Day 1: 31 Portraits in 31 Days...

July 31, (I tried to post this yesterday from my phone but had no luck) 

Wow! This week has been challenging. Teaching 8 promising (but nonverbal or expressive) young ladies (14-17 yrs.) to produce lots of work for their portfolios as well as how to work from life portraits has been a task. I've been too exhausted to get anything else done. Prep time has taken every extra moment because the class has to be rearranged to fit their needs. ...

And... The 31 PORTRAITS IN 31 DAYS project starts tomorrow!

I thought I'd go into this slowly and with a lot of free time to put towards getting myself in the zone. But jumping in feet first has always seemed to be my usual approach to life, thus again it will happen.

No problem. Thinking under pressure has always suited me best. And I trust that this project will go well. I'm fairly ready with supplies at least. It's just rest that I'm lacking.

August 1: Day 1!

I am really excited that the day has come to start my project.  I am ready.  Brooke Nicole Lynn will arrive at 2 PM today for her three hour sitting for the first of this month's challenging agenda.  I look forward to having her.  I kind of set myself up to have an easy day and hope it goes that way.  If you have seen Brooke you will understand.  She is stunningly beautiful.  Capturing what makes her so beautiful will be  exciting for me.  I met Brooke's mom Jeannie through a friend of a friend on FaceBook and she has become a dear friend!  Jeannie will be posing for me on the 17th!  

I have been slowly changing my skin tone mixtures in the last 7 years to be more buttery.  I wrote my book based on the way I painted skin for the previous years since I started painting portraits in 1984 and still stand by those colors.  But, lately, I have wanted to expand and improve my work by using more layers and more opaque paints to create a smoother creamier skin tone.  So, my goal is to use this month to really embrace this color theory and figure out how exactly I want to adjust my skin tones to get the best result in my work.  My color theory worked for me then and now I am just taking it to a new level of life-likeness.  The new colors that I am adding to my pallet are in the lit side of the skin.  I am using Cadmium Scarlet, Cadmium Yellow medium, Quinachrodome Magenta, and Cadmium Green Pale along with the other colors in my pallet.  I am omitting Permanent Rose and Indian Yellow.  

WORKING TOWARDS A CAUSE:  Going into this project, I have a lot of goals and just a few issues. My cousin, Susan, suggested that I use this time to also promote a non-profit, but I tend to make things too complicated and stress myself out. When I was young I thought I needed to conquer the world all at once, so to say.  But, the older I get, the more I realize that keeping things as simple as my personality allows, the better I am.  

And I repeat, "as my personality allows".  I am not good at staying away from multitasking.  Once someone suggests an idea that sounds fairly good as Susan's idea does ... my mind continually prods me to work it in.  But, I really don't have the time.  So, I will suggest it here and hope that it does make an impact.  If I did include a non-profit, I would start with HHT (AKA Osler Weber Rendu Syndrom).  If during this month you would like to donate to (or just become aware of) HHT.org, please do so in the name of my mom, my uncle, my grandfather, and myself.  My mom died two years ago from HHT, at the age of 78.  My grandfather died at 77 from HHT.  My uncle, in his 70's, is still alive and fighting daily with bleeds.  

We all have or had the unfortunate genetic malformation of our vascular system which omits any capillaries. I am the only one out of the four children that was lucky enough to inherit the genes. (Sorry, bad humor is in the genes too.) The lack of capillaries means that the small veins cannot handle the flow from the artery and create bubble like polyps or spiderweb like veins in the soft tissue that burst often due to weakness, causing artery flows.  It is not fun to have, and the lack of stress in my life is pretty important because I do have this.  If I have ANYTHING that thins my blood, I will find myself fighting continual nose bleeds (or worse intestinal or throat bleeding). For instance, just a couple of foods I cannot eat are oranges, cherries, cinnamon, tarragon, cayenne, ginger, salmon, etc.  These are just my favorites.  If my blood pressure goes up slightly, if the environment is too hot or dry, if my body reacts with pressure from eating too much, etc.  I have to deal with trying to not loose too much blood.  Needless to say how others react when they see you.  It's pretty embarrassing and humiliating at times.  In this day and age with all the issues of blood contact, I can imagine seeing me bleed makes people concerned as well.  I usually only share this as needed.  But, for the advancement of a need to cure this in the future generations, I expose what I keep quiet about.  See HHT.org for more information.  

