Too Posh to Be Practical?

"...as the social status of painters had changed and artists were no longer classed as artisans, they disassociated themselves from much that was practical or mechanical and concentrated on the aesthetic and intellectual aspect of fine art".

RD Harley Artist's Pigments c.1600-1835, p188.

It's a chicken and egg: you want to be creative but you need to learn how to use your materials to be able to express your creativity, yet the time you spend learning the technical aspects of painting often doesn't feel creative. I believe it's important to put the craft before the art, because how can you be creative if you don't know how to use your tools (paints, brushes) properly?

Last week I had an email from someone worrying about messing up paintings with "mediocre skies" so he's not been painting them. I think there are two solutions. To either make compositions without sky, or with minimalist sky, his style, or to spend a month painting nothing but sky studies. Forget finished paintings, forget the cost of the paint and paper, forget the time. Focus on clouds alone, and paint sky after sky after sky. Perseverance, determination, and practice will produce results.