My last post pretty much covers the how-to-come-up part of this, and like I said in the post before last, whatever it is you decide to paint in the end, make sure it’s something you love. Something you truly believe in.

When working on a series of paintings (or sculptures or prints or mixed media pieces or installations or so on), you expend so much of yourself, you give so much of yourself. So you better make sure (or at least be sure enough) that what you’re about to kill yourself for is something you really truly want to bring into this world and share with other people.

Having exhausted the ideal, as Dumas put it, you must now come to terms with the actual. Consider the gallery, or the venue where your exhibit is to take place—or, where your work will ultimately call home. How many pieces are you making? How big are they? How much space will you need?

This works both ways, in that, you either find a gallery and then plan how many and how big, or you plan the number and the size first and then find a venue to suit your plans. Some people will tell you the latter is ideal, and how you shouldn’t let your resources interfere with your conceptualisation and planning process.

I totally agree with that, and I see the value of that line of thinking against the backdrop of how artists (should) have complete control over their ‘babies’. Personally, I think it’s quite natural to use and be ‘limited’ by the resources you have on hand, just like it’s natural for Philippine indigenous artists to use things like abaca and pandan.

As much as I’d very much like to work sky’s-the-limit style, I’ve often found I’ve had to work with what I had and to just do my best to, again, make the most of whatever that was, and that included the exhibition space.

And then again, it’s not just the space, but what the gallery will (for lack of a better word) allow you to do, or might ask you to do. Say, for instance, the gallery only takes oil paintings, or photographs, or tends to favour photo-realism or more ‘adventurous’ pieces.

So you can do one of two things: you can either find another gallery where you can totally do what you want, or try to work within the gallery’s parameters. It’s all about how far you’re willing to (didn’t want to have to use this word) compromise and what you can live with or whether you’ll be able to live with yourself as an artist, afterwards.​

In any case, these are things you might have to consider when planning your series. You know me, I’m all for planning—but I’m also for being flexible when necessary.
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Medium and technique pretty much go hand-in-hand with figuring out what to paint—not necessarily, but it does happen pretty often, for me, anyway. Although it has happened where I’ll decide what I want to paint—a fish, let’s say (jillashorthand for ‘mermaid’), and then I’ll decide afterwards whether I want to do it in watercolour or something else.

But other things you might want to figure out before you get to the down and dirty includes things like how were you planning on working on your giant painting, say, in a tiny studio space? Don’t laugh, this was something I had to negotiate when I worked on this—​

—at my desk— ​
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Aaand speaking of time, one major consideration for me, at least, when planning a series is how much time I have to make everything.

I was once told that six months is ‘standard’ for preparing for a show. I was also asked once how come I was always so stressed ‘cramming’ for a show—the person who asked thought that you basically just made stuff whenever you felt like it, and then when you had enough, went and had a show.

Well one thing I will say—if I had a show after I made stuff ‘whenever I felt like it’ I probably never would’ve had any, lol. And like I always say, Michelangelo didn’t do the Sistine Chapel ceiling in six months.

If you’ll allow me to digress, a little, I guess one ‘bad habit’ I picked up back at art school was learning to be driven by a deadline. That’s not to say I can’t make anything if I don’t have one, but boy is the going slow. And even before I went to art school I’d noticed that anything that was taking me too long to finish made me fidgety, somehow.

So as much as I hate to admit it, having deadlines does help.

In any case, however much time you have between the blessed day you were able to book your show (or decided to work on your series) and opening day (or the reasonable deadline you set yourself), it helps to plan.

Personally, what I do is count how many months, weeks, days I have, and how many hours I have in the day I can work on my stuff. When I’m in full-on ‘factory mode’ I need to paint about eight hours a day on top of my day job. If you ‘live a double life’ like I do, I do suggest you do your best to, you know. Plan to sleep sometimes. And eat, lol.

But knowing how much time you have to work will help you to plan what you’re going to do, too. Like if you only have so much time, you might want to think about the amount of detail you’re going to put, type thing. Or if you must have fine detail, try and see how you can give yourself as much time as possible.​

Like if you were doing 15 pieces, let’s say, you could maybe prime all your canvases or stretch all your paper beforehand. I know some people who work on multiple pieces at once, like maybe they do layering, and work on another piece while the first piece was drying, and then go back to the first one to add another layer. That kind of thing.

