Category: Art

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On creating mental models

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At my daughter’s art studio, “4Cats”, there is a poster that half-jokingly lists the benefits of art education. Among these benefits are improved study skills and a possibility to make a fortune of selling your paintings.

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There is another skill that did not make the list, but which is taught through the practice of art (or any other creative process) – it is what psychologists call “creating mental models”.

Charles Duhigg wrote an entire chapter on this in his book “Smarter Faster Better.” According to him, some people are better than others at creating mental representations of current and future events. In other words, they continually narrate a story to themselves as they go about their day. By doing so, they work out a model of how the world works. The more detailed the story, the deeper the focus that these people are able to maintain. Also, when the life events actually unfold, people who are good at creating mental models are capable of making better decisions, because they already fave a forecast of the event, which can be compared to the real situation. Duhigg quoted Andy Billings of Electronic Arts, who said that modern companies are looking for people, who habitually tell stories, because this trait is an indication of the person ability to apply analytical observation to their experiences.

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As it is the case with many useful traits, creating mental models is a true skill, rather than an innate ability. In other words, it can be developed through practice. In fact, this is what children do when they play make-believe games, play with toys and, particularly, when they practice art. In regular, structured art lessons, the teacher outlines a plan for the process and then provides feedback on the progress at various stages. This way, the children are taught to imagine the final painting/drawing/sculpture, at least in some detail, and then compare what actually emerges as a result of their work to the mental images.

So art really is good for everyone – both to those, who create it, and those, who consume it – because it involves storytelling at every stage. And telling stories, it can be argued, is the most effective way of communication.

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How to go down in history: being the first or the last

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In a recent interview, Chuck Klosterman, the author of “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs”, mentioned that while it is difficult to predict, which musician/artist/scientist would be considered the most historically important figure of the current period many years from now, it is unlikely that it would be someone, who is considered as the leader of his/her field right now. Klosterman suggests that in order to have retrospective historical weight, an author (or a piece of art, scientific work, etc.) needs to meet at least one of the two criteria: he/she/it needs to offer true innovation, i.e. to be the first the first ever in the specific field, or he/she/it must represent the culmination of the development of the field that changes how people think, i.e. to be the last in the field – the finishing touch that completes it and points to a fundamentally new paradigm.

Basically, history likes those who are are either the first or the last in their area of work.

This concept has some parallels with the strategy for creating innovations outlined by Cal Newport in “Deep Work”: be on the leading edge of your field and then look just beyond it using patterns similar to those that exist (and are already known) in other fields.

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Of course, following the Newport’s strategy does not guarantee that the future generations will pick your work as singularly significant. However, stepping beyond the leading edge of your field gives you the chance to be the first in a completely new area, while getting to the leading edge gives you the chance to be the last in your field – the one who applies the unifying finishing touch to the existing body of work.

There are a couple of implications of this concept. First, you cannot be a narrow specialist. In order to apply known patterns from other areas, you need to have at least some knowledge of the fields beside your own area of expertise. As Miyamoto Musashi wrote in his famous “The Book of Five Rings, “Develop intuitive judgement and understanding for everything.”

Second, you cannot be a pure generalist either. You need to specialize in something in order to develop the deep expertise that would enable you to do cutting edge work in this area. Becoming an expert of that caliber is, of course, the hardest part of the process.

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No big deal

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At my daughter’s birthday party, which was held at a local art studio, the children were reminded about one of the “rules” of conduct at the studio. The rule was “No big deal!”, as in “If I accidentally get paint on the floor, it’s no big deal” or “If I mess up my clay dragon and have to redo it all over again, it’s no big deal.”

For a creative process to be effective, it is important not to take things, particularly your own work, too seriously. That is why it is sometimes useful to choose disposable media for your work to avoid putting excessive emphasis on the result, where the process is inherently more valuable. Julia Cameron wrote in “The Artist’s Way” that in order to make art, we must be ready to make bad art, at least initially. I heard some writers say that if you work for hours to write a thousand words, and then end up throwing out everything except the last couple of sentences in revisions, the hours spent on this should not be considered a wasted time – writing the text that was ultimately thrown out was a necessary step in creating the last two good sentences.

In other words, it’s no big deal that it takes longer than what we thought it should have taken to create something of value. We should just accept it and enjoy the process. After all, they said at my daughter’s party that the main rule of the art studio was “Have fun!”

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Media matters

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When amateur artists begin to extend their creativity and develop their skills, they often expect to produce great work right away. As Julia Cameron points out in her incredibly influential book “The Artist’s Way“, “By being willing to be a bad artist, you have chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.”

