Lecture at University of the Arts

 Hi, guys! Welcome to the most recent entry of this blog!

I have for you today the very first lecture I gave at a university! That was University of the Arts in Philadelphia!

We did the lecture over Zoom and here is the video, which includes a bit of a Q&A at the end. In this blog entry you can read the lecture I read for the attendees and also find a couple of additional links to things I suggest to read and listen to.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions on future entries, please let me know in the comments or feel free to inbox me to my Instagram account here: @gabrielahandal

 

Also, a link to youtube, just in case the video embed doesn't work.

I. Introduction

In this lecture I am going to go over thoughts about inspiration, my process and learning experience, and some advice for artists.

This introduction is also a very short glossary exclusively to serve two terms I will use in this lecture:

1. Work: I vehemently refuse to refer to artworks, drawings, paintings and sculptures as "pieces", because although they are objects and arguably pieces of something, they are not simply objects and not simply a piece of something. The term is descended from the word "masterpiece", but I personally don't like the way the word "piece" feels in my mouth, and it feels like saying it reduces the work to a mere fraction of something when I consider a work as a self-contained and self-sustaining environment.

Suggested listening: Episode 28 of Art Grind Podcast with Marina Granger from The Artist Advisory

2. Beauty: Without going into the definition of this term because it would become its own lecture series, I refer to and mention it because it's important. For a while I was under the impression that beauty doesn't matter in art or that what we're trying to do is not even think about beauty when making work, but I rediscovered the term recently and have realized its meaning as a goal and the important role it plays in giving art value. Whatever the definition of beauty might be, try to learn what it is and strive for it in your own work.

Suggested reading: Roger Scruton's "Beauty: A very short introduction"

II. Inspiration

The perception I have of "inspiration" is some sort of mystical wave of feeling, a mood a person gets into where they're helplessly driven to make their drawing and because of said inspiration, said drawing also results in a beautiful work of art. This idea of inspiration reminds me of how love is portrayed in romantic novels and movies: as an inexplicable fire of intense infatuation that comes, wreaks havoc and then leaves for no apparent reason. It makes sense our ancestors repeatedly thought of inspiration and love as god entities which possessed us.

These views are unrealistic and misrepresentations of the truth. Making meaningful work and having a meaningful relationship require much more than a passing mood to make them happen and make them persist.

I personally don't think of inspiration as some mysterious, fleeting motivation to make work.

Sometimes I see something I want to study through drawing and I more or less think of this as a form of inspiration. Other times I have an idea I want to see with my own eyes instead of through my mind's eye, which is made possible through drawing because it places the idea onto a physical object, and I also consider this more or less a form of inspiration.

I want to draw the great majority of the time, whether to start a drawing or work on a drawing in progress. I would say if a person wants to be an artist in any capacity, then they effectively have to make the work. We forget how in the past good quality, beautiful objects took days, weeks, months and years of study and labor to make. We've been spoiled by a finished product simply showing up at our doorstep or on the smart phone screen.

When an individual makes work, they might go through moods when in some occasions they enjoy what they're making more than other times. Sometimes feeling extra good about oneself for whatever reason also provides confidence that spills onto the act of making work and the work itself. Likely one makes just as many mistakes as usual, but one doesn't mind because of the good mood. This coincidentally good mood might be what some people call "inspiration".

Making something is a goal. The individual has to work towards that goal and earn that goal. Being an artist is having the constant goal of making beautiful things.

But what is beautiful and how does one make it? This might be where it gets mystical, abstract and maybe even philosophical. Art and the elusive inspiration I muse about require researching, practicing, learning and thinking for long periods.

There is definitely such a thing as beauty that crosses time, place and individual. One gleans at what beauty might be by looking at as many things as possible, gathering this information and then comparing different aspects of their appearance and how they make one feel as a viewer until a hierarchy of beauty starts to form.

Through the acts of practice by making as much work as one can and observing as many works of art as possible, an artistic voice forms and one's own idea of what is a beautiful work of art also forms.

Beauty guides the making of a work of art, determining the artist's path and also keeping them honest. Once the artist's idea of beauty has formed through practice and research, this idea will be the standard against which they will make work and different aspects of the standard will influence the outcome. Making beautiful works of art requires honesty with oneself. For example, as I make a drawing I wonder "would I purhcase this drawing?" "Would I want to live with it?" If the answer to either of these questions is yes, then it's quite possible I consider what I'm making to be beautiful or, at the very least, on the path to becoming beautiful.