On a good day ... I don't bleed.  So, I just try to have as many good days as possible.  Today is going to be a good day!  I hope yours is too.  I better get the studio ready for painting now.  

31 PORTRAITS IN 31 DAYS! AUGUST 1-31, 2015

31 PORTRAITS IN 31 DAYS

I am so very excited to announce the beginning of a new project.  I will be painting one 3 hour portrait every day of the month in August, 2105.  Wow!! Right??  Yes, 31 in 31 days.  Can you believe that I am this crazy to attempt such a goal?  Well, the truth is that I believe that this is a do'able experiment and that the outcome will be a huge growth in my own learning process.

My personal goal:  As a painter, I am always looking for ways to become better. As I become aware of so many other portrait artists through the centuries and present who paint these porcelain colors in the skin, I am intrigued.  I have been playing with new mixtures of color and how they actually apply to my models.  No one has the same coloring especially those with dark golden skin tones.  And I want to see how this applies to everyone.  It feels like the artists who have the best portraits tend to be artists who only chose a certain type of model with really pale skin.  I want to see if I can use these new skin colors universally and have the effect that I want.  I am sure that with this much intense study I will start to find how they apply in an overall approach.

I think there must be a way to achieve that buttery skin color that makes flesh look like flesh, as healthy, glowing skin.  I guess so far, I have applied that California dream of having a tan and golden skin. But, I feel that I need to experience this exercise to make myself grow in my ability to capture even more lifelike coloring.  I am really loving the work of Bouguereau, Sargent, Schmid, and Shanks.  I want to make my skin look supple, healthy, and soft in the first layer of paint.  That means I may go to using more paint and texture.  So, this is my goal in this exercise.

The outcome:  I will be compiling a book for my students from this exercise with my study and findings.  I am not sure what that looks like yet, but I am very excited about what is to come.  I cannot wait to begin.

The process:  So far, I have purchased the canvases, lined up my models, and written to them with the model releases as well as a sheet to tell me a bit about them personally.  I have always felt that a person's character comes through in their features.  I often find myself learning about a person's life experiences and looking at their face and hands to see where that characteristic shows and if it does.  Many things are very subtle and on each person they are a bit different.  But, reading people is my life's passion.  So, this exercise is all about creating a study of a person with what I see.  I asked them to tell me a bit about themselves too so that when you look at this book you will read about them in their own words and see if you see some of what I do in their features.
My next job is to paint all 40 18 x 24" canvases in a middle tone of gray.  The paintings will be just head and shoulder paintings.  I expect that I will handle it with the goal of creating a study that has loose edges where the paint stroke may just evaporate into the outer painting.  I do not plan on adding any background.

My obstacles:  Wow! There might be a couple... I am not sure what they are right now.  And my experience is that the ones I anticipate won't be an issue but others will crop up.  So, I need to be able to keep a balanced approach and be willing to just see what happens.  My dear friend Cynthia tells me that I need to plan food ahead of time and have someone to help me.  I think she has a foresight into these things far more than I do.  I am not too worried about this.  I may buy a lot of Trader Joe's healthy Passadena salads, shrimp spring rolls, and quinoa salads.  (My favorite splurges when I am there!)
I think the one thing I can identify as a possibly tough situation will be Wednesdays.  I have two classes I teach on Wed.  So, my models are scheduled at either 7AM or 6:30 PM.  This will be my challenge day.  But, I believe I can do this and it is only one day a week. LOL ... I am not a morning person and teaching two classes leaves me a bit tired. So, either way this is gong to be my toughest day.  Overall, though, I won't be teaching three of my 5 classes per week and this will be my largest goal throughout this month with my strong focus.  So, I do believe I can handle it!

Fears:  One fear that I have might be that someone won't show up as scheduled and then the 3 backup alternative models won't be able to fill in at the last minute.  In this situation I will paint myself, if I cannot find a willing person.

Susan Jeffers, Ph.D. wrote, "Ships in harbor are safe, but that is not what they are built for!" in her book Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway.  This is one of my first favorite books and I have always gone back to it when I take on a project.  She has a great way of putting our own personal feelings into perspective that resounded within me. I strive to be stronger than my original self was, daily.