​Generally, I have two main methods of thinking up a painting which I use equally often, but if I were asked for like my main-est method, I would probably have to say Interpretation. This involves me interpreting or giving my own take on a concept or a narrative. In this approach, you’re taking off from (or playing with) what’s already there—even if it’s just one word.
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In the closest thing I have to an artist’s statement (which you can find elsewhere on this site), the single-word concepts I gave as examples were ‘hunger’ and ‘anger’. (Hmm, I don’t seem to have changed very much in the ten years that have passed since I wrote that statement, lol.) So, offhand, if I were to have interpreted ‘hunger’, I might have made something like this:

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Okay, so I didn’t exactly have ‘hunger’ in mind when I made that bug. Closer to home, I think, if I were to have interpreted ‘anger’, I might have made something (more) like this:
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​Facile, I know, but maybe some of you might have fun with the word play method, too. I also have the tendency to name or title my work this way, because some people have a little trouble thinking of titles for their work, as well. (Me, when I can’t think of anything or I really don’t want to call it anything I just put ‘Untitled’, lol.)

Cultural association is how something is visualised according to a specific culture—like how East and West have different ways of representing dragons. Personal opinion is pretty obvious, although some people might try interpreting other people’s opinions in their own work.

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​The second of the two main ways I ‘think things up’ is Extrapolation—if Interpretation involves playing with what’s there, Extrapolation is all about playing with what isn’t there yet. To oversimplify the dictionary definition, if there’s an ABC, then DEF is likely to follow—the continuation of an existing trend.

In contrast to Interpretation, which is personal or subjective, Extrapolation, to me, takes a more ‘scientific’ or objective approach to conceptualisation. In my pseudo-artist’s statement (I really ought to make a proper one sometime), I explained this by saying ‘what would a monster look like based on its habitat or prey’. Take the wengalores in ‘Tessa’s Poem’, for instance:
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I think I came up with wengalores around the time I was working my last job at an ad agency-ad agency. (And if I remember it right, I named the species after what a co-worker called another one of our co-workers at the time.) I remember wondering what the people of a planet that was entirely covered by water would look like.

Even if this planet didn’t have dry land, it had these enormous trees growing out of the sea floor (or something). And I thought, some of these people would be more adapted for swimming, others for flying (depending on whether they lived in the roots or the branches).

So some wengalores had ‘wings’ that looked more like fins, while others had ‘wings’ with giant scales instead of feathers. Naturally, they would be covered with scales, have the requisite webbed hands, yadda yadda.

And that’s not hair on their heads, by the way, at least not as we know it. Under a microscope it would look a lot like the filmy fins or tails on long-tailed fish like goldfish (my bad, I’d paint hair the same way regardless anyway, hee).

In any case, even if you weren’t painting monsters, you might still be able to apply Extrapolation to your conceptualisation and/or production process by dint of its being the ‘continuation of a trend’. In other words, that logical thought process of what your subject could be or would look like based on what you have at hand.

Very simply, say for instance you were painting a house—depending on where the house was, it may or may not have a pool, a fence, window shutters or a tiled or a thatched roof. If it had a garden, you could extrapolate as to the kind of flowers it would have or, if it had a clothesline out back, the kind of clothes and linen that would be hanging from it.

I guess a fun way to use Extrapolation would be to counter the logic in a sort of ‘Anti-Extrapolation’ that doesn’t make sense. Like hanging a ball-and-chain, a crowbar or a monkey from that clothesline, or putting a dinosaur on top of the house instead of a roof for no good reason and making him wear a feather boa. ​
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Many people (myself included) find it helpful to write things down or to doodle when they think up paintings, with many of them keeping their scribbles in a journal of some sort. As trite as it is, it really is useful to keep a notebook or something to write things down in when a brainwave hits just to make doubly sure you remember it later.​

Some like to make like the Surrealists and write and doodle automatically, while others prefer a more structured or guided brainstorming process such as mind mapping. Branching out from a central theme or ‘striking leaf blades off of a stone core’, so to speak, can be particularly useful when you’re planning for a show.

