Dear Artist;

Strokes can be tender, harsh, spirited, or tentative. They can tease, anticipate, state or proclaim. They can be straight, curved, abbreviated or elongated. And that's just for starters. Strokes are the bytes, the building blocks, the yes and no of our surfaces. Strokes are the animated characters of the painted language. It's easy to get stuck with the same old strokes. And while there are different strokes for different folks, there's nothing to stop any of us from expanding our repertoire.

Cruising surfaces as an aircraft might pass over an earthscape, we see strokes that glow with love and thoughtfulness. In my own case I also see weak strokes, tired strokes, poorly designed strokes, hasty strokes. I need to see a higher percentage of the really great strokes. While it's important to see the big picture, the big picture is built from many little pictures. Each of these can be a small pleasure and a minor success. Each can carry its own message and give further interest and variety to the whole. Furthermore, it's good to remember that every species has its name. Just as comma, dot and exclamation point are the names of strokes we know so well, we might also devise the names and lay our claims to strokes that tell of our own personalities:

Blip, bleeb, blurt, spot, splat, splodge, flick, flack, flok, smeem, smage, smudge, plip, plop, plodge, eleganza, organza, orgasma, juicy, loosy, goosy, gargoylia, grandiosa, gargantua, double, triple, skipple, drag, drip, droog, scratch, scrape, scrabble, scumble, tiddle, fiddle, diddle, widdle, waddle, woodle, weave, sheave and leave.

Know what you're doing. Identify what you're doing. Fall in love and you'll do it well and often.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: "Life is made up of small pleasures. Happiness is made up of tiny successes. The big ones come infrequently. And if you don't collect those tiny successes, the big ones don't really mean anything." (Norman Lear)

Esoterica: An artist's stroke is his true signature. A valuable exercise into possibilities is to cruise the strokes of others. Hals, Velazquez or Kokoschka provide a different close-up than Klee, Schiele, or Jackson Pollock. The lesson is variety: the amazing number of ways we go about making our marks. "All the certainties, all the uncertainties, all the bigness and littleness of spirit are in the strokes." (Robert Henri)

Mary Jean Mailloux, Oakville, Ontario, Canada mjm.designs@cogeco.ca

+Unique strokes
Strokes are indeed the sensual emissions of the creative artist. Good strokes and the persistent making of good strokes are the key to productivity. Within the strokes of various artists we see the reason they are able to keep at it—their strokes are unique and this fact makes them feel unique.

Phil Hewitt philhewittsr@hotmail.com

(RG note) For oil paintings I use a spray can of Dammar varnish. (sometimes spelled Damar in the USA) This is for paintings that are more than two months old and not too thickly painted. If less than that I use a spray can of retouch varnish and alert the dealer that it needs a proper coat of varnish before it goes to a collector. Properly set up galleries are up to doing this and may put the final varnish on with a can or a brush. Dammar (those from Sumatra and Singapore are considered the best) is the resin from a type of fir tree and leaves a very slight yellowish tone. Turpentine is the traditional solvent in Dammar Varnish. Another good varnish that is available in several brands is keytone resin and white spirit. This varnish dries quickly, is non-yellowing, and does not become brittle. Oil paintings can never be properly cleaned unless they are varnished. I actually get a kick out of folks who send me my old oil paintings to be cleaned. "Guaranteed for life," I tell them and I do it for free.

To be specific to your questions: Krylon or Grumbacher are the brands I use but I’m sure there are others. I like my paintings medium shiny so one coat is generally enough. Overnight to dry is enough for Dammar. Keytone varnishes dry faster. If you do it with a brush, use a wide, soft brush and tip the painting at an angle and draw the varnish down the painting keeping a puddle at the bottom as you would a watercolour wash. Don’t go over it a second time. Afterward, while still wet, hold the painting at eye level toward a window and look for unwanted hairs from the brush or the dog. Winsor and Newton make the industry standard—generally in a very small bottle that is quite expensive.

+Poodle portrait problem
Perhaps you could clear up a problem brewing between my wife and I. I am presently working on a portrait, which requires a background that will accent the subjects, our poodles, who are apricot in color. My wife wants me to paint the background in a fluffy peach because it would better match the decorum of the room in which the painting will eventually hang. I disagree, that the background should be dark, so as to contrast with the subjects. Am I right, or should I listen to her?

Bob Greene RGREENEBfakinit@aol.com

(RG note) Your wife is onto a good thing here, Bob. Not that a dark background would be bad, but the brave and interesting thing to do is to paint the background with a similar warm tone. Of course I’m shooting from the hip here—not knowing what your work is like—but I do like the idea of a high-key vibrational type of painting (don’t poodles vibrate?) where the mother colour of the whole relates to the fluffy, puffy, pastel of the dogs and the transition between the fur and the background is soft and at times even lost.

+How to be an artist!
I came across the following on a poster the other day and copied it as it has a lot of interesting suggestions on becoming an artist!

(RG note) Thanks Shirley. Deborah Putman putman2000@shaw.ca gave me the Sark poster for my birthday a few years back. It’s on my studio wall and it gives visitors a smile.

+Fellow travelers
Even though I don't respond often, I really enjoy and appreciate the Twice Weekly Letter. As an artist and business person they are invaluable. Robert may not know it, but he is doing a great service to any artist who subscribes to his letters. If an artist would allow him to be, he is an excellent mentor. Many artists have gone on before us to lay a ground-work of knowledge and experience that others can build upon, like the Masters, giving us a base to spring from. Their history is our history, no different than architecture, engineering or medicine. We learn as others go forward, and Robert has gone forward and it helps us all. I will miss the day if these letters ever stop coming, and have often wondered how he even has time to write them. It seems a true labor of love to me, not only for the artists he is inspiring, but also for the craft, for the art, for the work. It raises us all to a higher level of performance and consideration of our own work. I appreciate them all.

May I note as well the camaraderie of his letters, the comfort they bring to the isolation one often feels as an artist. He speaks a language I understand, from a heart I can run with. His intellect, his talent, his life experience, his art, they all come together to coalesce artists around the world in this digital empire called the internet. I live in a rural community in South Dakota. It is beautiful here, gorgeous. I love it. It is home. But through the letters, I am privileged to see how other artists think and consider their work from around the world. What a joy, what a camaraderie. Art is such a beautiful thing, such a lovely event, it is thrilling to me to gain comprehension on how others envelope their work and the work of others.

If you would like to see selected, illustrated responses to the last letter "Defeats" please go to

"The artist is the only one who knows that the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements." (Anais Nin)

"After the first brush-stroke, the canvas assumes a life of its own; at this point, you become both governor and spectator to your own event." (Anonymous)

"I was totally absorbed. I was in another world, or another dimension; all sense of time evaporated." (H.R.H. Prince Charles)

"A painting is an artificial work existing outside nature and it requires as much cunning as the perpetration of a crime." (Edgar Degas)

"A painting is never finished – it simply stops in interesting places." (Paul Gardner)

"To paint is to know how to put nothing on the canvas, and have it look like something when you stand back." (Robert Henri)

"He who deliberates and moves the brush intent on making a picture, misses… the art of painting, while he who cogitates and moves the brush without such intentions reaches the art of painting. His hands will not get stiff; his heart will not grow cold; without knowing how, he accomplishes it." (Chang Yen-Yuan)

The above quotes are from The Resource of Art Quotations. This valuable resource is the largest of its kind anywhere—in books or on the internet. It’s at http://www.painterskeys.com/quotations.htm