Having the consistent goal of making beautiful works of art and the discipline to draw regardless of mood will effectively result in meaningful action and results.

Perhaps to reconcile the romanticized idea of inspiration more with what it is in real life, Picasso's view of it fares well: "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working".


III. Process

The drawing process is the best process and it's why I favor it so much. It really might be rather how my own way of drawing has developed.

My materials are generally pretty summarized and there's little to prepare and these are two of the reasons for which I think drawing is so great. The bare minimum you need is a pencil and a piece of paper, you can even do without the eraser. There's no need to prepare the surface of the paper, just put it on a table or any flat surface, the pencil doesn't even actually need to be sharp.

What I'm saying is for drawing, you can get away with very few tools and still draw. I have a personal issue with "prep" work as I have experienced it when I've painted. Whether it's adding more gesso to the canvas, getting tubes of paint, choosing the colors, then putting them on the palette, then I need all these brushes, then I need oil, then mixing colors (which is absolutely never ending and I specifically consider mixing colors to be incredibly distracting. I find mixing colors will distract me from mixing color itself, because I might have forgotten half way what color I wanted to mix to begin with while I am trying to mix said color. I do not like to stop painting in order to mix color because it feels like a constant interruption), then waiting and hoping for oil paint to dry or having to race against acrylic paint drying, then having to thoroughly wash each of those brushes covered in oil paint or I will effectively lose a brush, then cleaning the palette or having to let this pile of materials spill into my freezer to not waste them.
How does this pertain to my process? The previous tangent and rant is part of the collection of reasons for which I don't paint and practically deliberately refuse to paint.

Also, it seems as though I just have a huge bias in favor of monochromatic imagery. Proof of this for me is when an artist makes both drawings and paintings, I tend to strongly favor their drawings. There is something in the mark making and overall appearance I can't seem to enjoy as much in paintings.

The most summarized in terms of amount of tools I use for a drawing is ballpoint pen over paper, only two objects. I generally use ballpoint pen for sketch like work. These drawings are quick, they take a few hours at most, seldom more than a day. Depending on how I feel, drawing with ballpoint can be very careless as I can be with a charcoal or more similar to a carefully made graphite drawing.

I tend to think of ballpoint when I want to take a break from another drawing that's taking very long, to pass the time or to get in some drawing time if I haven't been able to draw for a while.

Then we have graphite and paper. For this I use one pencil over paper, occasionally I will use powdered graphite applied with a soft bristle brush. I don't actually use powdered graphite very often, and rather tend to go with the used brush for it's very light tone and I utilize these tools if there is any need for speed or I want to get quickly through certain parts of the drawing. Even more seldom for drawings with graphite are blending stumps, mostly for life drawing, but I don't care for blending stumps and the color with which they stain paper like that of grease from a finger.

I associate graphite with comfort, intimacy, proximity, softness, smoothness and precioussness. Indeed, I feel quite comfortable and confident with graphite, this is probably because drawing with it has been my go-to my whole life. It's the medium with which I've lived the longest. I would sit hunched over with my face very close to the paper, trying to draw small details. So effectively, my graphite drawings tend to be precious dioramas. They range in size between 3 x 3" - 16 x 20".

I have a comically stubborn habit of only using one type of pencil per drawing. For example, if I start a drawing with a 2B, I will not use another pencil during the making of the drawing. There's two reasons for this: 1. I don't need another pencil to make all the degrees of tone I want 2. I cringe at the thought of superimposing a less waxy, dark pencil over a very waxy, light pencil. More over, different grades of pencils even within the same brand have different colors and this is an unacceptable discrepancy.

Finally, there's charcoal and paper. Charcoal is the medium with which I am willing to invest the most time setting up and use the most tools to work. In this case I have charcoal pencils (which is plural, because I might go through one pencil quickly while making one drawing, but it generally is the same grade as the first one I used. Also, I specifically use pencils, not charcoal sticks or vine, but sometimes a charcoal chunk or chalk), several erasers (mechanical erasers of different diameters, kneading eraser, pink pearl eraser, staedtler and faber-castell erasers, which are the pencil shaped erasers), several cheap bristle brushes and blending stumps (which I don't actually use that much during a charcoal drawing, for the same reason as for graphite, plus they burnish the paper. And also, it seems as though the burnished area won't respond the same to more pencil on top or more powdered charcoal).

