Forget Instagram. Pick up a Brush and Paint!
Instagram is so powerful of a tool today. It is literally shaping perception and cultivating thousands upon thousands of brands, write at the fingertips with our phones.
But this obsession with pictures and capturing moments is not something new. Whether it was old-school photography or even painted landscapes, people have wanted to capture the essence of worldly experience.
Now, instagram and photography (the one on your smartphone) are just pressing buttons, swiping, etc. Its stripping away the kinesthetic and PHYSICALITY of painting. Strokes of knives, sponges, brushes, beating the ‘devil out of your paint brush’ like Bob Ross, or getting into the elements with plein air painting, make this hobby very special and bring powerful lessons.
Painting allows you to experience the layers in nature, people, personalities, physical and abstract infrastructure.
When you start off painting, you’re basically building layers. You start off with a rough sketch followed by more details, followed by variations in coloration, hue, light/shadow, and composition.
If you believe in a God than you appreciate the Grand Architect for the complexity of creation.
Especially in the autumn/fall.
The variations in color as the tree leaves are stripped of their pigments and the shades of red, yellow, and orange against the rising sun are the same experiences that seeing projects come together from their components. Painting helps to shed focus on the summation of components in a variety of places.
Painting teaches how to adapt and see mistakes as ‘happy little accidents’
Its almost like we’re too comfortable to make mistakes. As if we are so comfortable and have ‘so much to lose’ that the the burden of making a mistake is considered a ‘burden’.
Pathetic.
Imagine saying that to Bob Ross, the king of ‘happy little accidents’.
Painting is maneuvering and finding a new angle to what you could call a ‘mess up’.
What in reality is something you had not planned. How well do you adapt to things not going your own way?
The fate oft hat painting in that moment can reveal a great deal about the kind of person you are when faced with things not going your own way.
Painting allows you to see how what you consume is a PERSPECTIVE
And this plays a great example in today’s age of social media. Are you or are you not creating what you THINK you see?
It will never be the exact same, although some realist painters are damn amazing.
But everything is perspective.
You’re shaping a more ‘well-composed’ image for your painting and other people are going to consume your painting.
