Finding my creative happiness

New starts and finding my creativity

September always makes me think of new starts, even more so than January 1st. I guess it reflects the cycle of school life and the new academic year. My studies continue with the Fine Art BA course with the Open College of Arts, and I’m effectively in my final ‘year’. As a self-paced course, an academic year can actually take many calendar years - I started in 2016 so I’m making the most of it! For me, the experience has been absolutely brilliant, but not without its frustrations. Doing art is simple. Doing good art is extremely difficult. But what is ‘good art’ anyway?

In the spring of 2021 I’d reached a point of exasperation in understanding what art I liked to make. I was completely lost in a creative void. Give me a cityscape, and I can sketch it; give me a photo and I can paint a half-decent reproduction, I can paint a still-life, but never as good as the Dutch masters. But I find doing this sort of art so labour intensive, and I was increasingly asking myself why I was doing it. The process didn’t give me a sense of happiness, or fun. And if there’s no fun, then there’s no motivation.

So, I set a challenge: to understand what creativity is.

After 2 years, I’m now confident that I know what it is - for me at least. And I want to share with you my breakthrough moment. It was discovering a course called Find Your Joy, run by Louise Fletcher. It was THE absolute breakthrough for me, and I know it’s been a breakthrough for many other artists too. Some past students (from many different countries) have gone on to create a sustainable art practice from Louise’s teachings, creating awesome work, and going from strength to strength.

Louise is just about to start her free Find Your Joy Taster Course, and it’s for this reason that I chose to dedicate this news-blog post to her. I hope it’ll help anyone of you who might feel as creatively adrift as I did.

The course happens over 8 days, starting on 1st September. Louise will give you access to videos of exercises, and also access to live sessions during the week. It sounds a lot, but you can do it even if you have only an hour to spare each day.

So what’s the difference between this course, and other how-to-paint courses? The difference is that Louise is teaching you how to recognise your creativity - that’s it. She’s not telling you what subject to paint, she’s not doing a ‘sitting-with-Nelly’ painting tutorial, she’s teaching you how to recognise what you love doing while you do it.

Looking back into my video archives, I found lurking there a video of me de-taping a grid painting. This is just one of the basic exercises which help us understand how we feel about our art. Thinking about how we feel when making work is a recurring aspect of the course - this is fundamental to finding our joy.

It took me around 15 to 20 minutes to make the painting in the video. A process which is fast, loose, and free. It’s plain and simple fun. As I remove the tape, I see how shapes become so dynamic, especially where they interact with the edges.

Below are 4 sections which I find really interesting. They don’t mean anything as such, they’re simply visually entertaining.

Selected cropped images from the painting in the video

This art may not be your cup ‘o’ tea - but hey, the work you make will be different to mine. What you choose to do in the course doesn’t have to be abstract art, it can be representational, figurative, portrait, or whatever. It’s a process of gentle unfolding and realisation.

If you’re tempted to try the course using acrylic paints (which is what I did) but don’t know how to prepare, here’s some suggestions:

• Buy a decent brand of acrylic paint - avoid student grade (even if you think you’re a student). It’s better to buy fewer good quality colours then lots of colours of dubious quality (such is the way of life).

• Buy a blue, a yellow, and a red. Don’t worry about the different variants of colour (like Naples yellow, or lemon yellow). Get tubes of at least 100ml. These colours can be mixed to create variants of all the other colours - e.g if you want an orange colour then you’d simply mix red and yellow.

• You need black - there are different blacks - I suggest you get Mars black, it’s good to mix with. Get a tube of at least 100ml.

• You need white - buy Titanium white - buy it in larger quantity relative to your other colours - you’ll use it often. If buying tubes of colour of 100ml size, then get at least 200ml of white.

• Get a couple of basic paint brushes and plastic scrapers from a DIY shop.

• You might like using a painting knife - I love to use them when slathering on lots of paint, and also for making fine marks, or flicking paint.

• I’ve snuck a black Stabilo Woody into the photo below - it’s by no means essential - but just really fun to play with on acrylic paint (I wrote about this in a past blog)

A selection of materials and tools I use

• Get some reasonably robust paper to paint on. You can use acrylics on lots of different material, but consider that acrylic is made workable by adding water so the more water you use the more it’ll soak into paper. I’ve bought rolls of lining wall paper - it’s cheap and gives a sense of economic freedom. In the same vein, you could use old cardboard boxes. If you go to the art shop they’ll sell you expensive paper, but the problem is that most people will (consciously or unconsciously) restrict themselves by using it sparingly. The point with this course is to feel free during the making process. Free to screw up your paper and throw it away without any real concerns about the cost.

I don’t know what exercises Louise is including in this year’s course, but I do know they’ll be focused and brilliant. You just need to be willing to embrace her method and join in the making. This means you actually do the exercise, and not imagine doing it in your head !! Oh, and you’ll meet many other artists (virtually of course) on the way.

If you want to listen to Louise talking about the course then tune into episode 220 of Art Juice - wherever you get your podcasts - or jump to her website using the button below …

P.S - There are no affiliate links in my news-blog posts - I get no reward for promoting the course - she’s simply brilliant at what she does.
P.P.S - I suggest you don’t try this course with oil paints - they don’t dry quickly enough to allow paint layering - you’ll end up with a brown yucky mess 🥺

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About me

My name is David Bell and I’m an artist living in Sanremo, Italy. I write this blog for my band of followers, giving an insight to my art and life generally living on the beautiful Riviera of Flowers.

Ciao4now … alla prossima.