Olympics And Art

August 15, 2016

I've been watching the Summer Olympic games in Rio this past week and marveling at the practice and dedication of the athletes. Observing them can really teach us some life lessons. If you want to get good at anything, you have to practice and practice and practice.

Which brings me to another thing I saw this week. It was a quote by Nelson Mandela,

"I never lose. I either win or learn."

I believe what Mr. Mendela was saying is that even in failure, there are many lessons. If that opens your mind and heart to those lessons I think that's a good thing.

Like an olympic sport, drawing and painting are both incredibly rewarding and tremendously challenging. So much work goes into getting good at this craft. People devote their entire lives to creating art.

I am a long way from perfecting the craft of portraiture, but I get better and better with practice. I've been spending some time doing portraits and figure sketching. I found a book with illustrations from the 1950's and draw as many as I could.

The illustrators of the 40's, 50's and 60's really perfected the art. Whatever media they used, pencil, watercolor, airbrush, or oil, they were great at capturing expression.

Here are some of my efforts over the past few weeks. Thanks as always for checking out my work. If you get a chance, leave a comment, I'd love to hear your thoughts about art and practice.