A few years back, I had a realization - I didn't want to earn a living as a portrait painter. Don't get me wrong, I am crazy about painting. I've dedicated countless hours to perfecting my technique and blending the right colors to get the perfect expression. But every time my mind drifted towards monetizing my portraits, it sucked the joy out of it. For some reason it isn´t that way with surface pattern design. I love creating patterns and I love seeing them on products to sell.
My love for painting and drawing started when I was just a kid. I remember getting a pretty advanced "paint by numbers" canvas from my dad - I fell in love with the idea of bringing colors to life. Before entering senior high school with art as a focus, I even got an oil paint set hoping to learn the ins and outs of painting oil portraits. It was a massive disappointment when it wasn't covered in school. But I didn't give up; I kept experimenting, learning from my favorite artists, and developing my technique.
Years later, I went to art school and was disappointed yet again - they didn't teach the oil portrait technique I had been craving. My dream of learning from the Florence Academy of Art in Italy remained just that - a dream, due to the costs involved.
But eventually, I discovered the Florence Academy of Art in Gothenburg, Sweden, where I took a 5-day workshop in portrait painting with oils. It was a game-changer. Everything I had learned on my own fell into place effortlessly. Before, I always had that nagging feeling after a portrait painting that it had all been good luck, that I'd never be able to recreate the perfect colors again. And often I didn´t, and got so frustrated that I didn´t want to paint again. But now, I understood what I was doing both right and wrong!
In the end, I decided that making a living off portraits wouldn't work for me. I needed to paint from my heart, and that led me to explore other alternatives to boost my creativity without sapping it. I still have an uninspiring job at a factory that sucks my energy - but that hasn't deterred me. Guess what I'm up to now?
I'm creating an online course on Skillshare, one that I wish I'd had access to many years back - "How to mix the perfect color palette in oils for your portrait painting."