Another fear is that I will have a bad day.  Painters work hard on their paintings.  We can't all be "On" every day of the year.  I pray that I have enough strength as a painter and trained artist that I can pull each and every painting up to the standards I hold for myself.  It is hard work.

My mentor and friend, Igor Babailov once said, "people say ... 'oh, you are having fun, you are just an artist' but they are wrong.  This is hard work!"  And he is right.  To become a great artist you must work and study, continually questioning your approach and looking for a better one.  There isn't a moment that your brain is quiet.  The thoughts of contemplation about angle, depth, value, composition, color, contrast, anatomy structure, and more are constantly playing and over-playing in our minds as we strive to make a beautiful but true piece of art.

The outcome:  Those who know me, know that I am a pretty spiritual person and that I believe in the power of God.  I am also very accepting of everyone else's choice to believe what they want.  But, this idea was one that came to me at a moment that I believe I was led to.  So, I pray the outcome is larger than I expect.  It is in his hands.  I am only the vessel of delivery.

With that said, if you have any opportunity to further the public reach of this project, I would definitely appreciate any and all help.

A page from my book... on Color Theory

Painting is an art form like dance and music. Relative to the desired effect of movement your strokes are the music and your harmony. Sense the emotion created by the bold large movement of a dancer to strong rhythmic beats. Then, as the movements become more intent and the dancer uses just their limbs, we become more aware of the subtleties and nuances of their character . And with our emotions evoked, we take the time to look into the eyes, just in time to see the final focus of passions, as told by the slight tilt of a head, the precise movement of the hands, and the placement of every finger. Your strokes also evoke such emotion from large to small.
Use your colors to enchant your painting as a whole. Make this a dance of brush strokes, only to finish with the movement of tiny details, never to be over done.
Think about how one color relates to another. Think about how you can use the last color in the next color and yet not loose the freshness of the color you are working with.
You really want to move into a blank canvas and claim it for your own. The white of the bare canvas is as blank as the emptiness of an empty room. Your emotions are important to your painting. When you move in, let the feeling of the subject fill your space as you would fill your room with life.
This may sound silly and overly romanticized, but painting is a part of life that uses emotions at their best. Paintings are meant to entertain. We are entertainers. If you don’t evoke some emotion from your viewer, you have missed out on the whole concept of painting. Only the best paintings can really capture emotions of the model, the artist, and the viewer. Use what comes naturally to make your painting far better.

Always make the decision of feeling ahead of time. What do you want to feel from this painting? What does your client want to express with this painting. If you take the time to think this out, your paintings will come alive.

This is a good time to tell you about a wonderful book for artists, The Artist’s Way and The Artist’s Way at work, by a friend of mine, Mark Bryan. (The “Morning pages” are the best tool to tap into your emotions and help you to enhance your work. I highly recommend it.

You can mix the right color. 

By Bobbi Baldwin

Remember how many times you have made huge piles of paint that were the wrong color???  You ended up with a pile of paint that you might have tried to save, so as not to waste it. But, all along, the frustration you felt in not getting the color you wanted just made it worse.  You just knew if you kept adding different color, you would get to the color you were looking for… sadly never getting there.  Some of you are shrugging your shoulders and saying to yourself “This happens all the time!”  After you decided that you didn’t want to mix a gallon of the wrong color, you began buying all the colors there are for sale, right?  Did you get any better at mixing color from it?  Not really.  Why?  To coin an old phrase, you didn’t “learn to fish”, you just provided the fish.  So, I’d like to teach you to really understand how to “fish with the right bait” and catch that perfect color with much more precision.  I am going to help you find the color you are looking for much faster from now on. 

I have been teaching for almost 30 years now and I have painfully watched so many painters when they first arrive, struggling through the process of mixing color to match what they see.  After watching my students in pain for so long, I came up with an answer based on how I taught myself to mix color. 

It’s simple.  I think about color in primary terms.  I know, the color wheel is a basic fundamental and you probably learned it in grammar school.  Then, we learned about color in science, understanding how we see by the light rays given off by the sun.  In art we learned that red, yellow, and blue are primary colors that are only found in pure form and we cannot mix color to make a true primary color.  We learned that green, purple, and orange are called secondary colors, and they are a combination of two primaries.   Then, we were taught about the color wheel and that compliments are straight across the color wheel from each other.  But, no one ever explains why it is that we should use the compliment to make the best shadows within a specific item’s color -as in: lemons are yellow, apples are green, red, or yellow, bananas are yellow, etc.  There is no explanation that the compliment is actually the one or two missing primaries, meaning the colors that you haven’t used so far.  My goal is to really press that idea into my students, helping them to be more observant of the way that they see color. 

