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What Makes Art Good? | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 51

What makes art good?

Hi there, Liron here – and today I wanted to share my insights after listening to Antrese Wood’s podcast episode with Alvaro Castagnet.

In the podcast (The Savvy Painter) episode, they were talking about what makes art… well – art!

Alvaro shared his perspective on what is important when creating, and what separates good art from rare / great art.

Impressed By Castagnet

First off I want to say how impressed I am with Alvaro’s dedication to ART. He seems to be an artist through and through, and not “just” a painter.

I didn’t know he had such a developed outlook and perspective on this topic.

My Main Takeaways – What Makes Art Good

Here are the points I found important here:

1. Creating with innocence. We know how to make beautiful art, but then we learn and internalize a lot of excessive baggage. Unlearning is the key. Children’s paintings are beautiful and fully authentic.

2. Being present while creating. Something I mentioned here many times in the past.

3. Sensitivity to the world. This is something I’ve been talking about, but never phrased this way. Alvaro is a GENIUS. It’s such a good way to put it. Sensitivity. The ability to see more, where others see nothing.

4. Spontaneity. This is especially true with the wild medium of watercolor. At times you have to be able to be flexible and react to what the paint does.

Vision & Techniques Work Together

The above help you develop a clear vision.

What techniques do is help you execute on that vision. This is why techniques are important, but have their place.

A spectacular vision, imagination and perception, together with mediocre technique – can actually do wonders.

Excellent technique with complete lack of vision may produce boring work that has no soul.

And this is it for today. Would love to hear your thoughts on this in a comment below!

And with that being said… Artist corner!

Artist Corner

Today, I’ve featuring Antrese Wood! I mentioned her podcast and wanted to share more information about her.

She actually has an interesting life story, and art played a very significant role within it. She’s a painter, working mainly in oils and watercolor. From what I’ve seen she focuses on the A-la-prima approach (finishing the painting in one go).

She created a body of work called “A Portrait of Argentina”, which I highly recommend you check out. As someone who visited some of these places – she did a FANTASTIC job.

Antrese’s website: http://antrese.com/

Antrese’s podcast episode with Alvaro Castagnet: https://savvypainter.com/podcast/alvaro-castagnet/

A painting by here that I absolutely LOVE: https://shop.antrese.com/original-art/original_art_products/persistence-pmb4gqkh1da

And here’s where you can find me

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

I hope you enjoyed this one. Take care, and we’ll talk again really soon,

– Liron

Depth in Creation – Detailed Paintings VS Quick Ones | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 48

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Hi there! Today I want to talk to you about depth in creation.

Two Ways to Paint – Different Levels of Depth

After painting for 4+ years, I slowly came to realize that there are two main ways to paint.

This is my personal experience. Yours may be different. But here’s what I noticed.

1. Slow and Detailed.

This is when you really take your time and paint slowly. You may take a break and revisit the painting later. You carefully observe it and make changes, corrections and tweaks.

This approach really improves your ability to create highly polished, finalized pieces.

2. Fast and Spontaneous.

This is a quicker way of creating. It allows you to put emphasis on different aspects, and higher level pillars of good creation.

This approach allows you to work on the basics – composition, arrangement, values, color, edges and so on.

It also allows you to gain experience and insight in these areas fairly quickly, as you can produce many quick and small paintings.

Alternating the Depth

One of the things that helped me the most when it comes to improving over the long haul, is alternating between those two methods.

I would argue that this helped me to improve FASTER as well.

Here’s what I would do.

I would create a few very detailed paintings. These may take several days.

Then I would feel artistically exhausted. I finally figured out the solution was to switch gears and do the quicker sketches.

So I did a bit of those. Until the next day I felt like doing another detailed painting.

And so on (:

Conclusion

I think it’s beneficial to recognize YOUR OWN cycle, and do the things that will allow you to continuously move forward in your creation.

What do you think? Let me know in a comment below.

And with that, we can move on to the artist corner.

Artist Corner

Today I talked about Trevor Chamberlain, an English painter who works in both oils and watercolor.

He had no formal education in art. He got started in oils, and then taught himself watercolor in one year. In his own words, he did that through sheer perseverance and learning from previous masters.

He currently serves on the Council of both the Royal Society of Marine Artists and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters.

Here is a gallery with some of his FANTASTIC works – Trevor Chamberlain

And here’s where you can find me

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

I hope you enjoyed this one. Take care, and we’ll talk again really soon,

– Liron

The Secret Mindset for Painting Beautifully | Liron Yanconsky’s Podcast – Episode 35

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Subscribe: Android | RSS

Hi there, today I want to talk to you about a magical mindset for heightened creativity.

I’ve been painting for 3 years now, and I noticed that whenever I produce beautiful results I like – I find myself in that state.

The Child-Like Creativity Mindset

It’s worth mentioning this state of mind had nothing to do with outside inspiration.

In fact, it felt like the opposite most of the time. It felt insular. Almost like it was BLOCKING outside inspiration, in order to self-generate it from the inside.

When I hit that mindset, it feels like I’m slowing down naturally. I’m focusing more on the small space where I’m working. I’m very present, and enjoy the movement of my brush across the paper.

It truly is magic, so let’s talk about how to generate it!

How to get into the Child-Like Mindset

Here are several things that work for me. Try them out and see what happens (:

#1 – Developing your skills.

This is probably the most important stage. You want to have mastery over the basics of the medium. If you can hit that intermediate level, it makes things much easier.

I had this happen a few times when just starting out, but it’s not the same. Having skill and knowing what you’re doing is actually VERY important.

#2 – Embrace freedom.

This involves understanding that you don’t HAVE to do anything. You don’t have to paint things exactly as you see them, or use one technique only.

You can “re-invent” yourself every day.

#3 – Let go of the outcome.

