range of body types.
Unless you work in a big city with a lots of art schools, classes, and artists, you probably can't make a full-time job of it.
The very best way to find out what life modelling is about would be to take a couple of life drawing classes.
The instructor usually wants to see a variety of poses: front/back/side, standing/sitting/reclining, extended/contracted.
When you're starting out, don't model privately (that is, alone in a studio with a stranger), and don't model for photographs. Use your ordinary street smarts: tell someone where you're going to be and when to expect you home.
Nobody should touch you, belittle you, or make sexual comments about you.
I think it's important to call a model by name (so that we relate to the model as a human being, not an object) but not by last name (so the model controls who may or may not look her up later). This varies with different classes. If you have strong preferences, make them known to the instructor or facilitator when you arrive.
People will have to talk about you, sometimes in remarkably explicit anatomical terms. They won't all be good at life drawing. You're going to see some unflattering drawings, some drawings that bear no resemblance to you, and some drawings that are just plain bad. Life drawing is hard to do, and people in classes are, by definition, students of the art.
You're usually allowed to look at the drawings, but many students will be bashful. (And they've got all their clothes on!) As in life, compliments are always welcome and criticism is usually discouraged.
Contact every local art department and gallery that offers classes. Most universities are accustomed to breaking in rookies--they go through a steady stream of undergrads (especially drama and dance students) looking for well-paid part-time work. Contact the art department and ask who books the models and how you can get onto their call list. Life models don't work through agencies anywhere that I know.
The life model is a vital part of many artists' training and practice. Good luck, and thank you for your help.
Do you know what little kids do when they find a dried-up marker? They throw it back in the tub and grab another one. A big kid will tell me, "This one's dried up." Little kids trade in dull pencils. Big kids sharpen them. Little kids will argue that the brush isn't really dirty and they hardly used it anyway and besides, they already put it back with the others and they can't tell which one it is any more. Meanwhile, big kids learn how to look after their brushes by practicing on mine.
Little kids want to do easy stuff, and get praised for it. Big kids want to practice hard stuff, and get better.
It's not a question of age or size. Some of my "big kids" still sleep with a night light. Some of my "little kids" are licensed to drive. It's about responsibility and initiative and engagement. Big kids try new things. Big kids bounce back. Big kids mop up what they spill, pick up what they drop, and fix what they break.
Big kids don't whine.
So, in my studio, big kids have more opportunities than little kids. They use the Special Brushes because they've proven they can maintain them. They have a wider choice of materials and more open-ended assignments. Big kids get less Adult Supervision and more Constructive Feedback.
Big kids replace the roll when the paper runs out. Big kids flush. And when the toilet fails to flush, a big kid tells someone. A little kid closes the door and walks away.
My art school taught me how to build my own stretchers by hand from standard lumber-yard materials. If yours didn't, I think you got ripped off. I'm not saying that making stretchers is easy, and I understand that painters aren't necessarily carpenters. But if you're even moderately handy, you can build a much better stretcher than any store-bought readymade. You can build stretchers cheaper and stronger, and you can build them to exactly the dimensions you want.
A canvas stretcher is a wooden frame inside a painting on canvas. Like an embroidery hoop, it holds the canvas taut. The canvas is stretched across and around a stretcher, and tacked or stapled to the back. Once a painting has been framed, you can't see the stretcher, but it's a permanent part of the artwork. The painted canvas is only removed from the stretcher for short-term storage, travel, or repair.
If you're an art lover, that's background information. If you're a painter, that's a fundamental piece of equipment.
Every art supply store stocks ready-made stretched canvases. They're commercially manufactured and assembled with primed canvas.
Cheaper stretched canvases are made with lighter wood, thinner members, and cheaper canvas. Cheaper stretched canvases have the canvas stapled on the sides (rather than on the back) to use less canvas.
Expensive stretched canvases should be stronger. You'll pay more for thicker stretchers, cross-bars, and/or corner braces. You'll pay more for stretchers milled to create an especially deep drop from the outside edge, and consider yourself lucky to find them. You'll pay more for hardwood stretchers, and it's worth it for big paintings. You'll pay more for linen (rather than cotton) canvas.
Prices and availability vary hugely, but I can give you some ballpark figures. At the time of this writing (February 2006), a 16-inch by 20-inch stretched canvas, cotton on a regular 7/8 inch deep stretcher, primed with acrylic gesso, retails for $5 to $12 CDN. A 16-inch by 20-inch stretched stretched canvas, cotton on a gallery-depth 1 and 3/4 inch deep basswood stretcher, primed with acrylic gesso, retails for $12 to $25 CDN. A 16-inch by 20-inch stretched canvas in linen starts from $22 CDN. [For a few points of comparison, also at the time of this writing, my toothpaste cost $4 CDN today, and 2 litres of Diet Dr. Pepper cost $1 CDN.]