 So, what is my secret to teaching students to mix color faster?  I have really embraced the scientific concept of color rays.  Knowing this, I look at every color with the knowledge that I can only see combinations of the primary colors and that is all I am seeing.

To begin, let me explain that I want you to stop calling any color by the name of brown or gray. Just omit those words from your mind.  Every color is made of a variation of the three primaries, with or without white added.  I want you to start looking for the dominant primaries in your color.  Previously you learned that adding the “compliment” will create a brown or gray.  Understand this is merely adding all three primaries together.  So, from now on, let’s just eliminate gray and brown from our vocabulary and understand that gray is a term which identifies when there is more blue in the mixture of the three primaries added together, whereas, brown is also made from adding all three primaries together, just using more red and yellow.  That is the only difference between brown and gray – meaning  more or less blue added to the mixture.  From now on, I want you to identify all colors as a color that is called the name of the closest primary or secondary color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, or violet) that you can think of. 

After you have identified what color your target color is closest to, you can deduct the right addition of the missing primary or primaries in order to find the solution to your mixture.

Let me show you here:

This is the target color that I am trying to mix. 

I can deduce that all three primaries are in this color.  And then I have to study it a bit longer until I can decide what color it is closest to.  I go through the secondary colors first -green, orange, or purple.  I think that if I had to describe it as any one of those I would say it is closest to purple.  With this decided, I can begin with red and blue.  I also know there is some yellow in it because it is a “muddy” color; we know that this color has all three primaries in it.  Muddy color can describe any color that you previously identified as gray or brown.  We have to do this by elimination and now we know it is the yellow that is missing.  So, I start out with purple and add some yellow.  There is also a bit of a green in this color.  So, I continue to add small amounts of the yellow (and white) until I get close to this color. 

Let me show you another one: 

On this one, I would immediately say it is either a red or orange.  But, again, it is not pure, so we know there will be all three primary colors in it.  We start with a very red-orange and then add the missing primary blue and possibly some white. 

Is this starting to make sense?

Here is a third example: 

We immediately know this color is mainly blue.  But, is it pure blue?  No.  Is it green or purple?  No.  But, it is a dirty color of blue.  This means the other two compliments are also in it.  So, we add red and yellow or orange (the compliment).  We start with a tiny bit of these other “missing primaries” and slowly creep up to the color that we see here.  If we get too green or too purple, we know we have added too much of one of the other primaries.  So, we slowly add the blue back in. It is still most dominantly blue. 

If you use my method of common-sense mixing by thinking about the way that we see with light rays of primary color to make all color, you will find it far easier to paint because it will become a natural task.  If you ask yourself the simple question, “What primary or secondary am I missing?” you will be able to figure out how to mix that perfect combination that represents what you see.

Exercise:

Go to a local store where they have paint swatches for choosing wall paint.  Pick up about 10 of those swatches, choosing some pretty muddy colors.  Now, match them.  This type of practice will really help you to embrace the concept and make it second nature to your painting technique. 

---

Now let’s talk about the actual tubes of paint that we buy at the store and the purity of the primary colors. 

I learned about color from a woman who studied in France at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.  In 1996, we spent a summer just pulling paint across a white surface of pallet paper and analyzing the pigments in every tube of paint I owned!  I have never looked at color the same way since.   I found a passion about color that summer that has never gone away.  I began to understand how to look at pigments in a tube of paint and see the texture, purity, and consistency.  I threw out some really bad paints with muddy colors that were so impure and ugly that I wouldn’t want them in my paintings.  I quit working with “hues” and student-grade paints, due to the impure man made pigment.  I limited my pallet to two tubes of red, yellow, and blue, a warm and cool of each.  I also have white, umber (for opacity), green, violet, and orange.  I can mix nearly any paint color from the 11 paint tubes that I primarily use.   The only time I add a color to my pallet is when I want to get a purer form of a color that is bright, such as specialized cloth colors.  Think of hot pink, fuchsia, really bright turquoise, and possibly chartreuse. 