This way, each branch (or stone knife or scraper) could represent an individual painting, and you can be sure that each work ties in with the others to form a cohesive or unified collection for your exhibit.

As an example, if I had made a mind map for 'Horselords' (because I hadn’t; I really only wrote things down), it might’ve looked something like this:

​Apart from choosing a relaxing subject, think about what medium or technique you enjoy using. In fact, you don’t even have to choose a subject—you could just focus on playing around with the medium and your tools and make something non-representational (what most people call ‘abstract’).

You might also want to consider your expected output, as some people get stressed out when their painting doesn’t come out the way they expected it to—in which case, paint something you know you’re going to enjoy making and hopefully love, afterwards.

​Or any room in your house, for that matter. I guess the easiest way to think of something to paint for this reason is to paint something that either complements your interiors or provides contrast in terms of colour or theme.

If your bedroom comes in shades of blue and grey, for instance, you might paint a seascape, which could look nice in blue and grey, or a still life featuring a dish of oranges, or an orange kitty.

Giving someone something you painted expressly for him is a lot like giving him a sweater you knitted or a cake you baked. I guess the main thing people worry about is ‘will he like it?’ Well, the answer to that entirely depends on how well you know the intended recipient.
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But as you select a subject based on what this person likes, you might also want to keep it simple, as what you end up choosing may also depend on how much time you have to complete the painting. If you know this person likes classical music, for instance, you don’t have to paint an entire orchestra. ​

While No. 5 is fixated on the ‘how you paint’, this reason emphasises the ‘what you used’. Some of us are transfixed by the materiality or the very nature of their medium, or by individual elements such as colour, texture or line. If you’re one of these artists, then you might choose a subject that best showcases the characteristics of the element or medium you’re exploring.

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons behind the creation of non-representational work, because people tend to look at what is represented instead of the medium or elements if the work represents something. For example, most people would look at the apple in a painting of an apple, instead of the colour red. ​

Usually when we get commissions we’re already told what to paint. There are times, however, when the instructions can be a little vague—which can be a good thing because that gives us more room for, well, putting in more of ourselves and less of the person who’s doing the commissioning. ​

In this case, let the parameters given you by the ‘commissioner’ help you figure out your subject. If you’re still having trouble, try asking this person for more details—which can also be a good thing because that will help to make sure you’ll be giving this person what he wants. For example, “Paint me some flowers”. “What colour? How about gardenias?”
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By this, I mean a portfolio, in which case, see No. 5—because this is where you show people, who could potentially commission you for a piece, what you can do. It’s a good idea to paint things you see yourself painting for others on a regular basis, i.e. if you killed yourself making that 10-foot portrait of Godzilla that one time, then you may want to think twice.​

If you should ever be asked to paint a sort of ‘audition piece’ (i.e. we’re picking someone out to illustrate our book)—try to get all the details you can to help you choose or plan your subject. (And boost your chances of getting the job.) That said, might I suggest that some things (such as being true to yourself as an artist) might be more important than landing a commission.
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This time, I mean painting in an art class (where you paid somebody to teach you how to paint).  Sometimes you don’t have a whole lot of time to think of something to paint when you really only found out what you were going to do when you got there. And your teacher is the liberal kind who likes to give students the freedom to choose their own subject. (*Points to self*)

One way to speed up the subject selection process is to think about what you like to paint most and then try to find a way to relate it to the lesson at hand. For example, no matter what, I like painting horses. I could paint them all day, every day. Today’s lesson is pointillism, so I’ll paint a horse using that. But a horse is too big, I’ll never finish today. So I’ll only paint his head.
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In a way, this is much like Nos. 7, 8 and 9, where the rules of the game aren’t entirely your own (even though in a perfect world, I think, they ought to be). The trick is to be able to balance who you are and what you want while being able to play nicely with others. If there is a theme, try to choose a subject that doesn’t deviate from it too much (‘play nicely’, remember?).

It does happen, however, that the show is one you just can’t not join, but the work just isn’t what you would normally do. In that case, refer to No. 9, and see if you can find a way to relate what you usually do to the theme or the prevailing technique if it’s something you’re into. Again, the important thing (to me, anyway) is to remain true to your own artistic values. ​
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And what if you really do know why you’re painting, but still can’t think of anything, anyway? I’ll answer those in my next post. Because the truth of the matter is there is no one-size-fits-all reply to ‘What should I paint?’; if I told you ‘go paint a hammerhead shark’ and you hated the sea (or sharks)… In which case I’d be happy to help you toss ideas around if you’d like.

