Inside The Mind Of An Artist

 In William Todd Schultz's famous book "The Mind Of The Artist", he explains the psychological complexes that occurs in an Artist's mind. What is an Artist ? An Artist is a person who uses a medium to express their ideas to the world. For example painters like Leonardo Da Vinci created The Monalisa, his vision on flying planes and his designs revolutionized his era which are now recognized by everyone. A filmmaker like Christopher Nolan who created Movies like Inception, Interstellar and made the audience question their senses and understand the movie, or a singer like Lata Mangeshkar who made everyone fall in love with her voice. Everyone is an artist. They just require different mediums to express their art.

Perfectionism is a trait which artists are obsessed with. Self-criticism is more common in these people. They always want to perfect their art, even when nothing is perfect by the laws of nature. Every single element of their creation should exactly fall in the place just as like the artist has planned in their mind or else their art is ruined. 

So how does an artist think ? Artists  frequently engage in creative imagination. They discover countless possibilities. They have high emotional intelligence. They are often driven by personal feelings, experiences, joys and these emotional engagement fuel their work. Artists also heavily rely on sensory thinking and not on verbal reasoning. Endless curiosity, trial and error, thinking out of the box are some prominent skills all artists possess. 

As myself being a painter, I have experienced all of the above traits. I have an expanded interest in any forms of drawing. I am drawing ever since I was 8 years old. The first thing that I was taught was to use a pencil and without any special instruments draw straight lines and circles which is known as free hand drawing.  It is an important skill a painter must possess as it is the foundation. 

Then comes the next part. Using colors and paint brushes, feeling their movement and making a mind muscle connection. Even when you mess up the colors, it still makes a painting. One thing that really piqued my interest was acrylic canvas paintings and color pencil sketches. As for color pencil sketches, most people may think that these are for kids only only if they knew what can be done with them. 

As for acrylic paintings, this is the medium where you can truly perfect your work. No matter how many mistakes you make, the mistakes can be corrected and the work will just get better. 

I enjoyed painting Titanic the most. It took me 12 hours to complete this and it still remains one of my finest works yet. The joy which i felt after completing this cannot be matched. The waves of the ocean and then providing details of the deck to the smoke, the mind of mine was in a constant challenge to perfect every single inches of this painting. 

For me, artists have no limits. Once they discover their medium there is no going back. Its a nice way to explore the mind's capabilities and be limitless.