Exercise:

Pull every tube of paint out of your box and use your pallet knife to pull this color over you pallet.  When a color is muddy, grainy, or just impure in quality, don’t use it. 

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Purity of color:   Take all your red paints out and put a small sample on your pallet.  Do the same with your blues.  Choose the two colors that you think are the purest form of red and blue.  Mix them.  Did you get a pretty purple?  No.  It is nearly impossible to get a pure form of purple from the tubes we know to be close to a pure form of a primary.  Most of the colors we assume are pure red, blue, or yellow have a bit of the other primaries in them.  This makes it impossible to make a great secondary color if you need to get a really pure color.  Now, I want you to look at all of your yellows as well.  Try to make orange and green.  Compare these mixtures to your tubes of green and orange.  Did you come close to the pure color that is in a tube?  You might have come a bit closer with these colors because you are starting to understand how to identify what primaries are in your tubes. 

Take a bit of Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine Blue and try to make a purple.  Did it turn out? Not likely.  They both look like they would be perfect forms of just two primaries.  But, if they didn’t, that means that one of them has some yellow to it. 

Look at Alizarin Crimson.  Do you think it is pure red?  No. Not only does it have blue in it, but there might be a little bit of a muddy color to it.  We know this because we tried to make a purple, and it was muddy (yellow would make muddy color because the third primary was added).  Could yellow also be in the Ultramarine Blue?  It’s possible.  But, if you were to try a Permanent Rose with Ultramarine Blue you might get a bit closer to purple.  It’s still a bit muddy, not like a Dioxazine Violet, which is the prettiest purple. 

Now, look at Cadmium Red Medium.  Is it a pure red?  Let’s try it.  If it is pure, we should be able to add it to blue and make a purple.  Did you get mud?  It must have yellow in it.  Add the Cadmium Red Medium to a Cadmium Yellow Medium and try to make an orange as pretty as a Cadmium Orange.  Did it work?  If not, there is blue in one of the colors. 

Keep doing this.  Do this mixing until you clearly see what is happening.  It’s like doing math, simple addition and subtraction. 

Summary:  If we assume that all color is made of red, yellow, and blue, and we understand what colors we start out with from the tube, we can find the solution to all color mixing.  

Painting Material

There is nothing more beautiful than material that is painted well. A painting can be breathtaking when an artist can translate the textural feeling of material in a way that not only pleases your sense of need to touch, but also stimulates that part of your sight that is so fond of color and effect. They might paint what they see like a light reflecting in jewel patterns on the sheen of the material, a white that reflects a rainbow of softly woven reflections of all the colors in the prism of light, a beauty of a pattern recreated by their paint brush in masterful strokes, or the curvilinear lines that describe the sensual flow of a enchanting form under a piece of material. Whatever the effect or subject, painting material is a magic form of adding intimacy to a subject. Material is just as much part of a person's character as their hair, their features, and their hands, because it is what holds to the shape or lets loose of their form in response to their personality. So, what and how you paint the clothing and materials around your subject(s) is as important as all the other features. Some painters really miss this, resulting in paintings that are stiff and unfeeling.



As a special note, you cannot paint clothing until you learn to paint the human figure. So put your time in studying the human form, skeleton, muscle form, and anatomy in any and all ways you can, prior to painting clothing.



When painting the folds in cloth or clothing, be sure to make your brush strokes move with the direction of the flow of the material. For example: if there is a hump or a fold in the material, the brush stroke should come from the top of the material. Remember that the material does not just end at the wrinkle, it continues on under. Use your mind and your hand to create the motion in your material by seeing around the edges, proving the shape of the rolling material in the way that the value is applied.



Material is a supple object. It will therefore take on any shape that it lays against. Thus, you must understand what it is laying against and show the form or shape of the object with purpose. If you can do this, you will carry out a moving piece of art. You may get tired of hearing me say this, but you must think like a sculptor. Think three-dimensionally. When at all possible, have a model or some form of a modeled human anatomy around to remind you of the shapes of muscle and bone structure.

The material has a character of it's own that you also need to take into consideration.

