I have great expectations and ambitions

[Birgith Schei]

Hello.

 

My name is Birgith Schei

I joined  NMA in the middle of February this year.

I am a 67 years old woman from Norway, who has  been drawing and painting since childhood. However, I have had several breaks for several years. I had in mind, when I was young, to be educated within some kind of arts and crafts, but instead I became an engineer. The main reason for this was the safer income as an engineer. I am now partly retired, partly a consultant in my own company.

I intend to follow as much as I can of the drawing and painting lessons and videos. My hope with participating in NMA is to achieve knowledge about fine art similar to what is possible to get at art schools leading to for instance a bachelor degree. My ambition is to get as skilled as a bachelor. Maybe too ambitious, but the goal depend on how much I practice. Hence it’s  up to me. I already draw and paint each day. For the moment I am following “Introduction to landscape” by Ben Fenske, where I have watched about half of the videos in his course. I find his videos and his approach to the painting very useful. I have also watched videos showing how to draw hands and others drawing so-called bargues. Although I have learned the most basic skills of composition, perspective, colours etc. etc. during my long life, I watch also videos showing things from the scratch, as I do not want to miss details which I possibly am not aware of.
So, to summarize: My ambition is to by a skilled and good painter.

[Josseline Jeria]

Hi Birgith and welcome 🙂

Thanks for sharing a bit about yourself. I’m happy to hear that you’re pursuing your artistic goals. It is never too late! I only started drawing and painting the past 1-2 years. I didn’t do any when I was young. Not sure why. I remember that I always loved colour, paper, books, pencils, pens, the like but I can’t remember ever drawing. I might have been too fearful to approach it. I have an anxious tendency so not surprised if that might have gotten in the way. So I feel very late given my very limited experience, but I’ve pushed myself real hard to not let that get in the way of becoming a skilled painter as well.

I signed up here last year late October. My progress has sky rocketed since starting. I am so happy that I decided to sign up here, I truly feel you can get a very high level of technical training here, much more so in the craft than in most bachelor programs, as they focus heavily on the conceptual and very little in technical skills.

Your goal isn’t too ambitious at all!

How do you set up your daily drawing and painting practice? I find it difficult to strike a balance between the two. When I paint, I focus almost exclusively on it for the day, week and even several weeks . same goes for drawing. My temperament is to hyperfocus on one area, but I know that both compliment each other. For me my drawing skills are limited, so I know I need to work on my draftsmanship, in order to improve my painting.

I’ve watched through some of Fenske lessons. I enjoy his approach to landscape painting. I had planned to start plein air painting during autumn or spring where I live, but it’ll probably have to be postponed for the time being given the current global situation.

I highly recommend Bill Perkin’s Colour Bootcamp course. I think even if you’ve done colour theory, this course is still good to do. He goes in depth with all the aspects of colour – value, hue, saturation, colour temperature, complimentary colours. He teaches you how to use each aspect to serve the message you want to deliver with your image. To be deliberate and selective with your choices. How to plan out your colour compositions. He gets you to do 20 30min portrait colour sketches at the end of the course to practice your understandings of each of the elements in the course. These REALLY push and test you, but they are very valuable exercises. He demos how he would approach each one so that helps to see where you can improve etc.

John Asaro’s course is very good. He teaches you how to ensure your gestures of your figures, with a focus on the limbs, have a good flow to them, so that your figures don’t look stiff. His painting approach taught me how to push hue, saturation and colour temperature further than what a reference provides.

Hollis Dunlap’s course is wonderful for seeing how to paint the portrait and figure from life. How to develop your painting in layers, broad to specific. How corrections and adustments in proportions and drawing occurs throughtout the entire painting. That you will struggle in parts, and that is ohk. To persist through it, to push yourself to push a painting further. You see him directly going through all this, which I found both valuable and reassuring.

Looking forward to seeing more of your work 🙂

[Author]

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