In yesterday’s post I was reflecting on the task of painting flesh tones, and in particular on the lack of advice that is readily available regarding how to paint people of African or Caribbean origin. Only today did it occur to me that I had missed the most important point. My search for advice ran along very familiar lines, and the artist’s magazines are full of this kind of thing. You probably recognise what I mean. They are full of pieces telling us “how to paint” …. (“winter skies”, or “street scenes”, or “marine motifs”, or ….). I rail against the is kind of thing regularly, but failed to notice that I had fallen into the trap, and had failed to observe the most important rule. OBSERVE! This is the first rule of painting. Don’t tie yourself to formulae, but actually look at what is in front of you.
My excuse on this occasion is that I was trying to work from a single, rather poor, reference photograph, and didn’t have the opportunity to work with a live model. Even so, it is disturbing to find how easy it is to fall into lazy artistic habits.
Learning from this experience, however, I did speak with a couple of friends this morning, recruiting them as live models for another picture I have in mind.