One of the reasons for the high initial self-expectations is that the creative process of (new) amateur artists is sporadic. By definition of being amateurs, they are are not thinking as professionals. For pros, the workflow is largely focussed on showing up and consistently delivering a large volume of work rather than waiting for mysterious inspiration. Here is Julia Cameron again: “Great Creator, I will take care of the quantity. You take care of the quality.” In other words, the pros trust the routine of honing their craft. They know that if they keep at it every day, the inspiration (and greatness) will come eventually.

The beginners, on the other hand, don’t have the psychological safety of the large volume of generated work. Therefore, each painting they produce is very precious to them.

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Ultimately, the way to deal with over-attachment to one’s own work is to produce more work on a regular basis. Another trick is to set up the framework of practice from the beginning. One way to do it is to use very cheap or disposable media, the kind that typically would not be associated with a museum-quality masterpiece. I saw the ultimate expression of this concept in Beijng, where calligraphers write elegant Chinese characters on a sun-heated sidewalk using water. They can barely finish writing a poem before the first characters start to disappear as the water dries up.

Calligraphy writing at the Jing Shan Park. Beijing, China.

These days, I am playing with an airbrush, learning freehand and stecilling techniques. In airbrushing, the mistakes are difficult if not impossible to recover from. Once too much or too dark of a colour is sprayed, there is no way of removing it. So I made it a point to use newsprint paper – the medium that many professionals recommend for practicing airbrush techniques. I use newsprint even when I think that the result could be a unique painting. I also don’t hesitate to use subjects that have no potential for standing on their own as a piece of art, like copying fragments of famous paintings that were originally done in a different medium.

The idea of using newsprint paper came to me when I was looking at the paintings in Mauritzhuis earlier this year. Adrian Coorte, in particular, often painted on paper, instead of canvas or wooden board, which were typical media of the time.

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Interview with Craig Mildrexler

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I have been working on an article for Craig Mildrexler. I find it inspiring to see in Craig a real-life example of someone turning around his career to follow his artistic calling. Please see the complete TBLM article below. The images in this post are not related to Craig or his work, other than that they are of Genoa, the city that he visited recently.

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This week, I had an opportunity to interview Craig Mildrexler, a Kansas City – based painter, who creates “artwork that changes when viewed in a different light…just like people!”

Craig specializes in abstracts. He enjoys the freedom that comes from having no boundaries on the artist’s imagination. Abstract paintings are open to individual interpretation, and in that sense, they directly involve viewers in the creative process. Craig views each painting as an experiment, sometimes making the images look like flowers or stars and nebulae.

Craig’s medium is neon (fluorescent) acrylic paint on masonite board. Sometimes, he mixes fluorescent paints with regular acrylic paints to achieve a 3D effect – the non-fluorescent paint turns dark when viewed under UV light, creating an impression of depth. Mixing the two types of pigments allows him to creates two compositions in one painting. For example, mixing blue neon colour with a regular (non-fluorescent) yellow acrylic produces a green colour when viewed under white light, but under the black light, the yellow hue disappears, and the colour becomes blue. Neon and regular acrylics mix perfectly, and mostly hold the colour of the regular acrylic under the white light, because the florescent component of the neon paint is not fully activated.

Craig applies the paint using a variety of tools, from different types of brushes to knives to toothpicks to his fingers. He often uses a hair dryer to spread the paint on the board or lets gravity do this work. Sometimes, he uses a back side of a masonite board, which has a rough texture, to smudge the paint around the working surface.

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I asked Craig about one practical advice that he could share with someone, who would want to try his technique. His tip was to add water to the paint – different amounts to each colour. As the paint dries, the colours separate and crack differently to create interesting 3D effects, especially in the neon colours.

Craig paints under regular white light, so he sees the “black light” effects for the first time only after the painting is finished. Relying on his extensive experience, Craig can create the desired fluorescent effects without immediately seeing them. Still, he admits, when the result is revealed under the black light, he often cannot help but chuckle in surprise. In fact, this element of surprise is what particularly attracts him to black light painting.

Craig grew up in an artistic family: both his parents were artists. Although he never formally studied painting and has never taken an art class, Craig often watched his father paint. Craig went to college for a business degree and subsequently worked as an accountant until approximately 2001. During that time, he painted recreationally, as a means of relief from his stressful job. In 1990, to take his mind off the work, Craig followed the example of his parents and painted his first and still personal favourite picture – a little square that is now hanging in his studio. As he was working on it, Craig noticed that he was so focussed on the process that all his stress seemed to disappear. He then painted another picture, and another one, an another one…. Since then, he created over 5,000 paintings. He still considers it an epiphany to finding in art something completely unique and different from his prior interests by just stumbling across this powerful experience and trying to replicate it.

