Why take art lessons?

Why not just be intuitive and pure and raw in your reaction to your subject? Isn’t art an emotional expression that doesn’t need to get sullied by academic considerations? Won’t learning technical processes destroy my creativity? These are questions that beginning artists often pose, and they are valid questions. Artists should react intuitively and not be thinking about techniques and materials while they are creating. They shouldn’t have to consult a color wheel every time they mix a new color on the palette, or refer to a textbook before selecting a brush. And this is the very arguement in favor of taking lessons and developing a mastery of the craft. Mastering the technical details enables you to focus on your reaction to your subject without thinking about technique. Just as you wouldn’t expect to sit down at a piano without prior knowledge of music and play a great jazz improvisation, you can’t expect to express your artistic vision without the tools neccesary to help you realize that vision.

 Becoming comfortable with the tools and materials, how colors interact when mixed, how to get the effect you want from your brushes or painting knives, knowing how the surface of the painting will accept the color, and many other aspects of craft should become second nature so you don’t have to think about them while you are painting. That level of mastery will only become possible after making many paintings. Most of your early paintings will not succeed as great works of art, but they will be great learning experiences. Expect to do hundreds of paintings before you feel truely comfortable in your abilities. Embrace the failures, because without them, you wouldn’t be able to learn. Each painting you create will be a learning experience, and if you are lucky this learning will never end. Art is so deep that you can never completely master it, and each painting will challenge you to reach a new level of understanding that is beyond anything you’ve done before. If you become complacent in your abilities and feel you’ve learned all there is to know, your art will become stale and it will bore you to make a painting. Challenge yourself with every painting you make.