Work In Progress

"Rolling" with the failed background.

This is a "Work in Progress" post. I had started this painting almost three years ago and was never quite satisfied with the way the daylight side’s background was coming out. As I started painting the rolling hills in the foreground, it just (to me) made the background look far worse and it wasn't coming together quite right.

I eventually put it aside and moved on to another project, always with the hope that someday I would eventually come back to it and get the painting I wanted out of this attempt. That didn't happen... until now.

"Rolling" with the reworked backgrounds first layer.

I finally decided what I wanted to do with it and have started to rework the failed background. I have decided to go with a much brighter and warmer background and this is the first layer of color that will go over this old background, one more should cover all the old background and really add some more dimension and overall appeal to the entire thing.

Keep an eye out for further WIP images of this one. I think it is going to be a beauty.

Setting Realistic Goals

Being featured in a gallery within a month is not a realistic goal. Could it happen... absolutely, but the chances are slim.

I have been trying to set myself some realistic goals. Ones that will be fulfilled, hopefully in short amounts of time and aren't that far removed from the possibility of completion. Goals should not be monumental but tiny at first. If your initial goals are to hefty, you might not be able to bare the weight of the amount of work needed to reach it.

My first new goal was to establish a presence on social media. I already had some accounts but needed to brand them a bit and make them more coherent. I started by creating a Facebook fan page specific to my fine art works. I edited my profiles on other sites like Twitter and Google Plus to reflect this as well. This goal took less than a few hours to complete and gave me that overall sense of accomplishing something. A great boost if ever there was one.

My second goal had two parts. Create a blog to feature my works and to get my likes on Facebook as well as followers on G+ and Twitter to reach over 25 each. Like I said, small goals. This took about a week and again has given that feeling of getting something done. This is a great motivator for anyone. It helps to know that there are at least a few people out there that like the works I create. A few nice comments and all seems right in the world.

My third goal was a timely task. To keep this blog going for over a month... check and check. As of this post, I have been at this for exactly one month. This was far harder than I thought it would be. I have never been the best communicator, in written or spoken words. I also thought I wouldn't be able to find the subject matter to talk about. Did I indeed have enough to say without creating a blog that just wastes your time as well as my own time with useless trivia and quotes from others or could I actually find it in me to express my personal thoughts on the matter. This has been a great way to get some of my thoughts out and relieve a little stress in the process. Just writing about things has been a thrilling way to both entertain myself and free my thoughts for better things.

So what are your goals, in life, in business, or in your own works of art?
Have you set goals that were just too big to control?
Do you have any stories of goals set and reached?

I look forward to reading your comments.

"Fear"

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Or

"The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then."

Thomas Carlyle

Either way you look at it, the idea is always the same. Fear is what you make of it. There is no fear, only an emotional response to perceived danger, but most of the times that we humans feel fear... there is no "real" danger. Real fear is hanging by one arm off of a cliff, Being attacked by a grizzly bear, or waking in your house to find it being engulfed in flames. This is fear that we rarely feel these days. Our new fears stem from social interactions. We call it nervousness. This is a purely learned reaction. One that you the artist are meant to overcome, in your own way and at your own pace. Some will say you have to take the big leap but if you’re like me, you like to wade slowly into the pool and get a feeling for it first, before you can submerge yourself.

Now don't get me wrong. I feel it too. Fear; can at times be as real as it gets. There are all these new things I am trying to implement right now that are scary to me. Who really knows if any of it will pan out, but it is the journey I am taking that makes all the difference. Isn't it? All these new avenues and directions I am learning to access are of course, feeling me with feelings of dread and discomfort. That twitching in your spine that tells you to stop and think about it. That tries to control your actions and sets up the fight or flight response we all get from time to time. Well I am choosing to fight. Or at least give it my best shot.

Things I am trying that are completely new and scary to me.

• Contacting newspapers with a self-written press release and a bio.
  
  
• Looking into outings and other events where artists can sell their works.
  
  
• Approaching galleries and talking with the owners to see if they have any interest in my works.
  
  
• Connecting with restaurant owners about hanging works if they have space available.
  
  
• Engaging with fellow artist and trying to find likeminded people.

For me specifically... I find that anything having to do with public speaking, to be the most troublesome. I don't always do well in situations like that. As well, the mere thought of success can make me a bit anxious. Nobody really wants their existing lifestyle to be greatly altered from comfort to uncomfortable, and that can get a little overwhelming for me personally.  But you have to press on. I will start enter works into contests or maybe even doing live demos one day. Who knows where this can all lead?

