Clara Lieu's Blog, page 3

Lobster Painting

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This week I finally finished the oil painting for our upcoming oil painting video course! I seriously felt like this was the oil painting that was never going to end.  Compared to other media I work in like printmaking and drawing, oil painting takes an excruciating amount of time by comparison, so the inherently slower pace of oil painting can be really hard to deal with.

This still life has been sitting in my studio since January; I never thought dismantling a still life could feel so good.  As it is my studio space is tiny, and having this mammoth still life that you had to keep still was, let’s just say, a pretty big logistical challenge.

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Painting this lobster really was very exciting, in the above image is the first pass of blocking in the colors. Stressful too though, because I only had 4 days to finish it (what’s the point of buying a lobster for a still life if you don’t get to eat it when you are done?) and so there was pressure to get it finished quickly.

Out of all the still life objects I’ve ever painting, a lobster was definitely one of the most challenging and intriguing to paint. The surface of a lobster is odd; in some places there was a speckled pattern, in others it had a lavender matte tint, and then there were all those odd bumps and spikes that seemed to pop out of nowhere.

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When I sat down to edit, the final (well, not quite FINAL) cut came out to two hours. Which is crazy because I still feel like I had to leave out a lot of content. Yesterday I was convinced that I was definitely done shooting, but upon revisiting the second half of the tutorial where I walk the audience through every step of painting the lobster, I saw what was missing:  my face.

Not because I’m vain, but because one aspect that bothers me about a lot of art tutorials online is that the entire video is just a person’s hands, and you never get to see the person. I can see why, it’s waaaaay more work to include footage of the person talking, but to me the result feels very impersonal and what I’ve discovered is that the presence and personality of the artist is really important for people to really connect to the video.

So it looks like I’ve got more footage to shoot, not much because most of the voice over covers what I need, but I need to insert some clips of me talking.  In my opinion, the impact of a tutorial is significantly increased if you feel like the person is there talking to you, and that doesn’t happen with imagery of hands with a voice!

An “Epic” Tutorial

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Miraculously, I managed to catch up on tons of video footage I had been sitting on for months for Artprof.org, and I only have two tutorials in the works right now, which has to be a record for me!

One of those is an oil painting tutorial, which is turning out to be “epic.” Our longest video so far is 1 hour, and it covers how to prepare a wide range of surfaces for painting. I’m not even done shooting the footage for the oil painting tutorial, and I’m already at an hour and 45 minutes! The crazy thing is that even at this length, I still feel like I’m leaving out a lot of content on oil painting; the process is that involved and complex.

I’m actually really surprised that despite not having painted in oils for over 15 years, I’ve really retained all of the knowledge I gained when I was heavily focused on painting.  I guess it’s like riding a bike, you never forget!

I’m trying to be really specific and concrete to offer a fully comprehensive tutorial on oil painting, so that you could start the video knowing nothing about oil painting and then feel fairly confident about how to proceed.  From the videos I’ve seen online about oil painting, it’s ridiculous how much absolutely critical content gets left out:  safety hazards, specific colors and their individual behaviors, and more. The colors on my palette feel like old friends, I know them inside out and it’s been fun to revisit each color with it’s quirks and strengths. I know that Cadmium Red always needs to be the life of the party, whereas burnt umber is happy to sink into the background.

Another fun part of this tutorial is that I invited 2 art students, Cat Huang and Owen Rival to be on set with me so we could represent three different levels of painting:  1 person who just started learning, 1 person with about 1 year of experience, and then myself.  We’ve done plenty of 1 person, 2 person tutorials, but this is the first one with 3, so it’s fun to experiment with a new format to create a different dynamic in the conversation.

 

My Perception of Time

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I’ve been frustrated lately because I feel like I have no perception of time as it relates to progress with Artprof.org. I have a timeline in my head of what we’ve accomplished since the very first thought of Art Prof popped into my head back in the fall or 2014, yet I still feel like I have no way of really measuring our progress.

Sure, I can look at the numbers for the past 1.5 years that our main site has been live. Last month we had over 10k visitors to Artprof.org, our highest yet, and the other day we hit 11k subscribers on our YouTube channel.  I really shouldn’t do this, but then I look at the numbers for other channels and sites that are doing somewhat similar things and I can’t even conceive of ever reaching 100k subscribers. I can’t help but ask myself, is it simply a matter of time before the project feels like it has truly “landed,” or am I doing something wrong?  I guess it’s fruitless to ask myself questions like this, but that doesn’t stop me from having those thoughts.

