Transcending through the paint brush: From Stick Figures to Sinatra
- BEING&DOINGTEAM
- Feb 10, 2020
- 3 min read
As a young child, I’ve always resorted to coloring, or painting whenever I was bored and needed something fun to do. Little did I know, when it came to high school, I grew serious in my passion, which led me to win multiple awards in my state and city, and even created a masterpiece for a renowned rapper. Art is something that I can always resort to, and keep as a constant healing piece in my life
I used to think that I wasn’t creative
Back as a freshman in my high school art class, I was surrounded by people who came up with these amazing ideas on how to put a new clever twist on an old style, or make a trendy new painting. When I began to do art in the classroom environment I would always have a tough time deciding what to paint for my next project because I felt that I wasn’t creative enough to come up with something new. I soon realized that creativity isn’t about how well you have the ability to think of new ideas, it is the lack of fear in producing something that doesn’t look good. This breakthrough was what drove my passion for art even further. I soon began to delve deeper in my thought process and made myself comfortable with the thought of creating something that might not turn out ok. This Idea doesn’t just apply to painting and art, it can work for anything in life.
Art as a temporary getaway
Soon after I finish my paintings, the most common questions I get, coming after “can you paint me” of course, are “how did you do that?”, or “can you teach me”, and if you are wondering, I honestly have no clear explanation of how I get these details so accurately. When I am working on a portrait, there aren’t really any thoughts going through my head. I often put on some music, or have a tv show playing in the background. In a sense, I just let the painting paint itself. I even wonder too sometimes, of how I pieced the painting together so well, with no real recollection of how I did it. This state, acting as a type of meditation for me, allows me to channel my inner self and not think of any other worries. I find that whenever I pick up a paint brush it creates a feeling of satisfaction inside of me, as I watch my hands do all the work on the canvas.
I wasn’t always skillful in what I do
We’re not born with skill, we acquire it over time, it’s an idea that we grasp on to, and practice in order to achieve. The hardest part about excelling in something is actually starting it. When I started to get serious about painting, it took me a while to explore the field, and figure out what I was able to be successful in. When I got to a higher level of art, we had to choose a concentration or theme of what we wanted our main focus of our work to be. I went through so many different ideas and didn’t like 95% of them, until I reached portraits. Over the course of a few years, I would practice by creating new paintings constantly, and saw improvement in each one. The thing about art is that it is visual proof that practice makes perfect; with each painting you can see that they just get better and better with time and effort. By sticking to this idea, it led me to win first place awards in the state of California, and even reach the attention of music artist, Logic, who currently has the Young Sinatra painting posted on the left.
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