A page from my book... On Color Theory

Painting is an art form like dance and music. Relative to the desired effect of movement your strokes are the music and your harmony. Sense the emotion created by the bold large movement of a dancer to strong rhythmic beats. Then, as the movements become more intent and the dancer uses just their limbs, we become more aware of the subtleties and nuances of their character . And with our emotions evoked, we take the time to look into the eyes, just in time to see the final focus of passions, as told by the slight tilt of a head, the precise movement of the hands, and the placement of every finger. Your strokes also evoke such emotion from large to small.
Use your colors to enchant your painting as a whole. Make this a dance of brush strokes, only to finish with the movement of tiny details, never to be over done.
Think about how one color relates to another. Think about how you can use the last color in the next color and yet not loose the freshness of the color you are working with.
You really want to move into a blank canvas and claim it for your own. The white of the bare canvas is as blank as the emptiness of an empty room. Your emotions are important to your painting. When you move in, let the feeling of the subject fill your space as you would fill your room with life.
This may sound silly and overly romanticized, but painting is a part of life that uses emotions at their best. Paintings are meant to entertain. We are entertainers. If you don’t evoke some emotion from your viewer, you have missed out on the whole concept of painting. Only the best paintings can really capture emotions of the model, the artist, and the viewer. Use what comes naturally to make your painting far better.

Always make the decision of feeling ahead of time. What do you want to feel from this painting? What does your client want to express with this painting. If you take the time to think this out, your paintings will come alive.

This is a good time to tell you about a wonderful book for artists, The Artist’s Way and The Artist’s Way at work, by a friend of mine, Mark Bryan. (The “Morning pages” are the best tool to tap into your emotions and help you to enhance your work. I highly recommend it.

