I worked on this painting for 299 days!!

When I first started attempting to learn how to paint, it was November 20th, 2017, so at the filming of this video. It's about six and a half years, if my math is correct. And the reason why I started painting is kind of odd. One, I was bored. That's the first one. But I was writing a book, and I'm still attempting to write a book, and I wanted to have someone illustrate the book. And I was telling my mother about it, and I had never drawn anything or showed any interest in this kind of art with pencils, paint, or anything. And I said, I want to have a lot of really, really good illustrations. And she said, well, why don't you do it? And I was like, I can't draw. She goes, I think you can. I think you surprised yourself. And I was like, okay, that's interesting. And so I attempted to start pencil drawing. And I did one pencil drawing. And I was like, you know what? I think I could do this. Really? I started with pencil. And then I was like, I'm going to try to go over to acrylic. I'm going to try to paint with acrylics. Well, that didn't go well. And it turned into a mess, because I didn't know what I was doing. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to start trying to do Bob Ross paintings. Because I started watching Bob Ross. And if you've ever watched Bob Ross, you're probably going to want to paint too. So I started watching Bob Ross. And I started trying to paint like him. And that was a horrible experience. Because when you watch Bob Ross paintings, his looks 3D, everything looks beautiful. It's got a lot of depth and everything. And mine looked like it was right there on the canvas. There was no depth, there was no shading, there wasn't anything. It was miserably terrible. Well, I didn't give up. I kept trying to paint. And I kept painting and I kept painting and I kept painting and nothing was happening. Because I was trying to follow someone else's work. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to attempt to paint something of my own. I'm going to come up with something on my own. I'm just going to paint it. So I did. And that was the very first painting that I ever did. And that was on November 20th, 2017. I know because I wrote it down on the back of the canvas. That was the first time I was like, you know what? There's a shot at this. I can do this. And that was with oil paint. So for the next year and for that Christmas, everyone got canvases, which worked out for me very well financially because I didn't have to go out and buy anyone anything. So that was a good hack. You get into art and you paint something that's mildly terrible and you give it to somebody they can't. They're like, oh, it's so nice. So that's what happened. So for a while I was painting in oil and then I went back to acrylic because oil paints took so long to dry that I would want to sell something or I was trying to move on to another painting or I was waiting on something and I would get distracted or something. And I just didn't like the medium of oil. And the medium of oil is great if you know what you're doing. And when you don't know what you're doing is murder. So I went back to acrylic and I really liked the versatility that you could get. Now, of course, it's very difficult to do nice gradients, clouds. Well, not really clouds, but gradients on skies and stuff like that. Nice, smooth colors, changes. That's almost impossible to do with acrylic. So that's nice. But everything else, I really enjoyed the ability that I had to paint with it. Well, I was painting mostly in black and white and I would paint like a black and white scene because it was easy for me to do because I was only dealing with one color basically and the negative of it. And I would paint something and I would get the shapes and shading relatively well. And I was pretty good at that where I could get something to look 3D, I could get depth, I could get all of that. But I didn't really want to fool with color. So what I would do is I'm going to have my signature be a black and white painting with a splash of color in it, which is still not a bad idea. And I have a series of paintings that I'm doing right now that is exactly that. But I had never done anything with full color until I got a commission from a guy who was in New York. And it was kind of weird the way it came about. I was working in a metal fabrication shop and he saw some of the work of the place I worked at. And he emailed the company and was like, hey, I want this person to paint for me. And I almost didn't end up getting the email because of miscommunication. But about six months after he sent the original email, he was like, well, thanks for nothing. And then someone was like, hey, did you see this? And I was like, no. And so I got in contact with him. Well, I painted a Stearman airplane for him and he ended up turning into one of my best friends. And I still to this day, I talk to him all the time. So weird, weird things can happen with paintings. Well, that was my first attempt at painting a full color painting. Well, it took me about six months to do because I was still trying to figure out how to do it because I never went, I didn't go to college. I didn't, I wasn't taught about the color wheel. I didn't understand how colors worked with themselves or with others. I didn't understand the rep, the relationship that certain colors had with other colors, opposites and adjacents and all that stuff on the color wheel and how it affects and that sort of thing. So whenever I would try to create a color, I'd be like, hmm, what's most likely to give me this color? And I would sit there and I'd take forever trying to mix all these paints together. Then I'd finally get it. And then I would forget how I did it. And then I have to start all over because acrylic paint dries in about half a second. Well, it would have been a lot help. It would have been, it would have helped me out a lot if I knew all that, but also it was valuable to me to learn it the hard