We can only be scared if we let fear bother us and fear isn't real. So nothing bothers us.

What if anything scares you about being an artist? Do you, like most artists, feel that you might not be good enough yet? Or think your art just doesn't fit in? Or anything else?

 I welcome all comments and suggestions as to how you might deal with your fears, or success stories of overcoming your own individual fears.

Sporadic Video Wednesday

This is  a video from the first and only art show I have ever been in. ( I kick in at about the 4:14 mark.) That is soon going to change. I have been putting in a lot of effort lately and have been seeing some positive results from it all.

In this video, it is clearly demonstrated that I don't like being in front of that camera and jumble my words a bit, hey it happens. Public speaking has never been my strong suit.

)

Personal Style

Joseph Finchum

       All of my life I have been told time and time again, that my artworks lack a sense of personal style. This is something that has always weighed heavy on my mind. I am not really happy unless I am experimenting in one way or another.  Trying to mix things up and see what kind of results I can get. Everything I know about painting and art in general, I have taught myself. I trained myself to use different mediums through trial and error, a pinch of oils, a dab of acrylic, and a splash of watercolor. So I had to ask myself a question. Can a lack of personal style, be a personal style?

I think it can. This I think is what drew me in to the idea of Graphic Design where you would be changing styles with every new project. This fit with me because the way I approach a piece may be different from the techniques of other artists. I don’t just look at the subject or idea and grab my brushes and start painting. I first have to decide what grabs me about the subject. What aspect of the idea is the focal point, and what style of painting will do it the most justice. 

What tools do I want to use is another factor? Do I want to accent soft and subtle brush strokes or do I want to bring out a sharp jagged line of a palette knife? Is a hard sculpted edge needed or a splattering of color? All these thoughts are presented before me and my choices come from these decisions. But wait there’s more…

Influence is something that astonishes me. We can make a list of all our conscious influences, but that will just cover the tip of the iceberg. Our minds think in pictures and we see pictures everywhere. We are bombarded with advertisements containing pictures everywhere we go and look. That ad on the subway wall, a billboard on the side of highway, and even the graffiti on the underpass all have a way of seeping into to the tiny cracks in our minds and branching out to connections. Links we could not conceive of without this intrusion. All this inspiration says a lot about how a piece of art will ebb and flow into the finished product.


Lastly, there is the mood we are in that lends itself to the situation and the specific genre. Feeling happy and playful, we might make something abstract because it the process of creating it is fun. Feeling angry or frustrated and we might want paint a misty and dark in a landscape. It all depends on what is filtering in.


Now, I am not saying that my “personal style” will not change or emerge and come to a full apex someday down the road. For now though, I am happy with where I am. Maybe one day a specific medium or genre will present itself as a major dominant style, but I don’t know if that will be next week or in the next decade. Until then, I want to keep experimenting and have some fun doing what brings me joy and true happiness. I hope you do too.

"Falling Water"

It's Monday and so that means I am posting another of my paintings for you all. I hope you like it and that it can bring you just as much joy as it brought me while I was creating it.

"Falling Water"

20" x 16" Oil on Canvas

Available for purchase $250

Prints are available on Blue Canvas by following the link in sidebar.

This is a 20" x 16" oil painting that I did a while back. 

A striking full moon hangs behind a floating mountain landscape with light blue waterfalls breaking away to the unknown and beyond.

All comments are welcome, any opinion appreciated. 

"Why Art?"

Well, let’s start at the beginning. I was born with a birth defect. My feet were twisted and turned backwards. The muscles in my calves were formed wrong and wrapped around my shin bones causing my backwards feet. For the first 5 years of my life I wore giant metal braces on my legs that meant I was immobilized, no crawling, no walking, and no movement at all. All this time I would go back to the doctors every couple of months and they would turn these braces a few degrees toward the front, eventually going all the way past the front and 90 degrees back inward and then backwards to the front again. My mother was told I would never walk or if I did walk, it would be with a severe limp.

