Thread to bitch about being an artist

[CrystalGeezer]

That sounds fun! I think I got commissioned to paint a lion king mural in Ontario today. I hope that works out and I make some much needed monies. I have been thinking of ideas and experimental creative ventures. We definitely need a thread where we can discuss our creative ventures and stuff like that....

I think you should go ahead and make an official artists of solo thread because 1. You've been an artist longer that I have 2. Let's face it, you're a better thread starter than I am. Way better. Let's go to our own thread and nerd it up.

(Yes, I'm trying to get you to set up a photoshop game for us to play.)

Commissions are THE WORST.

I was at the post office today mailing a vellum envelope with the donkey cutouts in it and the post lady could see my artwork. So she asks me (and she literally looks like the squiffy emoticon, somethings going on with one of her eyes) how much I would charge to paint "LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE" on a mirror, "really big so it goes all the way across my living room, like 10 feet long." I tell her that painting on glass is a specialty becuase you need paint that you cook onto it and that's not my area of expertise and she says "Or it can be wood, I just want is reeeeeaaallly big. How much would you charge?" and I'm thinking "Lady, you want me to paint three words that you saw on a sign down at Target on a huge piece of wood? Really?" but you gotta take the work when it;s handed to you. I havne't agreed to anything yet.

And the dog I have to paint. So I ask my hairdresser to send me a photo of the dog, he wants a portrait of his face and just a little bit of his shoulders. So he says "I'll send you something better!" and sends me this video:



Really? I'm supposed to tell his facial features from a video of him ripping the shit out of a bed? Thank God he's a general breed, I can just image google black schnauzer and add a few details that make it look like his dog.

/endrant

[CrystalGeezer]

I've tried writing on and off, but it doesn't really go anywhere. A lot of it is just me writing down mundane things that happen to me, and then I read it back and I think, "Christ, who would want to read this or get anything out of it, even I don't get anything out of it." When you're drinking, it's easy to write something and think it's the greatest thing in the world. The next morning is usually a different story.

I remember an old Taxi episode where Alex said, "I'm the only one here who is a cab driver. Bobby is an actor, Tony is a boxer, Elaine is an artist, but I'm the only one here who calls himself a cab driver."

I think in some ways, art is like that for me; I got caught up in the idea of some esoteric and grand escape from an identity rooted in a mundane finality...not necessarily a bad finality, but an average one; one that I don't feel particularly good at or suited to, although it's grown on me with time, and I try to be better.

So I wrote a lot and hatched schemes and had all these ideas, but you know...it's hard, it's really hard to take one's self seriously outside of the little scope of one's own mind. You have to ask yourself, "who does this say something to? Am I transcending something here? Am I doing something new? Are my motives pure?" Eventually I just took everything I'd written since maybe 2006 or 7 and destroyed it; it got too embarrassing to look at.

And the thing is, the handful of people I showed it to gave me very positive feedback but it didn't change anything. It was the one or two people who said, "this is total shit," that I really found myself listening to. When someone says, "this is really good," I can't take them seriously because of the possibility they are just being "nice and encouraging." But when someone says, "this is shit," chances are they are being honest.

Ideally, yeah, it shouldn't matter what anyone thinks, good or bad. But I'm human, and I'm gonna listen to whatever is echoing my own thoughts.

Exactly. I can see your attraction to Bukowski in the sentiment of mundane as art, but at what point does it just become self-promoting bullshit?

[!Viva Hate!]

I thought the original point of this thread was picking two different pictures to Photoshop together? You lied to me, Geezer!

[M-in-Oz]

I taught two art classes today. They are nice and the children are lovely and I do enjoy it...but sometimes I feel "hey, I have a post-grad in Visual Arts and I'm charging so little money for these classes and still made to feel that I'm over-charging".
I get tired of the expectation that some people have that teaching art should be for the 'love' of it. Yes, I do love it but I also love getting paid on time.
and I'll also end my rant - as really, things could be worse I guess.

[CrystalGeezer]

A couple of (in my opinion) very insightful clips on this thread subject:

YOUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!! You wrote a bunch of cool stuff and deleted it. I wanted to respond to it but was too tired and on my phone in bed on the way to sleepytown. Anyway, yeah my sentence was vague, I just meant you get to a point where you aren't sure yourself if it's bullshit. I've read one Bukowski book, Ham on Rye. LOVED it. And some of my favorite graphic novels and shorts are illustrations of mundane life. I love that stuff.

I thought the original point of this thread was picking two different pictures to Photoshop together? You lied to me, Geezer!

I will start that thread, I guess I lost track of the intent of an art thread and just took it to bitching level.

I taught two art classes today. They are nice and the children are lovely and I do enjoy it...but sometimes I feel "hey, I have a post-grad in Visual Arts and I'm charging so little money for these classes and still made to feel that I'm over-charging".
I get tired of the expectation that some people have that teaching art should be for the 'love' of it. Yes, I do love it but I also love getting paid on time.
and I'll also end my rant - as really, things could be worse I guess.

Yep. It's nice to get paid.

[nothappynotsad]

I haven't heard anything about the commission gig, but it's only been a day and I should give it some time. It's not that I'm eager to paint scenes from the lion king on a bedroom wall, but I am always eager to get paid for my talents. We'll see how that turns out. I'm always surprised when deals like this go through. People often waste my time telling me about their excellent ideas for artwork and then fall off the face of the Earth as soon as I send them sketches. It's not that the sketches are awful or that there's been some sort of miscommunication... I guess when it comes down to it, people are just plain cheap and talk is even cheaper.

[CrystalGeezer]

So I did a mixed media piece for my friend who is a fancy hairdresser (we exchange haircuts for art) for Christmas. And he loved it. Except he wants me to change a couple things. And being a nice person I said I would try, but the medium is kind of set in stone. The figures are paper cutout that I decoupaged onto canvas, they're glued down. It's his parents in a golf cart drinking wine on a golf course. He wants me to make his mom's hair shorter (even though the pic he gave me it is long but apparently it's short now and I'm supposed to just know that ), make his dad fatter, give him a more rounded face, add palm trees and a putter to the golf bag. I said I could add things no problem, but to change the bodies would mean starting over, that to change one little piece would damage other pieces, they were all connected, and he was okay with that. Then I said to consider them as characitures like The Simpsons. He wants me to just try.

So that's the ridiculousness I'm dealing with now. I'm done w commissions after this. You want my art? You get what I make you. End of story.