December 7, 2014

Cynda Mary's School of Art. NOTES FROM LOS ANGELES; another full moon at the brewery...please note the alien crawling up the light pole on the left....no doubt it'll turn up in a painting one day...

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November 26, 2014

Cynda mary's school of art; notes from los angeles; use this "close one eye and squint the other" trainer...do it till you see the design is actually 4 concentric circles...hold it!!

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November 20, 2014

Cynda Mary's School of Art; NOTES FROM LOS ANGELES; dear friends, the peops are so different down here! : check out the his and hers TIME MACHINES i found in the house we rented.....will send progress notes as i learn to operate them...first stop: the belle epoch... love cynda

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October 29, 2014

LAST TIP FROM CYNDA MARY'S SCHOOL OF ART (NORCAL BRANCH): we go to bed in a country where the odds are pretty good we won't die in the streets the next day of a bullet or a virus...likely we'll have plenty to eat (too much) and most of us a roof over our heads...even so, young artists gotta remember this isn't disneyland...it ain't always a barrel of laughs; our career choice doesn't guarantee ease or happiness or success...in fact the statistics suggest that 95% of young art school grads will never go on to make art at all....i was never the "star" of any of my art classes, never the one "most likely to succeed" and yet, now 30 years later, i look around and find only a few working artists left out of all my fellow alum. Tenacity and a compulsive/obsessive urge to paint are qualities much greater and more important to my development than whatever small talent i may have had... nurture them in yourself...don't be discouraged by those with huge amounts of raw talent...I think they are only rarely the ones that succeed in the end. What a struggle it has been (these last 30 years), but what a pleasure it has become to paint informed by 35 years of experience!...hang in there! love, cynda mary....Cynda Mary's school of art will reopen at the brewery in los angeles soon!

October 23, 2014

Cynda mary's school of art tip of the day; SOMETIMES A BAD REVIEW IS JUST WHAT YOU NEED...here's mine; written by an LA artist educator who i did and do still admire; Ruth Weisberg. The last paragraph has stayed in my mind all these years ( it was 1985!) and has pushed me to be compulsive about perfecting every technical /formal issue that i can in my painting. At this point it seems quite prophetic too...would love to see her give Damien Hirst (sp?) a tongue lashing! From Artweek, nov 23, 1985; here's the last paragraph;..."it seems to me that the temper of the times encourages impressIonable artists to be the worst possible artist, rather than the best. In desperate bids for attention, the volume is turned up and the work is turned out. We all suffer from a degraded context in which to make and view art, because a POWERFUL ELEMENT OF THE ART WORLD EXCUSES MEDIOCRITY IF THERE IS SUFFICIENT ENERGY OR MARKETABILITY, AGAIN AND AGAIN MISTAKING ATTENTION-GETTING ACTIVITY FOR SUBSTANCE"

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October 17, 2014

Cynda Mary's School of Art tip of the day..for those that use photo reference; keep the reference as close to the area being painted as possible, and keep it as close to the same scale as you can...both will make your job easier as most people have a bad visual memory and will lose the info in just the time it takes to glance from the reference to the painting...I love my "monkey tail" a device that holds my reference tablet hands free and can easily be adjusted to any position...for a tablet i use a galaxy samsung 4 which at the time of purchase had the biggest amoled screen possible (7 inches i think)...now i would get a kindle fire or something similar and spend alot less money...as someone who loves a saturated palette these screens really "amp up the volume "

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October 15, 2014

From Cynda Mary's School of Art; ON LOOKING, NOT PAINTINGEveryday, when I am done painting I bring the current painting home and spend hours looking at it. My family has often teased me about my “infatuation” with my paintings, not realizing how important it is to spend time looking rather than actively painting, …. Ideally this “slow looking” evolves into a painting that tells me something about myself that I didn’t already know and moves me in directions much more interesting then where I THOUGHT I was going... When this starts to happen I experience the most wonderful sensation of becoming the medium, rather than the author of the work. The painting starts to direct me, rather than the other way around. This is a truly heady sensation, one that, more than any other, feeds my soul and gives me the reason to paint. In order to be willing to spend the time “just looking” I have had to develop faith that the process will work, and that faith gives me the tenacity and patience I need to sit and simply look, no matter how long it takes for the “Muse” to speak.