Seeing as we are very much making up Artprof.org as we go along, I really can’t tell if given the timeline of the project, whether we are doing exceptionally well or if we really should be a lot further along.  Granted, I do think it’s unfair for me to have expectations to have concrete answers to questions that are impossible to answer,  but it still bothers me that I don’t have a way to measure where we “should” be.

I guess when I compare this project to the timeline of progress I watch my students go through over the course of a single semester at RISD, it’s startling how predictable my classes are compared to Art Prof.  I’ve taught enough classes that I have approximations of where I think my students should be at midterm, and expectations where I want them to be at the end of the semester.  I can tell when a student is really lagging far behind, and when they are doing exceptionally well at any given point in the semester.

I think this all started when a comment on our YouTube channel this past week showed up that said “Your content is such good quality, I don’t understand how it’s not more popular.”  It’s a really nice compliment for them to say that, but I haven’t been able to get this out of my mind.  Being the eternal pessimist the nagging question in my head this week is “what am I doing wrong?”

A Glorious Mess

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I’ve been getting all kinds of supplies in the mail from art companies like Strathmore, Lineco, Winsor & Newton, Fredrix, and Legion Paper. Needless to say, my studio room is a bit of a disaster, like to the point where if you want to walk through the studio you have to move a couple of boxes that are in the way!

My desk is a mess, I know it’s bad when the mugs and dishes start to accumulate and I don’t know what the notes on my desk are for. However, I love this. I love when I’m so busy that there’s no time to clean my desk, when I’m so much in the trenches of working that all I can handle is tossing something onto my desk, when I can’t be bothered to place it on the shelf. To me, being busy is the best feeling.  Feeling productive, shifting quickly and bouncing back and forth between each task.

When I woke up this morning and looked at my studio, one word came to my mind:  “entropy.”  Chemistry was the only class in high school I got a C in, but I do remember a terrific story my Chemistry teacher told us that I still remember.  He said that any time his wife got mad at him for a messy living room, he would say “It’s entropy!”

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Painting again, and again, and again

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We shot half of an oil painting video way back in January, and here I am in the November trying to tie up all the loose ends. I remember thinking at the time, “Paint a still life in oil?  No problem!!” Actually, it ended up being quite possibly the most problematic still life I have ever set up in my life.

I knew what I was getting into with the lobster, so it was obvious from the beginning that I would be painting at least 2 lobsters at 2 separate times.  What I didn’t count on was the dragon eyes (fruit that look like giant brown grapes with a tough skin on them) falling off the still life, the daikon radish wilting incredibly fast, and the jack fruit growing mold within two days.  Did I mention that at one point the blue plate fell on the floor and broke into many pieces? And that the grapefruit on the right turned into two navel oranges, which are now two absurdly large minneolas? Then there were all the tweaks that were added, like the red drapery that got adjusted and the bamboo leaves that were added behind the lobster to get better color contrast.

At this point, I just want to get it done. I really don’t like letting work sit around incomplete for this long, and the fact that its been many months has been pretty painful to watch. My goal is to finish this oil painting video by the end of the year, so I better have a finished product soon!!

Two Arrows

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I remember when we hired a web developer in 2016 to create Artprof.org, she was really surprised at the amount of content that we had to post on the site.  Apparently, it was common for many of her clients to have ideas for what they wanted for their website, but to not have any content that was actually ready to go.

Creating content is hands down the easiest part of producing Artprof.org.  A frustration we collectively have as a staff is that we are all oozing with ideas for video tutorials, but the reality is that it can be many, many months before a specific idea actually comes to fruition. We’ve been live for almost 2 years, and even with over 30 video tutorials, I feel like we have barely scratched the surface of our potential. Between everyone on our team, we probably have 30 years of content floating around in our heads.

