The importance of Technique

Topics: advice for artists

Foreword

This post is by Mark Brockman.

This article has been edited and published with the author's permission.

We've featured this post because it provides great value to up and coming artists and to the C- My Art community.

This author's views are entirely his own and may not always reflect the views of C - My Art.

The Post

Technique, style, your look, whatever you want to call it is as individual as your signature. Yes your paintings might look a bit like some other artist, and so long as it's not contrived, that's OK. We all strive for originality but with so many artists out there it would be hard for one artist's work to not, somewhere in the world, have their work resemble another artist's work.

But just how important is Technique and how does an artist go about creating their technique?

I believe Technique, the artist's style, is important. It lets viewers know that (insert artist's name here) painted that painting. It helps us artists to have a cohesive body of work. That doesn't mean though that your technique must stay the same your whole life. As we age, we grow, we change, so why shouldn't our work as well. Some artists have various techniques at the same time, this is generally looked down upon by galleries and collectors, but then maybe they lack imagination. I say an artist should paint what and how they paint anyway they want at any given time. My paintings often look a bit different from each other, not because of my using different techniques but rather because I use different surfaces which my pastels and watercolors are painted on and that can give paintings a different look as you often have to handle a medium a bit different on different surfaces. Plus it's a given that an oil painting would look different then a watercolor.

So how does one find or create their technique? You don't. You already have it, again, it's like your signature. You don't need to find the technique, you need to recognize your style and then nurture it. I spent years looking for my technique, years. Yes I learned a lot doing so as I tried various ways of handling the many different media I have worked in. I tried different schools of art, realism, Impressionism, abstract Impressionism, expressionistic representationalism (say that five times fast) and even abstraction. I studied hundreds of artists trying to paint like my favorite artist of the week. Again I learned a great deal. What I learned most though, what was most important, was that I am who I am and I paint as I paint.

Okay, now comes the hard part, recognizing what is your technique. In this I can only speak for myself and how I finally realized my way of painting, and I am sure there are thousands, perhaps millions of ways to do so. There were times I would do a painting and there would be passages that seemed to beautiful for me to have painted them. No way I could have painted that even if I tried. But I did! I didn't plan those passages, they just sort of happened. They were what many artists call 'happy accidents' but maybe they are not accidents at all but rather my technique trying to come out. When I realized that these accidents were not accidents I began to build on them, nurture them, collect them, they became my 'look'. Another aspect of my painting technique is lack of thought. Yes, you read that correctly. You see when I think or analyze my painting as I paint I always screw the painting up, it's a given. But when I paint without analyzing, paint instinctually, I will have, not always, more success. I believe my hand and gut know more of what to do than my brain, so I let them have at it.

Technique, finding it or recognizing it can be difficult and frustrating. It's not unlike just trying to learn to create in whatever medium you choose. To learn how to handle a particular medium takes practice, many hours of trying. So finding and developing your technique requires practice too. One needs to open their mind (or shut it off as I do), open their heart, their emotions, to feel what is right, to let intuition take over, to listen to their gut, let your hand(s) do the work, technique will come.

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You can view Mark's original post here.

https://markbrockman.com/blog/121904/the-importance-of-technique