The process reminds me of those old lava lamps from the 60’s; The subliminal (unconscious) mind bubbles at the base of the lamp. Given time and a quiet mind, (“unhindered,by preconceptions or mind sets”) and influenced only by the colors, shapes, textures, and images in the painting in front of me, a bubble of an idea will detach from the base of the lamp (subliminal mind) and slowly rise through the viscous liquid to pop into the conscious mind (top of the lamp) complete and fully formed and presenting such an obvious and simple direction for the painting to move that I am always surprised that it took so much time looking to discover it. I get that magical sensation that I didn’t think it up myself, merely grabbed it when it popped into my consciousness.

The Quakers too, understand this phenomenon. “The still small voice within” requires the quieting of your conscious mind and sufficient time to focus in and hear the voice. Even so we often try to deny the voice, it is so subtle, and we can easily drown it out… But over time it will bubble up again and again, quietly burst ing into our consciousness until we “see.”

October 9, 2014

Cynda mary's school of art; tip of the day; WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU FEEL UNISPIRED…I work anyway. I don't believe in creative blocks. I tell myself i have to sit in my studio and look at my painting but if i don't want to paint than i can just sit there and look the whole session…usually in 20 minutes or less i can't resist changing/adding a little something and from there it snowballs; getting started is the hard part…

 

October 5, 2014

Today's cynda mary school of art tip of the day...for Christopher Woods who battles to reduce form ,value, and color to the fewest possible components; CLOSE ONE EYE AND SQUINT THE OTHER; closing one eye; changes your vision from 3d to the flat 2 dimensional plane that produces the shapes you're looking for. Squint the other to reduce color /value so that only the most contrasty are visible...Good Luck...here's 10 minute study; breaking form/color/value down to the fewest possible components to tell the "light story"

September 27, 2014

BEWARE OF DRIFT; no matter how perfect the drawing or block- in as soon as you lay down a first layer of paint it's gone completely (UNDERNEATH)...so your edges will shift (usually outward) as you paint; so always keep re confirming your edges/proportions as you go to avoid the dreaded DRIFT...- FROM CYNDA MARY'S SCHOOL OF ART

September 23, 2014

"MANY UNFINISHED OR JUST PLAiN BAD PAINTINGS SUFFER FROM "NBE SYNDROME"....THEY'RE JUST" NOT BEAUTIFUL ENOUGH "YET....DON'T QUIT TOO SOON KEEP WORKING TIL THEY'RE PERFECTLY BEAUTIFUL..." - FROM CYNDA MARY'S SCHOOL OF ART.

September 21, 2014

Cynda mary's school of art, thought of the day; "use that hand mirror you ALWAYS have with you at the easel frequently (cuz you're such great student you always do everything i say!)"...to re-objective your view of your painting...will double the distance away from you it appears to be; allowing you to see the whole thing at once without physically getting up and moving back...reversing image also helps refresh your vision of it....

September 20, 2014

Thought of the day from cynda mary's school of art...."there are faeries that inhabit your studio..after you leave at night they do mischief to your paintings; when you come back in the morning the painting will be inexplicably better than you thought...or worse...you never can know which way they;re gonna go...and if you store a painting away out of sight for some time you can be sure they will make it a different painting by the time you dig it out...as painters, you gotta learn to live with these capricious poltergeists.."

September 19, 2014

Cynda mary's school of art thought of the day; "if not now, when?" this one especially for the legions of artists who had to invest 25+ years attending to the practical aspects of living (money, kids)...and now, blessed with good health and maybe 20 more years, now finally, the chance to paint...but we certainly can't squander another day...

September 18, 2014

Cynda mary's school of art thought of the day (besides "i hate my laptop");

"oil painting is a good medium for people who make alot of mistakes, because there is always the possibility of another layer...and with each additional layer come unanticipated results...usually better than what I had in mind; lots of room for happy accidents, capeche?"

September 17, 2014

"A Perfectionist Obsessive Compulsive is not a disorder, but a necessary component to the successful painter" -Rules to live by @cynda mary's school of art.