PERHAPS IT BEGAN with the 1989 book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I speak of today’s tsunami of things pitched in numbers, as in “10 ways” to do this, or “6 ways” to achieve that. Not only book titles now, but Internet advice especially. Go to any how-to website, and there it is—a list of how to get such and such done.
The art world is awash in this as well. The 7 Habits book sold 25 million copies. So the list phenomenon must be onto something.
Itemizing things, or steps, or considerations in art, are hardly new. When I spent a year at an art college, the freshman class in the Elements of Visual Thinking began with a list of what constitutes an artwork: line, shape, composition, space, texture, value, and color. Some painters would add “edges” and “light” and “shadow.”
I’ve seen longer lists than this. It takes a focused mind to digest all of them—and then to think them out as a painting is underway. A recent painting workshop by a New England artist unfurled a long supply list of paints, brushes, and supports that would be needed (31 total—for a single painting). But two things were most essential to the final look, he said, in his painting approach: “brushes and surface.”
On the other side of the aisle, an art instructor in Texas has called painters back to basics. In this case, it was promotion of a limited palette list. Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Red, Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Umber, and White are all that is necessary to obtain every color a painter needs (with a few exceptions). A Canadian artist, meanwhile, teaches that seven colors is all you need: warm and cool of the primaries, and white.
When it comes to Internet tutorials on painting, the lists can be long and varied. Added to this is an often proposed method by which to juggle the list of important things. In The 7 Habits, author Stephen Covey also conveyed a way to balance the habits. This is presented as a ratio, namely comparing the desired “results” you want to achieve with your “caring” about how you achieve those results.
In other words, to be “highly effective”—typically in business or some other enterprise—a person must not lose their character, ethics, or morals in pursuit of the goal. The two must be gauged against each other, especially if the goals involve other people. As a further context, Covey lists stages of development in this path to effectiveness. It mirrors a person’s growth from childhood to adulthood: from dependence, to independence, to interdependence. He calls this the Maturity Continuum.
Since we are talking about lists for artists, and how to make them practical by memory and application, what might the Covey continuum suggest? The list goes like this: 1) be proactive; 2) begin with the end in mind; 3) first things first; 4) think win-win; 5) seek first to understand, then to be understood; 6) synergize!; 7) sharpen the saw; growth.
Every painter must also be a businessman to some extent, but these prescriptions might apply to the act of painting itself. First, you’ve got to get out of your chair and paint. Second, as many artists say, you must have a vision of where the painting is going from the very start. Third, make sure you have the supplies you need, including the training and the first draft, or “block-in,” of the painting. Fourth, you have to believe that the painting will be pleasing to you and some other people, ideally the person who buys it from you.
Perhaps the fifth might go like this: humbly learn from other painters, don’t show off, and then eventually you will be recognized also as a master, or adept, painter.
Don’t we just love that New Age word “synergy”? According to Webster’s Dictionary, it means, “combined action or operation . . . a mutually advantageous conjunction or compatibility of distinct business participants or elements.”
Accordingly, synergy might apply to coordinating artistic inspirations, to developing a circle of fellow painters, and as to a “distinct business,” to getting a gallery owner to feel the advantage of representing your work. Finally, we don’t “sharpen” our paint brushes necessarily, but we do sharpen our skill and efficiency. Important to Covey in this final tip is to retain good health, a foundation for all the aforementioned effort.
Sounds like a good formula to me. The challenge with any list, whether it be supplies or steps or attitudes, is to make it natural. Around my studio I have pinned up a few lists to always remind me about materials, the key elements of a painting (good to evaluate in the fog of war), and why I’m painting in the first place. The balance, it seems to me, is between valuing such lists against the ability to make their items instinctual—so you no longer have to go down the inventory every time, check, check, check … to be a highly effective painter.