I got into charcoal drawing during school and I don't quite remember why, maybe a teacher asked for it for life drawing. Regardless, charcoal is the newest material for me and the one I'm least familiar with. I relate charcoal to bigger drawings, starting at around 16 x 20" and above.

Generally, I relate a sort of berserker kamikaze type feeling with making a charcoal drawing. There's something about the porosity of charcoal, its roughness to the touch, the lead crumbling as I make lines and the sand grain like feeling once it's put on the paper, which makes me think of sophomoric impetus, confidence in spite of fear or ignorance, hardheadedness in spite of any uncertainty, jumping in spite of any insecurity. Charcoal provides something graphite also obviously has, but I relate more to charcoal, where I am afraid of making the shapes wrong, but I know I can erase and draw again as many times as necessary or just start over again. In charcoal, I have "permission" to leave all the tracks I want (or pentimenti), and these marks of alleged regret actually end up taking part in a symphony of relationships I deeply enjoy.

A charcoal drawing is finished quickly compared to a graphite drawing with the assistance of the brushes and their ability to cover a larger area, while also being able to provide me with versatility in tone similar to what I would get with graphite.

More recently, I've incorporated into the charcoal drawings the "precious" tendency I have with graphite, which adds a more complex spectrum of tone, marks, textures and surfaces. There's a range of marks which go from making a line with my entire upper body to calibrating the softest possible touch with a combination of slight wrist and finger tip movements, and a distance range of several feet back to a few inches from my face. Being able to travel between these extremes during the making of a charcoal drawing is a profoundly fulfilling journey each time.


IV. Learning Experience

If I hiked along the same Nature path every day, each day there would be something different. It would be the same if I drew the same model in the same pose every day and this is the case with every drawing. Small changes in each iteration of something make it impossible to know what the next step, or even the first step, will be and having to find my way differently in every new drawing is humbling and exhilarating.

Every new drawing is a lesson in problem solving for each unique idea I want to solidify, so it feels as though I'm learning to draw with each drawing.

Whatever the reason, I don't seem to begin all drawings in the exact same way. I might do an envelope, an "action line" or a contour. I could probably argue some very valid reason for doing this, but getting started is urgent and overwhelming so having a specific method is secondary for me and I'm much more interested in just initiating, it doesn't matter how. Once I've kicked off I deal with things as they show up.

And effectively, in a way, it feels like each time I take the first step I'm doing so from scratch. In a way, I have no idea how I made any previously finished drawing.

With each new drawing, I make a shape and then continually attempt to make the shape more accurate through lines, volumes and tones. I want to convey what I am looking at, what I'm thinking of, what I'm looking for, figure out why it looks the way it does and attempt to explain it in the drawing.

The learning journey takes place while drawing, but also parallel to the act of drawing I look for references which corroborate the variability from one repetition of Nature to the next. Sometimes going into the field of artistic anatomy leads to the field of medical anatomy, sometimes I feel urges to write down thoughts. Learning and thinking about the theme of a drawing spreads into other fields and all these things populate the world within the picture plane.

Drawing isn't limited to researching subject matter, it also goes into learning about materials themselves. Through the use of different pencils and papers, I find which ones I favor in terms of their behavior, interaction and appearance.

I discovered the pleasure of shopping for paper for drawings in art school. Before, I limited myself to the same grocery store sketchpads, trying to use paper other people didn't want and didn't experiment much more. I'm not sure what about art school instigated me to make bigger drawings or try nicer papers, probably a teacher mentioned something about presentation, but I ended up with large sheets of very sturdy paper where I discovered how rough I could be in drawing. This also made me think of the act of drawing as a wrestling match between me and the drawing and I have to hold out longer in order to submit the drawing to my will.

Although I don't like the idea of a power struggle between an inanimate object and myself, this idea consequently led me to realize that I am actually in complete control and completely responsible for the end result in the drawing.