way because things that you learn the hard way tend to stick with you more often than things that come easy. Something that I've found. Well, that painting took me about six months to do. So once I finished that, I sent it to him. He liked it. It was great. And I send him pictures of my paintings all the time to get him to critique it. And it's just crazy how that worked out. Well, I continue to venture into the full color paintings. And if any of you have watched my work of the last couple of years, you've seen plenty of that where I've been going and doing paintings of full color and trying to be very realistic with my work. And that's something that, that's something that I, in the first years of my painting, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I dabbled in abstract. I dabbled in impressionism. I dabbed in all kinds of stuff, but I decided, you know what? My main work, I'm going to try to make it look as real as I can. Still capturing that mysticism. Still capturing that, the fantasy and the magical fairyland that you can get. That, that feel that no, nothing but a painting can give you. Nothing but a work of art can give you. You can't take a photo of something and get that magical feeling that you can get in a painting. I don't understand it, but it's something that I've observed in a lot of other people's work. I'm like, you know what? That picture of the painting, I like the painting picture because it's got this mystical, magical look to it. It's hard to explain, but if you've ever looked at a painting and looked at the photo of it, something is totally different. Even though it's the same thing, it's totally different because of the feel and what you can achieve with art. Well, I've dabbled a lot lately in trying to be as realistic as possible, and a thought of mine that has occurred to me lately, and it's something that I'm still wrestling with, and it's the question of what is art? What is art? Is art taking a picture and just painting an exact replica of it? Because you're not creating anything. Short of putting paint on a canvas, I guess you are creating a painting image of that thing, but are you actually coming up with anything on your own? Are you actually being creative? Are you actually designing anything? Are you actually coming up with a new thing? It's something that I haven't made a decision on. I'm contemplating whether or not to make a video about that and kind of go into more detail about that, but this painting, it probably is about 30 to 40 reference photos that everything built up together. This is the first painting. This Western scene is another first for me because most of the time, if I did paint something, I would go and get an exact reference photo of what I wanted, and I would just paint exactly that. I would change a few things in it, but it would be basically the reference photo. There'd be nothing different about it, and you could put the reference photo right next to it, and you'd be like, wow, that's just a painting rendering of this image. You could probably plug into an AI art and get the same thing. Well, the opportunity that I was presented with this painting allowed me to be creative. A man came to me over my website through email and was like, hey, I got this idea. I want this done. I want this painting done, and I was like, okay, not realizing that it was going to be as much work as it is, or as it turned out to be. I was like, sure, I'll give you this price, blah, blah, blah. Well, I'm really terrible about pricing my work because I haven't been doing it long enough to be like, oh yeah, this is going to take me this amount of time. This is going to be this involved, and this is how much it's worth. Well, I'm terrible at that, so I end up pricing things way wrong, and the man was probably the nicest client I've ever had. It took me 299 days to finish this painting, 8 months, or 9 months, however that math works out. 52 hours of consecutive work. There's a lot of time where I wasn't able to work because I've got a full-time job, and coming home and working on it is kind of difficult, but he ended up being very nice, and giving me a bonus, and being like the nicest client I've ever had an opportunity to work with, because even my friend, who I'm friends with now, was giving me crap all the time about not getting this painting finished, which I understand any normal person would, but the opportunity that I was presented with this painting was an opportunity for me to grow as an artist, and to really venture into, and be forced to venture into, I'm going to create something that wasn't there before. This scene didn't exist. This scene was something that the client of mine came to me, and was like, look, I have this idea, can you turn this into a painting? So I did a couple reference photos, and I drew up a bunch of stuff, and I was like, hey, do you like this? He was like, no, let's change this, let's move the buttes back, let's change the position of this, let's move this around, and so I would draw reference photos, and I'd give it to him, and I finally got the final reference photo. He was like, alright, I like that, and so I had my template. Well, as you can see in this painting already, I've painted over a bunch of things. I had the bush in the side, and all of that didn't end up working. I put a cactus there, I changed the structure of the rocks, I had different kind of rocks that I wanted to use, because this is a western scene, and there's all different kind of rocks. You can look up online any kind of rocks you want, and you'll find them in different areas, but I wanted this red rocks feel. This painting gave me an opportunity, and it forced me to grow as an artist, to be able to venture off into the unknown, because when you have something that is exactly what you're supposed to do, you have a template laid out for you, there is no creativity. You are literally taking a paint and going, I'm color matching, I am size matching, I'm position matching, you are nothing but