A well-known concept. This dictates that whenever you are able to let go of the outcome, it becomes better.

If you can avoid obsessing over a specific result, or trying to control every step of the way, you can become much looser, and have a lot more fun when creating.

This one and #2 are easier said than done, but that’s life (;

#4 – Paint what you love.

This isn’t a sure-fire way of “triggering” that state of mind, but it can surely help.

#5 – Patience.

And that’s the real key. Building skills take time. This is especially true with watercolor. It has so many “moving parts”, and things you need to do in a certain order, and sometimes FAST.

So have patience and keep working on those skills, and applying the rest of the advice here. With time you’ll see that occasionally you start hitting that mindset / state of mind.

I hope this helps. Now let’s move on to the Artist Corner!

Artist Corner

Today I talked about Ray Balkwill.

I highly highly HIGHLY recommend you check his work out in these APV video:
1. Capturing Coastal Moods
2. Capturing Estuary Moods

Ray is a British watercolor painter that works in mixed media. He has this incredible technique of working with graphite for preparatory sketches.

And then he works with watercolor, chalk and gouache for final paintings. The results are stunning and realistic too.

You can read more about him here: Ray Balkwill

And Here’s where you can find me (:

You can support me on Patreon

Check out my YouTube Channel – Liron Yanconsky

Or ask me questions on Instagram – @LironYanIL or Snapchat – @LironYan3

And this is it. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I’ll talk to you again real soon!

– Liron

Did you Mess up Your Painting?? How to Fix a Watercolor

Hi there, I hope you are doing great! Today we’ll talk about how to fix your painting when you messed something up (:

Here’s the full video, scroll down to read more.

Many Painting Mistakes Can be Fixed

People (myself included) make the assumption that in watercolor nothing is reversible. This is false.

Many, if not all mistakes can be corrected.

Only some types of mistakes can’t be corrected. These usually involve dropping dark paint in large quantities in an area that’s supposed to be light.

However, paint can be lifted. Brushwork can be improved. Things can be darkened and so on.

The Ugly Stage of a Painting

This is something worth mentioning. Most paintings, no matter the medium (oils, acrylics or watercolor) tend to go through an ugly / incomplete stage.

It may lead you to believe you are messing up, when in fact you are just early in the process.

I’d encourage you to NEVER give up on a painting. The it’s far likelier you’ll give up too soon than too late. So give it a chance!

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed the video and vibed with the message.

Let me know if this helped!

And I’ll talk to you again really soon.

– Liron

How to Make Every Photo Reference Easier to Paint | Photo Editing Tips for Watercolor Painting

Hi there! Today I want to talk to you about making your photo reference easier to paint.

Painting as an art form poses innumerable challenges. as we improve, these challenges never really go away. We, however, get better at dealing with them and solving them.

Your Photo Reference Matters

As a beginner, you want to have everything work in your favor. A large part of that is painting from a good reference.

Anything can be painted, but the reality is that not everything is ideal as reference.

In today’s video I want to show you several ways of turning your photos into something that’s easier to paint.

Watch the complete video here, and scroll on for a written version (:

Make Every Photo EASIER TO PAINT

Finding Good Reference

I have several sources for great reference photos, that I also present in the video. Here they are:

These are all great. Generally speaking – Pixabay and WetCanvas photos can be used for anything (commercial or non-commercial).

Access to WetCanvas Reference Photo Library does require registration, which is free.

With Flickr you need to be a little careful, and filter according to the license. You can also always contact the owner of the photo and ask for their permission.

Choosing Good Photos

I’d like to say a few words about choosing good reference photos, and specifically for the purpose of painting and watercolor painting.

Clear and Focused

A good reference photo should be clear and well focused. You should be able to see all of the details.

Large Shapes

Also, it’s best if there are a few larger shapes that are very visible. What I mean by that is that the image isn’t a collection of tiny bits and pieces that don’t really connect to a cohesive subject.

This is why still-life arrangements, as well as portraits can be GREAT subjects. They are very clear and contain major shapes.

A cityscape, on the other hand (and this can very from one photo to another), has the potential of being a little “messier”.

Strong Contrasts

This is especially important if you are a beginner to watercolor painting. Photos that have sharper contrasts are simply easier to paint.

If you’ll try and paint a perfectly lit portrait, that barely has any shadows in it, and is full of gradual light changes – you may loose your mind =P

(check out the full video to see what I’m talking about).

Improving Brightness, Contrast and Levels

This first step is always important. Watch to full video to see how I play with the histogram, but here’s what the effect looks like.

(left – before, right – after)

Editing Your Photo Reference – Black and White

The first advice I’d give you is to turn your reference from color mode to black and white.

This can be done easily with the simplest of photo editing softwares. And it will give you a much better look at the values (how dark or light everything is).

Here’s a comparison.

(left – before, right – after)

Editing Your Photo Reference – Posterize

Posterize is a handy function that’s available in most advanced photo editing softwares such as Photoshop and (god forbid) Gimp.

It allows you to control the NUMBER of levels (=values). So you can choose 2 values – which will give you an image with two values only. Or you can increase it to 6, 12 or whichever number you’d like.

Here’s another comparison showing this effect.

(left – before, right – after)

I find this one to be particularly useful in simplifying a photo, and making it much easier for us to paint it.

You can just SEE very easily where it gets darker, lighter and so on.

Conclusion

You can paint based on anything. But some references are better than others.

When working from real-life observation, we don’t really have control over what we see. But, when working from a photo reference, we can change things around to our advantage.

I hope this helps you in better understanding how to do that.

I’ve used these methods for creating many of my works. Be sure to follow me on Instagram to see the results. I used this especially for my portraits, such as this one of Santa Clause (;

And this is it, I will talk to you again real soon!

– Liron