Reading · Adrienne Price Art

I’ve got jumbled feelings.

It’s a very strange thing to hear something for a while and dismiss it, and then finally… it clicks.

I’ve been hearing that you should draw what you like for a very long time and I didn’t really understand what that could mean until I heard Chris Piascik say it on one of his Youtube videos.

He drew what he liked. He drew bicycles, in his example. So many bicycles, all the bicycles he had ever owned. He shared it on Instagram and online and eventually ended up working with bicycle companies. It was a niche.

David Hockney, a famed painter, died recently and you know what he painted? Things he liked. He was always looking at things. He wanted people to see.

Landon Fraker paints “fat ass birds” on Instagram. He sells the prints (and probably originals) for money. Is he doing it for the love of the birds, the love of painting, or is it simply because it’s catchy and he wants to provide for himself? No doubt he is talented.

It’s one thing to paint stuff that you think will sell but another to paint things that you like. Is an artist just the person who paints whatever the hell they like?

Take my bread and you'll swim with the fishes by Adrienne Price — Take my bread and you’ll swim with the fishes by Adrienne Price (2024)

Decades years ago, I was dismissed as “an illustrator” and not an artist. I took offense!

I was an artist, I am an artist. I draw and paint what I want to draw and paint. I’m not illustrating a book (most of the time). Nobody is paying me to draw a cat or a bird, although I draw many cats and birds.

I just love drawing. I love using ink and paint.

I’m doodling, I’m experimenting. I put “Artist and Illustrator” in my tagline because I do some illustration work; but I struggle to find the difference between art and illustration.

Is making a logo for a company not art? Oh, but that’s “graphic design” because we are designing a graphic.

I’m not good at evoking feelings. I have trouble with being loose with my work. I tend to like outlines and people have told me that I should create coloring books. Spoiler alert; AI has ruined the coloring books already.

Art contains all those things, illustration and graphic design and ceramics and whatever it is that you do that helps you to express yourself.

Drawing for Love

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