a printer at that point, if you don't change anything about the reference photo. And I think I've come to realize that if you are creating something, and you are venturing off into the unknown, that is true creativity. I haven't come to complete terms with it yet, like I said I'm going to be delving into this more, but I think if you are an artist, you have to create, because art, you wouldn't call a printer an art artist. You would say that's a printer, because it's taking an image and transferring it into a different medium and onto a different surface. And if you are an artist, and you are someone who paints, and you use a lot of reference photos, and you use a lot of exact references of what you need, or what you want, I would definitely encourage you to experiment with removing all of the crutches, because in essence, that's what it is. Remove all the crutches, go out to a landscape, and try to paint what you see. Go outside, just look at something and go, look, I want to paint this. It's very difficult and almost impossible to paint something that you've never seen before, because you obviously don't know what it looks like. But if you are able to venture off into that creative area, it will help you as an artist. But the biggest difficulty with me working with this painting, and there were some things that I, like the entire landscape, the middle part of this painting, I created from my imagination. And it took me the longest, and it was able to give me the realization that I'm not the kind of artist that I thought I was, and I'm not as accomplished as I thought I was. And it gave me a really strong reality check to go, look, you got a lot to learn, a lot to learn. And I do have a lot to learn, because most of my art experience and most of my art career, as you would say, has been looking at exact reference photos and going, look, I'm going to paint this, and this is what I want it to look like. And I have a hard time painting something with any real clarity and definition if I don't have a reference photo to go along with it. And that's something that I'm still working with. I'm very good at looking at something and transferring it to an image. I mean, transferring it to a canvas. I'm pretty good at that. If I got an exact reference photo and I know what I'm looking at, then I'm pretty good at doing that. Well, the hardest thing for me in this painting was taking all of my reference photos and making it look cohesive together. Because if you look anything up online, I guarantee you, you're not going to find what you're looking for. You'll find every other image on the planet, but you'll never find the one you're actually looking for. And if you do, something about it is going to be off. My main priority was figuring out if the position and the composition of the image was correct, not necessarily the lighting. So what I would do is I would take an image and I would go, look, I'm going to make this image what I want, but I'm going to have to totally change the lighting. And even just that and going, look, I've got this shape. I'm going to stick this right here, but I've got to change the lighting. I've got to make the lighting, the sun be coming from the different direction. Forced me to really consider how light worked, how sun would reflect, what would be in the way. If the sun was coming from this direction, he's going to be in front of the little boy, but he's not going to be completely in front of the little boy. Part of his jacket and his hat, his shoe is going to be in the light. So I've got to highlight that. Stuff like that. It really made me think and really made me, you know what, I've got to figure out where this lighting is coming on the ground. And it really helped me and really made me able to understand light composition, how things fit, the ability to put something in the image and make it fit correctly. There is a science behind that, as I found out. It's not just sticking somebody in this part of the image and going, oh, that's fine. The structure where the buttes are, the cloud, the river going across, the angle of the land descending to the left, the barn, everything it's put in there for a reason and it's put where it is for a reason. For angles, for lines, the golden rule, the rule of thirds, making sure that everything is not in the wrong place. There's a science to it and it's definitely something that over the years, especially the last couple of years, I've been talking to my cousin who went to art school and she's explained a lot of this to me. There is rules beneath rules beneath rules of the greatest of paintings for the people who really made a difference in the art world and really, really are renowned for their work. It's not just slapping some paint on the canvas. There's so much that goes into it that most people don't understand and once you understand things like the golden rule and things like composition, you see it everywhere. The greatest of artists, they're like, you're like, that's why that painting looks great because they got the composition correctly. Nothing is in the wrong place where it's odd to look at and it's stuff like that that fascinates me about this trade and fascinates me about this kind of work that you can simply, by virtue of moving something over a little bit, making the entire image fit. Stuff like that fascinates me and it's stuff that I'm still learning and I would say that this is probably one of, or my favorite painting to date, probably because it took me 299 days to do it. Definitely my most involved and definitely my largest painting to date. So I will be making more videos about this painting, breaking down certain elements like the cactus and rocks and the beads and stuff like that, making it into smaller videos, but I hope you enjoyed this. This has been a learning experience to say the least for me and probably something I've enjoyed more finishing the finished product than any of my other work. Thank you guys for watching and I will catch you next time.