But no matter what subject, concept or material you choose, make sure you paint something you love (or at least like a whole lot). Even if it’s meant for relaxing, art involves a lot of time and effort—why expend it painting something you hate? ​

​Call it mid-life crisis, I suppose. As I write this, I’m in the middle of a forcible removal of myself from, well, everything, going on at the moment, which has given me a little time to think about where I am, where I’ve been and where I’m going next.
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And seeing that this is what I project to be the first in a series of, ‘scribbles’ for anybody who might be interested in my work, or might be into (or planning to get into) art as a career (or as something to do because bungee-jumping wasn’t exactly their thing), well, I thought I might do a little ‘scribbling out loud’ on the subject.

I mean about why anybody might choose to do what a lot of people consider quite useless or impractical or just plain weird. Why anybody might choose to do something that doesn’t always lead to fame or fortune (although when it does, boy does it ever) and has most everyone you know looking at you funny because you don’t go to work in a high-rise in a suit.

Nobody likes to be looked at funny (well, generally, anyway), and I reckon everybody likes to be, well, accepted and to have people have a good opinion of them. “Oh, he’s got a good job” or “Oh, he’s vice president now” or “Oh, she’s got a lovely three-year-old.” People who do what I do don’t always get that.

More often than not, we don’t, and derision (polite or otherwise) is just something we have to live with (unless you’re one of us who hits the big time and buys a car or a condo with every painting sold). So why do we. Why would you? Are we masochists? Maybe.​

Which would actually begin with the fact that I never really wanted to do this as a career, really, to begin with. I mean, when I was a kid and they asked you “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I never said “a painter”. I remember saying “architect” (or “carpenter”, even).

As a high school senior, I remember wanting to be a copywriter, like in an ad agency. Seriously. I have this vague memory of some chick who used to work at an agency describing what it was like to write commercials or something (I have this even vaguer memory of it being for shampoo), and I remember thinking to myself, hey, I’d like to do that.

But even I had the idea at that age of not being able to make a decent living if I had painting for a job.

While I hadn’t taken the talent test to get into uni I remember I did pass the entrance exam as an art major—but one of the reasons I ended up going where I went the first time round was because I reckoned I wouldn’t be able to get a ‘real job’ after graduation if I went in for painting.​

Yet, I spent the first couple years or so making jokes to the effect that I was actually enrolled over at the uni where the art was, and spending my time taking figure-drawing classes at the gallery I’d been taking lessons at the time, and unsuccessfully (and quite naively) joining student art competitions.
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Even when I already was working at an ad agency as a copywriter, all my money was going to paint and to art classes (and the gas to get there). I really can’t seem to pinpoint when I decided I wanted to DO this. Maybe it was around then. I just couldn’t help myself. And I knew I wanted to go back and get my art degree (as in ‘fine’, not ‘communication’, lol).

And I did. I knew that if I did that, I would lose the relatively okay copywriter’s paycheque I had, and that it might be difficult to go back to agency work once I’d left. (I’d always had a sixth sense that way.) But I did it anyway.

I remember asking my creative director whether he’d allow me to go to school and work at the same time (because I knew this other chick who was doing market research or some such was doing just that), but he said no. But I was happy to take the plunge.

I admit things went to shite right after I made that decision—money was tight at home and even if I had been working a regular job up until then it’s not like I was helping out, but Mom and Dad let me carry on, anyway (thank you, Mom and Dad). I remember at one point I was working six jobs (including the radio station) on top of school, but it all worked out somehow.

And I was happy, more or less. (More like less? Lol) The upshot of it being I was doing what I wanted to do. Which was to paint things. Make my own pictures. Learning (or trying to learn) how to make them better. More believable.

I wanted to make my monsters come alive—I figured, the more ‘real’ I could make them the more I could get people to believe they were real—or something like that, anyway. I don’t know if I’ve succeeded since then, lol.

When, as I’d predicted, I had a hard time getting back into the workforce after I got out of art school, it was the art that kept me going. One thing led to another and I finally got my first show at the tender age of 30, LOL.