                So, in these first 5 years I spent a lot of time with paper and crayons and I would draw and draw and draw some more. I learned to read and write before everyone else my age, but my drawings never really got that much better… for a kid that is. I became introverted and lacked in social skills. Still do in some ways and have trouble dealing with most social settings, especially in large group settings. When the braces came off, they could not keep me still and the drawing sort of went away. That was until I went to school. A few class projects that involved drawing sent teachers into a frenzy. Here was a kid that could draw anything he saw, like a human photocopier. My teachers pushed at me to draw all the time and this actually made me want to do it less and less. I wanted to move, wanted to run around. I had these new legs and wanted to use them and art became just a side skill I didn't want use.

                Throughout elementary school and into high school I ran track, held records in sprinting that are still in place to this day at my former school. I wanted to run, jump, and climb trees. I did not want to sit at a table or desk and draw, mostly because I could do both with ease now. I can still draw anything I can see but never really had the ability to draw what I couldn't see; my imagination and recall seemed to be sub-par. Without reference I was lost.

                I never came from a family of money and as all my friends went off to college, I was left behind to find something to do with myself. I started to draw again and I started to paint for the first time. I fell back in love with making things that made others happy, or sad, or even angry at times. It was at this time that I realized just how powerful art could be. How it could draw out emotions in people that they themselves didn't know they had. This moved me in a way that I didn't know was possible either and at first it was a hindrance. I continued to make art but it was for myself, and still is to a point. I make things. Paintings, sculptures, drawings in sketchbooks, and then no one else got to see them. My walls are covered with my art and I slowly started to run out of room for new stuff, so I started to give it away to friends and family. This lead to them asking for me to do new works for them, but I still found it hard to let this stuff go. Something I still wrestle with to this day. When I create, even off of a suggestion, I want it to be mine and mine alone.

                After many years I decided that this skill should be put to use. I looked into going back to school for Graphic Design… this however turned out to be a huge mistake. I got suckered into attending a For-Profit school that really did nothing to help educate me. In the end I was left with a degree that is worth less than the paper it is printed on, not recognized by the people who hire for these positions, and a student loan debt that was in my opinion; astronomical. I fell into a depression and wanted to do nothing to help myself. 

                Trying to pull myself from my slump, I decided to paint something. That something is the painting I posted below. It is a reflection of how my world seemed to be a beautiful thing, but is contorted and out of whack with reality. Rolling and twisting hills as this upheaval of reality mixed with the torment in my mind’s eye. As I like to say, the virtual landscape of my minds eye.

This is where I decided to make a change. A change for the better I had hoped. Getting your foot in the door of the art world is a very hard thing to do. The “Are you experienced catch-22” was a major drawback. I would visit galleries and show them my work (which they liked) so that I could try to get a showing of my work, only to be asked where my work had been showed before. The answer of course was nowhere. So I would be rejected because of this.

                So now I am trying to get far more serious about this. I am extending my desire to break in and I am willing to do what it takes this time around. But I still have problems with initiative and of course fear. I am afraid of not being accepted, of starting something, and being afraid to mess it up and having to speak about the hows and whys of my art. I have a slight fear of success and everything that might come with it. Not that I don’t want to create, but more along the lines of being scared that I have more ideas coming forward then I have time to work on. Paintings get started and then put on the back burner, to simmer and grow cold. I am now striking out against this and trying to push myself to finish the things I start and this blog is part one of my plans. Hopefully, setting a schedule and a few goals will push me forward and I am going to be trying some new things in order to try and keep these creative juices flowing. I am going to dabble in some time-lapse videos of my painting process and try to jump into other areas of art.

                This, I think, will help me to be more consistent in my production of art works and I am hoping that one day this will be all I do for a living, because this is what I want to do with my life and this is just the starting point of what I hope becomes a long and fulfilling career of bringing joy to others. I have had one showing now and I look forward to having some more in the near future… hopefully.

                If you are an artist, I would like to hear from you. What is your story? Why do you do this? Have you had any success with it or are you still trying to break in? What are your major sources of inspiration? What are your fears and why, if you have fears, where do you think these fears come from?  

Why art?

"Twisted Moonrise" By Joseph Finchum

"Twisted Moonrise"

36" x 24" Oil on Canvas

Available for purchase $350

Prints available on Blue Canvas by following link in sidebar.


 This is a painting done a few years ago. I am using it here just to get started and would like anyone to comment on it. Tell me if you like it or if it is just not for you. Any opinion is appreciated. 

What kind of art do you like or enjoy and what, if anything, would you like to see me paint and post at a later time? 

Your suggestions may get you a free print of the finished work.

I hope you enjoy this and I look forward to hearing from you.