Eventually, Craig decided to paint professionally. He really enjoyed it and was encouraged by good sales of his work. In 2010, he discovered for himself neon paints and received a very enthusiastic response of people, who saw his work at art shows. His approach to developing his craft has always been experimental – using trial and error and learning from his mistakes.

Craig’s main influence in art is his father, Bob Mildrexler, who was a prominent artist in Kansas City in 1940s and until he passed away in 1998. Bob created over 10,000 paintings in his career, and always enjoyed experimenting with the painting process.

Craig himself has had a significant influence on the art community in Kansas City, the United States and internationally. Over the past ten years, he has taken part in more than 100 juried art fairs and exhibited his work in many galleries, restaurants and private businesses across the US. In November 2015, Craig attended the First International Black Light Painting show in Genoa, Italy among leading black light artists from Italy, France, Russia, Poland and Brazil. Along with these high-profile international activities, Craig contributes to the art community in his home town by giving away an original painting each Friday. Currently, Craig is planning a Black Light Painting Show in Kansas City, which will take place in the summer of 2017. It will feature the works of artists from Europe, Indonesia, South America and the United States.

To see more of Craig’s work, please visit his Facebook page: Craig Mildrexler’s “Power and Black Light Art”.

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What to do when you become good enough

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I wrote a blog post for The Black Light Magazine on the topic of concentrating on perfecting one’s craft vs. broadening it’s scope (see below). This question of whether niching down in a particular area of specialization is beneficial or detrimental in the long run is not new, and it comes up again and again in discussions related to photography in particular.

This time, I find an interesting connection between perfecting one’s skill and a sense of dissatisfaction with it’s level. As Randy Paterson explains in “How to Be Miserable”, striving for continuing self-improvement can, in fact, be detrimental, as it is related to the sense of “I am not enough”. He suggests leapfrogging this potential trap by asking a question: “What would I do if, for the sake of argument, I was good enough?” In other words, would we still work on improving a particular skill, for example, if we were to deem it to be sufficiently high (whatever “sufficiently high” means)?

The answer is that probably we would not keep obsessing about improving the skill (and facing the law of diminishing returns), but instead apply the skill in a new area, or start developing a new skill.

Perhaps, one way to maintain the balance between the depth and the breadth is to do the deep work (to borrow the term from Cal Newport) as default mod of operation, but every now and then pretending that whatever depth has been achieved is “good enough” and switching to a new area (e.g. starting a new research topic, learning a new painting technique, photographing different subjects, etc.)

As a reference, here is the original post for TBLM:

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In most creative endeavors, we are faced with a dilemma of focusing on perfecting an existing skill vs. exploring new techniques. This is true dilemma in the sense that there is not correct answer. Instead, a certain balance between breadth and depth must be maintained.

This issue comes up particularly often when we work in a relatively new field. Black light photography, or fluorescent art in general is one such field. It is still relatively new and even considered to be a niche among artists. As a result, not many references exist for basic lighting techniques, gear, specifics of posing and makeup, etc. When we apply a new technique, the question that automatically comes up is whether to try a similar approach again in the next photo shoot in order to refine the approach or to try something different, because a vast area remains unexplored.

There is a certain satisfaction and a sense of safety in staying with a familiar methodology. First, the probability of success is higher than with something that has never been tried before. Second, if you diligently work on a something long enough (about 10,000 hours, in fact, according to Anders Ericsson), you will become one of the top experts in the world in that thing that you’ve been working on, and that level of expertise is usually quite valuable.

Still, true innovation (and artists are innovators, or at least would like to believe so themselves), requires stepping out of one’s comfort zone, stretching beyond one’s current abilities. In order to grow, we need to step down from the level we’ve achieved in our niche and become beginners again in a different field. Besides, doing something different from what you’ve been doing up to this point (even if it hasn’t been 10,000 hours yet) is just fun.

So regardless of what you are doing at the moment – concentrating of honing your craft or blazing the trail into the uncharted territory – you are doing the right thing, as long as you are not completely ignoring the other side of the creative process.

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Monkey see, monkey scoot

Scooters are a big thing among my daughter’s preschool friends. Some time ago, we offered to buy her one, but she was not interested. Then one day, she saw a friend riding a Micro kickboard, and she could not wait to get one of her own. The next day, she rode it to school, and the following day, two more girls convinced their parents to buy the very same scooters (including the colour – it seems that pink and purple are the only two choices worth considering for four- and five-year old girls).

Naturally, a scooter had to be incorporated into the illustrated story that my daughter and I are making with a lot of help from my wife, who is the main actress in the re-enactment, playing the roles of nearly all characters (sometimes, simultaneously.

Here is the scooting episode.