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Which is why it drives me up the wall to have to spend so much time on marketing and publicity. Neither is in my area of expertise, so everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned on my own along the way and some days it’s the most tedious slog that exists. It’s hours of typing mind numbing emails, explaining the same pitch over and over again.  Actually, the most exhausting part of marketing is the tumbleweeds that you see after all of that work. I must have sent over 150 emails today, and in my eyes, it’s a miracle if I get even 1 positive reply. I’ve done this enough times that I know what to expect when I do these email blasts, but that never seems to make the experience any less disheartening.

I had a colleague who told me that he saw his career as a room that had a bunch of arrows flying around.  He said those moments that work out are when two arrows hit each other right on the head.  So on days like this, when my brain is mush doing from all the marketing tasks all day, I have to remind myself that the only way I will ever get two arrows to hit each other on the head is to keep sending more arrows.

New Travel Video: Guangzhou, China

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Very exciting to release our video from our summer trip to Guangzhou, China today! This was definitely one of the most complex videos we have ever produced at Artprof.org; not only was it filmed on site in Guangzhou, but it featured 4 artists, which is the most of us we have ever had in any video on the site.

My travel companions, Eloise, Lauryn, and Casey were one of the best parts of the trip.  We motivated each other to draw constantly, and it was so much fun to get to see everyone’s unique approach to drawing the city.

On top of that, this Guangzhou video cements our initiative to produce more travel videos in the near future. Previously, the only travel video we had produced was the one I shot in Taiwan last December. Now the Taiwan video doesn’t feel like an one time stand alone video; in fact I now see that Taiwan video as a launching pad for future travel videos.

Gesture Drawings from Life

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I’m trying something new with my RISD Project Open Door students this year.  The program provides a sketchbook for every student, so I thought it would be nice to check in with the students on a more formal basis about what they’re doing in their sketchbooks. I don’t give assignments, as I want their sketchbooks to be a personal space where they can do what they want, but I’m talking to each student individually every week to see what they are up to.

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Looking at someone’s sketchbook is always an eye opening experience.  I’ve only had these students for a few weeks, so I don’t know them that well yet, but seeing their sketchbooks definitely gave me insight into their interests and who they are as artists.

However, across the board, I didn’t see a single drawing that was drawn from life.  Everything was either drawn from imagination or drawn from a photograph. Even after all of these years of teaching,  it still surprises me that at the high school level, it never occurs to students to draw what’s right in front of them. One of my students did these hand drawings, and when I asked them what their reference was for the hands, he said he drew them from another artist’s drawings off YouTube. In my eyes it seems crazy that you have an a hand attached to your body that you have 24-7 access to, and yet upon deciding that you want to draw a hand, you wouldn’t even consider drawing your own hand.

I realized after telling every student that I wanted to see them do at least a few drawings from life every week, that I better practice what I preach. So I’m trying to make a much more concerted effort to sneak in a few minutes of life drawing every day, even if it’s just 5 minutes at breakfast.

My Bucket List (for real)

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I’m sure that I’m not alone when it comes to fantasizing about realizing your wildest dreams.  My business partner Tom and I like to joke about how he already has his suit picked out for when we are on the Today show.

While I can laugh and joke to my friends about stuff like that, I know that deep down I’m really not joking at all.

Because I really do want to have my own travel/drawing show on PBS. (and don’t forget about the Emmy I’ll win for it) I really do want to be on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and I really do want to be a clue on the NYT Crossword Puzzle.  And yes, I have thought about the heart attack I will have upon hearing Ari Shapiro say my name on the air.

I’m not sure why, but for the longest time I’ve been embarrassed to admit openly that these really are my true ambitions.  I’m not sure if it’s the culture of being a fine artist at an art school that I’ve lived in for so long (which generally disparages ambitions like this) that’s made me that way, or if it’s because I think having ambitions like this makes me seem like an egomaniac.  (like who am I to think that I would be capable of any of those ambitions in real life)

Either way, it’s time to own to up the fact that none of this is a joke, and that now, it’s for real.

Snail Mail + Art

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For those of you who are 40 years old and up:  remember the days when you got hand written letters from your friends in the mail, and you knew what each of your friends’ handwriting looked like?  Seems like that was centuries ago.

Well, here’s your chance to get snail mail again that isn’t asking you to get a new credit card:  donate $5 monthly and I’ll snail you a hard copy hand written letter + a sketch/print every month!

Not only will snail mail be fun again, but you’ll also be helping us keep Artprof.org free for everyone.