The human tendency is to want to blame any and all outside things, big or small. And really, it's not that the model moved, or the light changed, or the reference is not good enough or something about the pencil or paper. The artist dictates the outcome of the drawing by commission and omission.

In effect, drawing isn't limited to the act of making a drawing. Drawing consistenly teaches me the need for patience and focus, the value of time, it demands honesty of me, teaches me personal accountability and flexibility of mind.


V. Advice for an Artist

Each one of the points enumerated in this list is as much for anyone listening to this lecture as it is for myself.

I have found all of these helpful in some way. Writing these out and thinking about them was a great reminder for myself, so if I need to be reminded of something, someone else probably does, too.

If you choose to be in this for life, you have a lot of time to build something good, but it still requires a lot of effort, work and determination, and you have to constantly regulate how to invest your time.

Also, there is overlap between several of these, probably between all of them in some capacity. Things like showing work and participating; for example, bleed into each other, because like the systems within the body, everything is connected.

1. Get thick skin and practice: This extends into all subsequent advice in some way.

It doesn't matter if we're talking about getting rejected for a grant or a show, talking to the receptionist at a gallery and them telling you they're not looking for new artists, somebody giving you an "unwanted" opinion or what you perceive as negative criticism of your work; and really it also doesn't matter whether any form of alleged rejection is even art related. Make the effort to not take things personally and move on to the next thing which does pertain to your goals.

Getting thick skin and not taking things personally also takes practice, so the more this happens to you the more you can practice. One of the ways you can do this is instead of rationalizing why whomever was wrong in rejecting your work or having looping thoughts about what in your application caused the rejection, think instead about what the next thing you apply for will be.

Suggested reading: blog entry "Thoughts on Art Critiques"

2. Research: This also touches onto all subsequent advice in some way.

Looking for information on a subject is research, and so is trying different things for yourself, so this point covers both aspects of research through the experience of other people and your own accrued experience. Doing both types of research is very much worth it, because what one artist does might or might not work for another.

Remaining curious and experimenting is extremely important to finding things that work for you. Whatever method or ideas you currently hold, they are always subject to change. Moreover, it's no good to have one solitary method for something. Different things will work in different circumstances. It's good to have as many options to choose from as possible and they are found through research and experimentation.

3. Show the work: Whatever cocktail of social media and edifices you choose, make sure to consistently show your work. If you haven't been able to get into shows or galleries yet, post what you do on social media, get your friends to visit your studio, organize studio visits or critique groups or join the critique group your friend organized and visit their studio and talk about art and each other's work. If for whatever reason you haven't been able to post on your instagram feed, post to instagram stories or reels, snapchat or tiktok. Post anywhere, but show what you make.

This overlaps with research. Consider trying out different social media and sticking with the one you like best. Observe the behavior of different artists on social media and take note what sort of reaction they get.

Choosing a gallery to which you will submit work requires first knowing if what you make has anything in common with what the gallery shows. Head over to their website and see if they have anything regarding submissions guidelines. If they do, follow them; if not, email them asking what their guidelines are and find out what they say. If their website says they're currently not accepting submissions but you're still interested, bookmark the site and check back another time.

Also relating to galleries, if somebody says they're showing somewhere, visit the gallery's website and go over the previously mentioned things. It's also a great way to find places to which you can submit work.

Try different things yourself, but also see what the internet says about how to approach galleries or how instagram can work for an artist.

4. Apply for all the things: Getting into shows and galleries and obtaining grants requires applying to several of them before one of them will accept your work. The reason for this is irrelevant because you will still have to apply to many of them before getting one.

This overlaps with getting thick skin and practice. If you didn't get into one gallery, apply to another one; same with getting into a show, same with getting a grant. There are plenty of galleries, shows and grants to go around several times. Sometimes submissions are recurring, sometimes they're rolling, sometimes they're closed, sometimes you get invited, and sometimes you can still get rejected from a show to which you were invited to apply. You can try again next time or move on to another one. The more you apply to things, the more practice you get putting your applications together and you also get more practice caring less about rejection and moving on.

Set a goal of applying to one show a week, for example, and make the effort of sticking to it. Or if you have good organizational skills, make a calendar of things you're interested in and follow it.

