Never Stop Learning!
- Jessica Dunn
- Feb 17, 2021
- 2 min read
As a former teacher, I strongly believe that learning should never stop. I only took one art course in college, but I have continued to work on learning more about art and improving my skills since then. Many new to art start the way I did - searching youtube for tutorials and trying their best to imitate what what other artists did. This helped me for a while, and I gradually started to step out and create my own pieces with what I had learned. Between youtube tutorials and examining the works of my favorite artists, such as Monet, I felt I was at last creating works I could be proud of.
Soon enough, I experienced whatever the artist equivalent of writer's block is (painter's block? artist's block?). I had a picture I wanted to use as a reference picture for a painting, and no matter how hard I tried I could not get it to work. This sent me on yet another youtube spiral of painting videos, where I stumbled across the videos of artist Chris Fornataro. I soon found myself at my easel working on a painting of an apple - and I found it so helpful! It allowed me to step back and focus on the basics of painting again, and the frustration I was feeling with my "artist's block" subsided. I bought more canvas paper and started painting just for fun again, without the worry of wasting an expensive canvas. I wanted to do more studies with Chris Fornataro, and found to my delight that he has a Patreon page where for a very small monthly fee I could get access to full length painting videos. Using these Patreon videos I have been able to work outside of my comfort zone and try pieces I never would have attempted before. I painted snow for the first time! I painting a barn, my very first building! I even attempted a human figure - probably one of the most difficult paintings I have ever done.
Don't ever let frustration and fear of failure prevent you from trying something new! Often, working through the frustration and dealing with failure is a lesson in itself. I still haven't figured out how to successfully put on canvas the picture that started me on my journey to learn more skills but I haven't given up quite yet! Not knowing how to paint that particular picture has led me to learn about aspects of painting I may not have dug into otherwise, so I am grateful for the experience!
If you are interested in learning how to paint, please check out Chris Fornataro's Patreon page:
You can watch his videos on YouTube here:
The tutorials Chris does are popular for a reason! He is very down to earth, and explains things very simply. You do not need a degree in art or any art background to understand his videos. I not only signed up for his Patreon posts, I also signed up for his Foundations of Oil Painting course: https://paint-coach.teachable.com/p/oil-painting-foundational-skills
I am not receiving any kind of compensation for promoting Chris Fornataro - I just really love his work and wanted to pass along an excellent source!
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