Sharing My Knowledge

Sharing my knowledge
All rights reserved Bobbi Baldwin, June 22, 2011


I have recently started to coach other artists - Not just teach them about painting, but coach them in thinking, because just like anything in life, the way we think affects the outcome. This life has given me many gifts, and I guess it’s just time to share it all … even the life lessons. I haven’t just learned to get a likeness and make my portraits look alive … I have an insight to the psyche of people, and their creative minds. I see myself as a scientist, not just a psychology enthusiast or portrait painter. I love studying not just the human form relating to art, but also the person who has the skin. Every person has such incredible history written in their features, stance, image, voice … that it becomes this intriguing game for me to find what makes each person “tick”. I love society, and what each person brings to it with their own originality, from the expressive artistic personalities to the worker ants (as I call less colorful focused people).
People are incredible. And the Artist is even more challenged than most. This is often because of stereotypes that they mentally take on or as others project onto them. But, I rarely find an artist with the traits that the stereotyped character is supposed to have. Instead, I find intelligent thinkers who are strong, sensitive, and quiet geniuses in their own right … just misunderstood and lacking others who speak clearly of the way in which an artist IS normal.
Life hands us lessons daily and most of the best ones are not wrapped up in a pretty bow. Many of my lessons came with emotional hardship. The one thing I am most thankful for is the opportunity to share. In the last three years, I have found my way into a place where I sponsor people, not just artists, but people of the community that learn like me … the hard way. But what is life if not experienced? This has opened the doors for me to speak about the trauma in my life openly. Until now, I have never formally chosen to use my stories to tie in my life’s experiences with art, even though I have been teaching all forms of art for a very long time and may have shared a story or two, here and there. What I have found, though, is that my way of getting through things helps others to understand more about their lives. And this feels right. So, here I will share my philosophies and hope that it may also reach you!
I survived child abuse. It’s just my story. Everyone has a story to tell about their life. I will spare you the details here because it isn’t about what I went through, it is about the human psyche; specifically this artist’s psyche. This tool to understand myself and give back the lessons that I have had to learn to internalize, is the greatest gift I have been given. I work hard on myself to improve not only my skill level but my own mental focus too. I treasure the opportunity to share this with you.
Here are the things I have learned:
I will start with the basics - The sides of the brain and how they function:
I am not a doctor, neurologist, psychologist, or psychiatrist, but I have spent my time reading and listening to those who are, as well as just studying people, and personalities in my life. What I know about how the human brain functions is best described in hemispheres. Although there is controversy over the division down the center of the human brain and how it functions, there is an agreement about hemispheres and what is driven in us by those hemispheres.
The left hemisphere is the side of the brain which reads, writes, verbalizes, rationalizes, organizes, and keeps logic. The right hemisphere is sensory, creative, intuitive, abstract, feeling, emotional, and expressive. EVERYONE needs both sides to operate in everyday life with success.
Artists are sensitive to the world for a good reason, and much more driven by the right side. But that alone doesn’t make us artists. The goal is to learn how to use what we are strongest with to make our life balanced. Often the more creative mental right hemisphere ‘pushups’ we do … the more the intuitive, feeling, visual, emotional side gets engaged and developed. This is why artists, in my opinion, become more intuitive and much more able to use their antennae, so to say, to pick up on what is to be observed by all the senses.
I have often been in conversations with others about how or why we are like this. Were we first born with this right brain developed more than the left or is it circumstances that led us to this strength? I believe it is both or either. What we learn and why we have learned it often go hand in hand. In over 25 years of teaching and 29 years of portrait painting, I have found the more I talk to artists, the more I learn how they have had a similar sensory opening in their minds that keeps them observing the world at a level that most others never get to see. It’s incredible to talk to an artist who really is capable of expressing (with the left hemisphere) what the right has been able to perceive –Or- to visually see a painting that takes your breath away because they have learned to put that hyper sensitivity into a painting.
I became a portrait artist at the age of 24.
Let me next talk about ‘hyper sensitivity’ or in my case ‘hyper vigilance’. I started drawing when I was about 10 years old but the drama in my family was already there at birth. The family thought I was slow. I was not expected to go to college. Although I seemed to quietly get through school with a good GPA, I never studied the way others did. I believed that I was slower than the rest! It wasn’t until I was 45 that I was actually given an IQ test and learned that I have a 144 score. I could go on and on about how frustrating this is to me, to learn at such a late time in my life and think of all the wasted thoughts of inadequacy that came in the years that I didn’t understand. AND … the kids who are like me in school now … I think I will save that for my sister the school teacher! But I digress here. Let me continue…
My knowledge of psychology started with my mom earning her Master’s degree in psychology while I was in high school and then learned early that talking to someone (about my life choices and my personal ‘character building’ experiences) was a necessity in my life.
I needed to know that God, the Higher Power, Buddha, and the Universe … who ever … chose to give me this experience for a reason! I needed to know why at three years of age, my first memory was only one of many that would make anyone uncomfortable to hear.
And now at 52 years of age … my coaching, sponsoring … teaching about the psyche has given me that answer. I am thankful. The answer IS the hyper-vigilance I learned that made me an artist. It was that need to survive in an environment that was so crazy for a little child, in which I had to find a way to control my outcome that I became hyper-sensitive to my visual memory.
A person can become hyper sensitive to their creativity for whatever reason … it is personal. What we do with it … can be an art form.

With that explained … how does this fit into the art world?
• Well, I teach people how to out think their critic, understand how to work with their personality, and get past those things that stop them. For example when showing your portfolio to a client, I would teach you, as an artist, to think of the last compliment you heard someone say about your art work. That is all that you are to say out loud. Because artists are their own worst critics! We use this critical tool to make ourselves better, to raise the bar consistently, therefore to make sure that we continue to be the best that we can be. In other words, we are high achievers. And this is a great skill as long as we don’t use it as a stick to beat ourselves with.
• When I hear artists criticize themselves over how long it takes them to create a painting, I remind them of Leonardo DaVinci who took 7 years to paint the Mona Lisa. Or if they lack the attention span they desire, I remind them that there are painters who paint paintings in two hours, selling their ‘studies’ (en plein air), constantly.
Whatever the personality trait is that you possess, make it your specialty! We are all humans having a human experience and there is no such thing as normal. But, what I do find is that there is a common ground we share -And that is the quality of being scientists, psychologists, empathic, intuitive, and strongly observant. These are qualities that often get mistaken and misunderstood. Embrace them like a carpenter embraces their hammer, a mathematician embraces their calculator, and a doctor embraces their passion. We are wired the same as anyone else, with just a stronger emphasis in different areas.

Personal Creativity Coaching
Price: $395 per month
Includes:
1 phone consultation per week, daily e-mail communication, and help with setting up your Portrait Painting career
Personal One-on-One motivation
Portfolio preparation advice
Painting/Drawing critiques
Contract and paperwork set up
Marketing advice
Over 29 years of personal experience!