THE ULTIMATE DRAWING AND PAINTING TIP
By George Allen Durkee

The challenge for the painter is to be fully present - to sustain the dreamlike space where inspired work can take place. To describe this state, however, is to try to put it in a box, as though it could be saved and used again later. What takes the lid off your creativity cannot be grasped and held with words, but is freely given in the act of painting.

Does "being fully present" mean to simply slip into a mindless meditation, allowing your eye and hand to do the work while you stand back as an observer? No. The artist in a trance state is a myth. For many painters, the ART of art is not in the product - the finished drawing or painting - but in the experience of engaging the creative process. What do you think about while you work? Your internal dialog is one of the most important determinants of how clearly your work expresses you. It is not possible to think about updating your Twitter page or to to carry on a conversation with someone while working from the model - and at the same time be wholeheartedly engaged with the process.

Being fully present is the absolutely essential part of painting not usually talked about. No one can teach it. You have to learn it for yourself. Painting is a balance of thinking and feeling, but it is thinking and feeling about what you are doing on your palette and on your canvas. While one part of you thinks about technical principles - light/dark, warm/cool, lines and angles, pigment mixtures and which tools to use - another part of you, the wordless part, feels its way along. Painting is multitasking enough without the interfering chatter of a wandering mind. Focus on the work at hand. Shut up and paint!

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