In January, many of us plan our year ahead. Each year, I try to make time for two big creative projects, each dictated by the seasons: In spring and summer my fruit and vegetable garden demands my attention, and then in autumn and winter, I focus my time on learning an art or craft. This year it’s dressmaking.
In my mind’s eye, I’ve already created a peaceful garden oasis abuzz with bees, birds, and butterflies, full of juicy fruit and vibrant vegetables. My cupboard is full. There’s no need to go grocery shopping anymore. I’ve similar dressmaking dreams. In my head, I’ve made a perfectly tailored summer dress from raw silk, which swishes in the summer breeze as I skip to my garden heaven.
In reality, my summer dress is still a pile of blue raw silk, tucked away in the cupboard next to my sewing machine, and last year’s harvest gave me enough for an odd garnish: Some raspberries and a few bunches of salad leaves, to name a couple.
Pick a Profession and Master It
In the 1980s, self-taught silversmith Scott Hardy made spurs and horse jewelry until he met two master silversmiths. Over a drink, they shared their work and advice. Each concentrated on one area of Western craft. One of them said to Hardy: “Pick a profession and become the best you can be at it. You owe that to the materials.”
From that day on, Hardy focused on gold- and silversmithing. He made it his mission to read and learn all he could about the methods and materials of his trades.
Start Small to Become Great
Saddler Cary Schwarz advises any aspiring craftsperson to start small. Some of his students set their expectations high due to what they’ve seen on YouTube video tutorials and social media channels that show craftspeople making exquisitely crafted objects. But these omit the hundreds of hours of practice that each skilled craftsperson has undergone to be proficient.
Students want to start their saddle-making journey at second or third base, when what they need to do is to take a process-oriented approach and reach first base first, he said. He tells his students to first become acquainted with the leather and understand how it feels to work with it.
Know Your Materials Well
George O’Hanlon encourages professional painters to make their own paint, or at least know how to. As the director of Natural Pigments, a U.S. company that manufactures rare and hard-to-find fine arts materials, O'Hanlon says that a lot of artists today don’t understand paint; they rely on commercial paint from a tube.O’Hanlon sees this as a major disadvantage for them. He likens those artists to chefs picking up a couple of jars of sauce and some ingredients at the supermarket to make a meal. They’re not cooking a meal; they’re assembling it. “Imagine a chef not knowing how to prepare a sauce from scratch, or how to prepare a dish from the basic ingredients,” he said.
Artists today aren’t experimenting in paint making, as they did in the past, because they haven’t learned how to make paint at college, and they can’t readily access the paint-making materials.
Be Disciplined and Put in the Hours
Still-life painter Susan Paterson believes that budding artists are often unaware of the amount of work and discipline it takes to produce such detailed art as hers. “People think you have to be inspired to go up there to your studio and paint, but I do treat it like a job,” she said. For Paterson, that means working six to seven hours a day, Monday through Friday.
Sometimes a painting can take three to four months to complete, so she normally works on two or three paintings at a time while the oil paint slowly dries. Sometimes she’s even had to polish a silver piece in her arrangement, and more often has had to dust the pieces as the dust settles on them over time.
Take Time to Reflect and See Your Progress
Mixed media artist Susannah Weiland loves how embroidering by hand sets its own pace. There’s no way of doing it fast. She embroiders in stages, laboring long and hard at each motif.
She enjoys the slow, intensive process but needs sanity breaks to stop, reflect, and rest her eyes. “It’s good to take a break and then come back to it, and then you notice things that you want to change or you want to add in,” she said.
Follow in the Footsteps of Those You Admire, but Pave Your Own Path
Representational painter Kristen Yann’s college education fell far short of her hope to learn traditional painting techniques. “It was just very poor training as far as technique goes, and a heavy emphasis on how to think,” she said.The one golden nugget of advice that she got from college was to look at the websites and résumés of artists whom she admired and see where they trained. One of Yann’s favorite living artists, Alex J. Venezia, had also been to a university but ended up training at East Oaks Studio in Raleigh, North Carolina.
East Oaks Studio, she explained, is not an instructional program. It’s a community of artists who paint together, share information, and critique each other’s work.
Yann won an East Oaks Studio scholarship. She spent long periods of time watching East Oaks Studio co-founder Louis Carr and resident artist Venezia paint. “I learned from observation, and that’s a really wonderful thing because you don’t get a lot of this ‘head’ knowledge blocking your intuition” when you’re painting, she said.
Draw and Paint Directly From Nature, Not Photographs
For luminist painter Joseph McGurl, having a direct connection with nature is essential when he paints in the luminist style. It’s one of the reasons he creates plein air paintings, and why he never uses photographs in his artistic process. Luminism is all about light and spirituality, he explained, and a photograph has neither of those qualities. “A photograph has no light. If you turn off the light bulb that’s shining on it, there’s no light emanating from that photograph.”He added that because photographs contain no light, painting from a photograph means that an artist is not painting light but is painting colors, matching one color to another. For McGurl, painting out in the field is essential for him to be able to interpret the light and sensations necessary for his paintings.
Always Remember Your Why
Icon carver Jonathan Pageau first started carving in his spare time because it was something he loved doing. When his bishop saw him carving, he asked Pageau to make him a panagia, the pendant featuring the Virgin Mary with the Christ child that Eastern Orthodox bishops wear when giving the Divine Liturgy.Pageau had never made a miniature before, so he contacted a Serbian carver who guided him through the process, which took several days. Pageau laughed when he said, “He was ruthless with me. It was wonderful.”
Finally, when he felt he’d done his best, he gave the pendant to his bishop after the liturgy. He’d become so lost in the process of perfecting the carving that he’d momentarily lost track of its significance. But his bishop’s reaction woke him up. As his bishop unwrapped the pendant he made a gesture of reverence, crossing himself and bowing slightly. Pageau was taken aback. “My bishop wasn’t seeing my artwork at that moment. … He was seeing the Virgin.” he said.
It was all Pageau had hoped for. He realized that his bishop would wear the object he’d made and that it would follow the bishop through his spiritual life, including his church services.
