Aaron Holland Fine Arts

PRACTICAL ADVICE by Terrick Williams (from his book "Landscape Painting In Oil Colour")

"I have given the student such practical advice as I think may be useful to him and hope that I have succeeded in making this clear and helpful. I would like, however... to add a few cautionary suggestions:

• Don't try to be smart in your painting. If you have facility in handling use it only to express what you feel about your subject and not to display your cleverness.

• Don't be downhearted about failures. One learns more from failures, if the effort be sincerely directed, than from successes.

• Don't choose for imitation the work of any painters except the very best. It is safer for this purpose to select work of whose names are well established. If you imitate the work of second rate painters you will probably imitate their mannerisms.

• Don't imitate the handling of other painters, however good their work may be; imitate their attitude towards Nature.

• Don't cultivate whatever quality in painting you feel you are good at, cultivate those where you are weakest. *Aaron's addition- The extent to which you excell in your weakness will help to define your greatness.

• Don't be afraid of attempting what are sometimes called "hackneyed subjects". No subjects are hackneyed, but the pictures of them very often are. It is possible to paint quite an original picture of a subject which has been painted a thousand times, and to paint a thouroughly hackneyed one of a subject never before attempted. It is the artist's conception that matters.

• Don't be afraid of spoiling a sketch which promises to be good if you feel there is a possiblity of improving it by continuing. If you cannot regain the qualities you may lose in this process of continuation these were evidently only the result of an accident and thus not worth bothering about.

• Don't, on the other hand, go on with a sketch merely with the idea of finishing it, only go on with it so long as you have clearly in your mind what changes or additions will improve it.

• Don't try to find in Nature subjects which you have seen in other painter's work. If a subject pleases you, even if it recalls no picture you have ever seen, set to work on it and try to show to the spectator of your picture what is was in Nature that attracted you.

• Don't be too ready to adopt new fashions or manners in painting. These may be good and again they may be bad. If you feel quite sure that nature shows you something which you may express in this manner, or that you see in the work aspects of Nature which you recognize and with which you yourself are in sympathy, it may follow that it would be advantagous for you to try it. Remember, however, that painting is not a matter of fashion, manner or formula; it is an expression of an emotion.

• Don't think that you are going to be able to paint by reading books about the subject. All that [they] can do for you is to tell you how to begin to learn to paint. Painting is a very difficult art and proficiency in it can only be earned by long and earnest practice. If it could be learned by reading a book everybody who wanted to could paint and there would be little merit in the accomplishment.