“The Girl lent her scooter to the Baby Dinosaur, so that she could keep up with her friends. It was a purple scooter, with pink handlebars – Ella’s favourite colours! It turned out that Ella was a natural at scooting. It was handy to have four legs – when one of them got tired of pushing, she would witch to one of the other three.”

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Brush and spray

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This week, I have been working on a blog post for The Black Light Magazine to follow up on a recent photoshoot, where we had an opportunity to observe and compare the work of two makeup artists working side-by-side and using very distinct techniques. This is a replication of this blog post with some additional notes

Both of the artists applied full body makeup using fluorescent paints to female models, but one of them, Jenny, used airbrush and stencils, while the other one, Cory, applied a more conventional brushwork. Each painting technique had unique features, required different posing approaches from the models, and ultimately resulted in very distinct photographs.

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The main difference between the two techniques, besides the fact that airbrushing has a distinct advantage of covering large areas quickly, is that spraying thin layers of paint creates an illusion of mixing the colours. The spray actually creates a pattern of small dots of colour, which the “mixed” optically. In other words, the viewer perceives them as mixed. This effect is similar to what Georges Seurat and other pointillists explored during the golden years of post-impressionism.

Cory did not mix the florescent paints, which would reduce brightness of the colours and could potentially affect the fluorescent properties (a feature that would be interesting to investigate experimentally some time in the future). Instead, he applied the paint in discrete, thick brushstrokes, which created a van Gogh-like effect. He made use of the patterns of brushstrokes, creating the sense of motion by making them meander along the model’s body. In fact, the model recognized this feature of finished painting and skillfully utilized it in her posing by exaggerating the undulations of the painted patterns in her dance-like moves (which, incidentally, had to be performed very slowly to accommodate the slow shutter speeds that we used).

Looking at the finished body paintings, the inherent imperfections of the hand-painted pattern gave it a unique, one-of-a-kind look. On the other hand, I am intrigued by the possibilities of airbrushing, because it allows quick coverage of large areas and layering and optical mixing of otherwise immiscible pigments. In the case of body painting, the “mechanical” style of the airbrushed makeup creates an interesting contrast with the natural features of the model. In general, perhaps, a combination of stencilled and free-hand airbrush painting can give the artist the best of both worlds – the efficiency of the airbrush as the tool and the human touch of the painter who wields it.

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Bare essentials

Derek Sivers gave this advise on making a hit TED talk: cut out everything that is not surprising. The audience always wants to learn something. Even is their goal is pure entertainment, as it is often the case with cartoons or children’s books, there must be something novel in the storyline and/or in the artwork to keep the readers/viewers engaged.

My four-year-old daughter’s make-believe games, which are the basis for the picture book I have been making, are incredibly repetitive. Every day, and sometimes several time a day, the story of the hatching egg and its caretakers starts at almost the same point. There is no “Previously in the show..” type of summary. For children, this repetition is essential for training the memory. At the same time, as my daughter is re-playing the story over an over again, little details are being added, which eventually bring the characters to life, make them her own.

In the picture book, I am trying to maintain the balance between expressing my daughter’s childish, in the best sense of the word, approach to storytelling (keeping the characters and their appearance consistent) and maintaining the viewers’ interest by either introducing new characters or developing the main ones by showing their traits (clumsiness, resourcefulness, etc.)

Here is the latest episode:

“Ella was brave little Dinosaur for a one-day-old, so she left the eggshell and took the first step. Unfortunately, her legs were still not strong enough to hold her, so no matter how hard she tried, she ended up on the ground. But she wanted to play and run around with her friends so much!

The Girl had an idea: maybe Ella would run before she could walk after all!”

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Ups and downs

Any serious athlete would tell that motivation is easy to attain but difficult to sustain. This is true in creative activities too. For example, writers are famous for elaborate rituals they design to avoid procrastination and to ensure regular productivity. And quantity is indeed important if we hope to generate quality at some point. Adam Grant gives an example in his “Originals“, showing that most popular composers were also the most productive, with very rare exceptions.

Sustaining motivation in the audience is a slightly different matter. In order to keep the readers/viewers evaded, they should be exposed to a more-or-less continuous flow of material that is, at the same time, familiar and novel.

My four-year-old daughter and I are working through these issues in the picture book that we are making up (she creates the storyline through her make-believe games that she plays with her mom and I sketch it up). Sometimes, our motivation wavers, but we know that if we keep going, interesting things are bound to happen, just as in the book itself. Here is the latest episode about the newborn dinosaur discovering the world and her place in it.

“Baby Ella wanted to play with her new friends, but first, she had to learn how to walk. That was not easy, especially because she didn’t want to leave her cozy eggshell. The Girl gently nudged her to place one foot on the ground…”

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