This also overlaps with research. Where do you find open calls? At the New York Foundation for the Arts website, for example. There are Facebook groups, Instagram profiles and a subreddit for open calls.

There are open calls to suit every need: with a submission fee, a jury fee, a curation fee, a submission fee for a specific amount of entries, no submission fee for only one entry, no submission fee but with a hanging fee, no fees at all, no entry fees but with sales commission, with a submission fee and sales commission, different percentages of sales commission, open calls within your state, out of state, international calls, calls for shows about every theme you can think of. There's an open call for whatever tickles your fancy, and you find it by researching open calls.

5. Socialize, participate and communicate: If you want other individuals to show up for you in any way at all, then you have to do it for other individuals, too. This isn't necessarily as an equivalent exchange where you will expect the very same person to whose show you went to now be at your show. It might be in some vague way if you choose to be that sort of person, but for me it's much more about participating in the art world. I had classmates who complained about the school never showing their work, but then their studio was always closed off, they were never there, they didn't have work displayed on their walls, they didn't talk to anyone or all of the above. This pairing of their complaints with their behavior continues to make zero sense to me.

If you want stuff to happen, other individuals have to be aware of you and what you're doing.

This overlaps with showing the work, whether it's in galleries, social media or interacting with your own artist friends.

When you have a show, be it a group or a solo show, you want people in general to know about it. It doesn't matter what you're up to, post about it on social media, be at your opening, dress up, talk to people and thank them for being there.

Likewise, be at the opening of the artist whose work you like or your friend's show, and if you can't make it to the opening, go to the show while it's up and tell them it was lovely.

Many times a show will result from a group of artist friends wanting to show their own work, or somebody you know might be curating a show and they will invite you. Participate and socialize by helping to install or deinstall the exhibit and post about it.

A big part of what you should do on social media when you're using your allotted social media time effectively is commenting on people's posts and their stories. Don't whine about the algorithm being against you or passive-aggressively posting about how it's so easy for people to support artists by commenting on their posts and then you never comment on other people's posts yourself. The best way to use your time on social media after making your own posts consistently is commenting on posts of accounts you follow, replying to comments on your post, commenting on people's stories and replying to your direct messages.

This also overlaps with getting thick skin and practice. Sometimes one feels shy or lazy or whatever unnamed psychological state which prevents one from interacting with other people. Deliberately forcing yourself to socialize in spite of any psychological state makes your skin thicker and is practice to get better at socializing, communicating and generally being there for people who matter to you.

Sometimes social media posts don't perform as well as expected, but one has to continue posting. Sometimes not as many people show up to the opening, but we have to continue showing the work.

Tangentially related: An actually good article about the instagram algorithm

6. Stop being shy about pricing the work: Pricing work in the art world is difficult and chaotic by default because beauty is priceless. Many people including gallerists, dealers, collectors, teachers and artists claim there's a pricing pattern formed by at what point the artist is in their career, size of the work, how often they produce work, medium used and complexity of the work. Other methods of artwork price calculation which will elicit the same results include voodoo, learning whether we're in the age of aquarius or mercury retrograde, reading tea leaves, reading the entrails of your most recently slayed enemy or the entrails of your finest goat. There is no logic to pricing art.

Pricing one's art is another thing that requires getting thick skin and practice, in the sense you get used to just telling people how much the work is by doing it. A way to start practicing could be to write how much the work is in the caption of whatever social media. This way you don't have to tell anyone directly and the information is available for whomever is interested. The point is to start making it known that you absolutely charge for the work you make.

With practice in pricing your work you start to get a feel for what amounts you're personally comfortable charging, whether you're comfortable accepting installments, what payment methods you prefer, how you feel about negotiating and the general back and forth that takes place when a person is interested in purchasing art.

Forget about the idea of "I'm not ready to sell the work because I'm not good enough yet" or not selling something because it's "school homework". There is a buyer for every work of art and whether that person finds the work when you first made it or decades down the line doesn't matter. If somebody shows any interest in your work, get ready for the possibility of selling it.

This also overlaps with research. See how other artists price their work and at what price galleries sell work. Note how different artists display this information in their social media, studio and website.

7. Usage of time: Regardless of what sort of life you have, how you use your time is your responsibility. You might have three completely free hours every day, but if you spend them sitting in a puddle of anxiety because you were looking at social media instead of drawing or whatever else you should be doing, that is entirely your fault.