I remember at least one person thinking I was ‘very brave’ (i.e. you’ve got some nerve showing junk like that in public), but even now I knew I wasn’t quite ready at the time. Even now I don’t know that I am.
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I mean I’m not, ‘happy’, but I’m even more ‘not happy’ when I’m not making anything. I really don’t know why that is.

I mean, I’m exhausted? It’s always galled me how most people seem to think I just sit around all day doing nothing (more so now since I work from home), although the older I’ve gotten the less I’ve come to care. (Really.)

And yet this year, the year I finally took that supposed year-long break -away- from making things, here’s me about to attempt to crank out a few more canvases in time for December. I’m as tired as I’ve ever been, but at least that, gnawing (for lack of a better word at present) I have in the back of wherever has quietened down, somewhat.

Deep, deep down I guess I knew this would happen, which was why I kept putting off this “year off” for a couple or so years  (I’m not quite sure when I started to want to take it). But now that I -have- actually tried to take a year off to just recuperate, I know now that for people like me, perhaps, it’s just not possible.

I guess you could say it’s like being a mermaid, or a centaur. Running around like a horse is making the centaur as tired AF, so he thinks he’ll take a break for a while and -not run-, and spend the break focusing on his man-part, instead.

But see, he really is half-horse by nature, and before the year is up, even though he hasn’t quite recovered from more than 10 years of living both as a horse AND a man, he’s ‘back in the saddle’ again.

He can’t help it. It’s his nature. He’s really built that way. You can’t separate the man and the horse, and if you did he would probably die—like chopping conjoined twins apart when they’re sharing major organs. He can’t stop running around, it’s what he is. He just HAS to do it.

So I guess that would be like, the reason (or ‘a’ reason or at least MY reason) for choosing, of your own free will, to put up with “Oh why don’t you get a ‘real’ job” or “What’s the point? You’re not making money doing that” and so on and so forth.

Choosing to burn the candle at both ends because art demands a 100% commitment the same as any day job, whether you work from home or not. Choosing to sacrifice your time, your well-being, your resources and possibly any relationships you might have to Daemon and to your Muse, allowing them to drive you like a whipped nag on her last legs.

It’s because you WANT to do it. You -have- to do it. To just do it because if you don’t, you just… it just doesn’t feel right. Something is missing. ​

Sure, you’ll probably sleep more and you’ll have more money (because you didn’t spend it on framing or new knives), but I think what you end up doing with all that extra energy and resources is to just keep on running from who (or what) you really are.
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And while you’re running, you have all these new images, these new monsters—popping up in your head and since my own head is not very big (my brains, I mean, anyway, lol), it soon becomes crowded and the monsters start scratching at the walls or trying to bust holes into them, clamouring to be let OUT. Geez, what a racket, lol.

You have to let them out, or you will go crazy. It’s not the kind of noise you can shut out with a pair of noise-reduction earphones. I’d always understood that it wasn’t healthy to keep things that demand to be let out, in, because if you did you got sick. (Not that I’ve ever been particularly concerned with being healthy, anyway.)

You know, it’s like I always say—​there’s no such thing as a perfect job. Or career. Or calling or whatever you want to call it. Like this lady said on this self-help show I used to watch, every job has a sh-t sandwich—but if you love what you’re doing THAT much, you won’t mind eating it. If you do, then it might be time to find a new job. Or Something to do.

I forget right now who said this (I’m pretty sure I heard it during one of those Van Gogh films) that you need to give your whole heart and soul to art, if you’re going to do it. I know I heard in this anime movie I must’ve seen a gazillion times that you shouldn’t get into the martial arts unless you’re willing to go all the way. Martial arts = still art.

I’m not sure feelings are enough? Because feelings change. I don’t know what it is, but I do know it must be more than that. But whatever it is, it’s THAT that will drive you to choose this less-travelled path, and make it possible for you to continue on it, although, more and more people do seem to be following it these days, and I say, good for them!

If you’re one of them, to you, I say, good luck, Godspeed, and however hard things get (because they will get hard), keep going. And if you can’t, ask yourself why you’re on this path in the first place. And if you need help figuring that out, for what it’s worth, I’m here.