Lessons I learnt from painting timed studies - Smerdon Toast episode 2

“I’ve never painting a toilet before. But I think this is one of the sexiest toilets I’ve ever painted” - Anne Smerdon

Lessons I learnt from painting timed studies:

Do studies. 

We’ve all been told we need to be doing little studies or a little thumbnail before we do work. But we just don't, we resist it. We think “I just wanna get straight to the main thing and I haven't got time for that”. But when we do, they're so good, they're so beneficial. So I am grateful to Seabastion Toast for driving these challenges with me and pushing ourselves to be better artists.

Analyse your paintings AFTER painting them

My brother is a grandmaster at chess. He’s played competitive chess since he was 9 and after each game, he would sit down with his coach and analyse the game, how he played, how his opponent played, regardless of whether he won or lost. And I always thought that was odd, why would you want to go over a game that was already won? But maybe that’s exactly what we should be doing when it comes to painting.

I think so often when we start out making paintings, our aim is just to copy the subject. We want to know, “can I recreate that 3D object in 2D? Can I make it look so real, like a photo?” And once we can achieve that result, we tire of it. We want a harder challenge. So we are no longer striving to make our painting look like a photo, we can do that. That’s easy. We are looking for something harder now. Can I make someone feel something about that object? Or can I paint it with fewer strokes but still make it look realistic? Or can I paint this object but in the style of such and such. Art then becomes about creating puzzles for ourselves to solve. And that’s when art gets really fun! Once you’ve achieved something in your painting, it's like, okay, what's next? How can I push my work even further? 

Turn your artwork upside down

Half way through my painting time lapse, you see me turn my painting upside down. I was chatting to Mina Mohtasham about the artist Phil Geiger, who, at a certain point, halfway through his painting, he turns it upside down. It helps you to think of it as an abstract then. It gives you fresh eyes and you are better able to ask, “what does this painting need? What will balance this painting?”

When I flipped it upside down, I just felt like it just needed a pop of colour in that bottom corner. The result? Diagonally it draws the eye down. You look at the apple and then you notice “ooh there’s some kind of detail on the counter” and then that pop of orange pulls your eye back down and moves your eye around.

Be wary of posting your artwork to social media

Seabastion raises a really good point at the end of our episode about the younger generation of up and coming artists, particularly when it comes to posting work on social media. As she describes it, “there's a thing now that everything you paint, you put on Instagram and I don't think that's good for your development sort of at any level. It's like, oh, I've done a thing now here. Let other people evaluate it. I think you should be very selective about who you allow to have input into your process. And judging it on likes is just a bad thing.”

Wise words Seabastion, wise words.

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 Smerdon Toast is a YouTube/podcast channel by Australian artists Anne Smerdon and Seabastion Toast. Each episode Toast and Smerdon challenge each other with a painting topic, to push their painting skills and artistic ability. Viewers/listeners are invited to join along each challenge as well. You can find the full channel list here.