How to Develop Your Skills and Imagination to Get Better at Painting: Advice from Todd M. Casey
This is part of the end of year advice series. Guests from the show offer suggestions on how to use an hour a day to get better at painting and share some of their own goals (and how they set them) for the year ahead.
Todd M. Casey (2021 Guest) artistic education includes a BFA in Communication Design from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, Massachusetts. Casey’s work touches on more than simplistic, rigid realism. Paintings that are classically styled, but progressive in approach— fine, somber details, rendered with a clear, meticulous eye; and yet, somehow, subdued with a gentle, melancholic focus.
Casey will be on the podcast in 2021. Add your name to email newsletter below to get all new monthly episodes.
Hour a Day
If an artist had an hour a day, I would suggest two things:
First, do skilled based exercises so that you keep working at your craft and learning to see. This would mostly be drawing from observation, considering things like perspective, construction drawing, anything that helps you think. I refer to this as the optical and conceptual (drawing what you see and making sure it makes sense from an engineer's standpoint).
“I try to always plan ahead so I'm constantly thinking of new goals all year long. I can understand why the new year would bring in a sense that there should be new goals but I recommend you always keep adding to this throughout the year.” - Todd M. Casey
Second, draw from your imagination. It can be characters, world's you want to create, what you had drawn earlier from life. Perhaps it's thumbnails for ideas of stories you want to do a painting of, maybe it's an emotion or color that you're captivated by. Don't use reference, create from your imagination.
Eventually the two will become one so you won't be stuck painting only from nature (unless that's what you want to do which is fine).
How do you create goals for your art for the new year?
I try to always plan ahead so I'm constantly thinking of new goals all year long. I can understand why the new year would bring a sense that there should be new goals but I recommend you always keep adding to this throughout the year.
If an idea is too big, go after it and see if you can achieve it. Most of the time the dragon is within us and it's holding us back. The loftier the goal, the bigger the reward for yourself.
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." - Wayne Gretzky
Learn more about Todd M. Casey:
WEBSITE / WORKSHOPS / INSTAGRAM / FACEBOOK
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