If you find yourself spending too long on social media, try different things and start making a concerted effort to reduce the time you spend on it to what is strictly necessary to promote your work. Try an "intermittent fasting" of social media and do not use your smart phone until noon; for example, or only look at your smart phone screen while standing.

This might be similar to wanting to draw for longer periods of time. Try drawing first thing in the morning for one hour every day and see how that makes you feel, then maybe increase it to two hours, or try drawing for two hours in the evening.

When talking about how to use time, one might start by first thinking of goals and priorities. One might want to work on a drawing, but maybe one also has to put together an application for a grant, do exercise and make lunch and dinner. The grant has a deadline, the drawing might not necessarily, exercise and making food must be done every day, so however time gets distributed during the day, all these things must be present.

Maybe one could dedicate two daily hours to the grant until the application is done or the deadline, two daily hours to the drawing, one hour of exercise and one hour for the preparation and consumption of each meal.

This overlaps with getting thick skin and practice. If the way you are currently using your time doesn't deliver the results you want, deliberately try to improve your use of time which will take a lot of practice and continuing to do everything in spite of frustrating and disheartening setbacks.

This also overlaps with research. Do research on how other people use their time and experiment with different methods. Ask your colleagues what they do with their time, read about other artists and find out how they manage their time. Maybe even not just artists, try to find out what Elon Musk does with his time.

8. Success and priorities: Do you REALLY want to get a solo show? Do you REALLY want gallery representation? Do you REALLY want 50k followers on instagram? There are certain things which mean success according to some nondescript collective of articles on some art magazines or art collectors or art teachers or artists.

This overlaps with research. How do you discover what you'd like for yourself and art career? You can start by finding out what other artists have under their belts, either reading their biographies or CVs and seeing what is interesting. Think about the events which are generally considered positive in an artist's career and which ones appeal most to you, then think about your artistic goals and notice if there's overlap between your goals and those events which are considered successful, and proceed to make your actions lead you to those goals.

Gallery representation, a solo show and 50k followers on instagram might definitely look like success and these are perfectly valid goals for an artist, but each individual decides for themself.

9. Make the work: You are not an artist unless you make work, so make the work.

This point of advice is last because all previous arguments have no reason to be without the existence of this one. The work you make is the center around which your artistic career revolves so it's crucial you prioritize and respect the making of your work. An artist's career doesn't ride on their charming personality, networking skills and social media presence, because those are merely vehicles which carry the work.

This overlaps with research. You investigate drawing by drawing. Each repetition, whether you're making a sketch or a "finished" drawing, is research into how to make beautiful objects. If you take drawing classes, make the effort to investigate the teacher's method in the controlled environment of their class. Making master copies is also a method of research, because as one makes the copy, one tries to understand what the artist's intent was and one also tries to divine how they solved their own problems.

This also overlaps with usage of time. If there's anything that's mandatory it's making the work, so one absolutely has to make time to produce work.

Depending on where you are in life, you might get longer or shorter periods of time to draw. This also depends on how long it takes to make one drawing, whether it can be made for a little while every day or for an entire day two days a week. Whatever suits each individual's needs, it's important time scheduled to make work is respected.

This also overlaps with getting thick skin and practice. Sometimes one has the alleged "bad drawing days" and whatever causes these days, it takes thick skin and practice to keep drawing in spite of the dip in confidence. Sometimes the schedule one made for the day or week is interrupted by an emergency and it takes thick skin and practice to try again tomorrow. Whether you continue to make work is your responsibility.


VI. Conclusion

We might have been sold the idea that being an artist means to drift through life probably drunk or starving, occasionally making something.

We might have been sold the idea that beauty and art are irrelevant and relative.

It doesn't matter what information you start with or what you think you know in the present, you can learn new information and produce your own ideas.

I don't actually know why the artist stereotype thoroughly pollutes every aspect of art. I don't know why art isn't thought of as a career composed by several fields of not just making things well, but also philosophy, business and marketing. The answer is of course the opposite of simple, but other than as a subject to muse about, I don't particularly care for the reason.

I personally care about doing everything I can to build a career with highlights that matter to me and produce art that fulfills me.

We are all perfectly capable of doing it.