You can buy commercially milled stretcher bars in various lengths and assemble them in your studio with simple hand tools. You're ready to start stretching your canvas in a matter of minutes. The stretcher bars are essentially the same as those used to produce the readymades. The advantages of assembling your own are:
Why are handmade stretchers better than the ones you assemble yourself from off-the-rack stretcher bars? I have never seen a stretcher bar with a deep enough drop-off from the outside edge. A shallow drop means the important part of your canvas, the part with the painting on it, is exposed to the raw wood. That might be a conservation issue sometime down the road. The bigger problem is one you'll notice in the studio. When you paint, the canvas will bounce against that stretcher, leaving a telltale line in your painting.
If you get good at building canvas stretchers, you can earn money on the side building high-quality custom pieces for other artists in your community. Stick your card on the bulletin boards in your local art supply stores. Somebody always needs good stretchers. You did!
Some things can't be taught in words. If you don't know what a mitre joint is, you're not ready to build your own canvas stretcher. If there's anything on the tools-and-materials list that you don't recognize, by name or on sight, you're not ready to build your own canvas stretcher. Show these instructions to a friendly woodworker, and trade paintings for carpentry lessons.
The goal is to build a rectangular wooden frame strong enough in all directions to withstand the stress of the stretched canvas. That frame must have a raised outside edge so that the canvas you paint doesn't rest on any wood, or press against any wood when you apply a brushstroke.
You're going to create your own eight-foot lengths of stretcher-bar-stuff, then cut them down to the pieces you need for your project. Save the excess for a future stretcher.
Stretching a canvas is like putting a flat sheet onto a bed, with crisp
hospital corners... and then stapling it in place. (Hey, Doloros, that
would have made boot camp easier!) There are lots of places on the web that show you how to stretch a canvas.
However, the web changes every day.
If one of these links should fade, you could use my description
to do your own keyword search for similar relevant sites.
If you've got a compound mitre saw and mitre clamps and you know how to use them, making canvas stretchers is easy, and half the price. However, at the time of this writing (February 2006) a compound mitre saw costs $300 CDN to $700 CDN. How many canvas stretchers do you expect to build?
If I needed a standard canvas in a hurry, I'd buy it readymade, stretched and gessoed. If I wasn't handy, I'd buy readymade. If I was tragically separated from my tools and my studio, I'd buy readymade. If I was doing a student project or a commercial assignment (where museum quality isn't usually necessary), and I had more money than time, I'd buy readymade. But if I wanted a good deep canvas stretcher, I'd make one. If I wanted unusual or large dimensions, I'd make one. If I wanted to paint on anything other than standard ten-pound cotton duck, I'd make one.
If I was broke and had more time than money, I'd make canvas stretchers, using hand tools if that's all I had. I'd end up with better stretchers and I'd spend my savings on good paint and a shot of single-malt whiskey.
Neil Gaiman: Dustcovers: The Collected Sandman Covers 1989-1996
This is what I show to students who need to know that collage is more than cut-and-paste posters of the four food groups. (****)
Muriel Silberstein-Storfer: Doing Art Together
Great suggestions on how to talk with the kids about artmaking, project by project. (****)
MaryAnn F. Kohl: Mudworks: Creative Clay, Dough, and Modeling Experiences
Recipes for every play dough or hands-on homemade modelling material I've every heard of. (****)
CIH, Michael McCann PhD: Artist Beware, Updated and Revised : The Hazards in Working with All Art and Craft Materials and the Precautions Every Artist and Craftsperson Should Take
Safety precautions and first aid equipment, air circulation and appropriate solvent disposal don't sound very Creative or Artistic. But then, neither does "toxic" or "caustic" or "flammable." (****)
Joanne Mattera: The Art of Encaustic Painting: Contemporary Expression in the Ancient Medium of Pigmented Wax
Once you see the range of possibilities in encaustic (painting with molten wax), every painter will want to try it. (****)
Bill Creevy: Pastel Book: Materials and Techniques for Today's Artist
Pastels are misunderstood and under-rated. Here's the book that helps change that for my students. (****)
Bill Creevy: The Oil Painting Book: Materials and Techniques for Today's Artist (Watson-Guptill Materials and Techniques)
Clear colour step-by-step illustrations of the wide range of oil painting techniques and materials. (****)
Kimon Nicolaides: The Natural Way to Draw : A Working Plan for Art Study
Classic text on drawing technique as practiced from life models. This is the book your art teacher studied. It's not an easy read. It's a timeless handbook. (*****)
Nick Bantock: Urgent 2nd Class: Creating Curious Collage, Dubious Documents, And Other Art From Ephemera
Eye candy and inspiration. (****)
Altoon Sultan: The Luminous Brush: Painting With Egg Tempera
Egg tempera is ancient and versatile, a handmade paint that won't break the budget. (****)
