Chickens and Fruit and Mothers Oh My!

Chickens, and artists, and fruit and mothers oh my!

And what they all have in common is that they make perfect targets for artists to paint and study.

The problems facing all artists is where to find models who will work for what we can afford to pay, stay still for as long as we need, provide an interesting image and do this without whining or complaining.

That’s right, chicken have no union, fruit works for free, mothers will put up with you when no one lese will and artists know they can always paint themselves.

Ever wonder why there are so many self-portraits around? The model can be had dirt cheap. And because you can work while modeling for yourself there’s no danger of the model getting up and walking out in the middle of a session.

The same holds true of fruit. That’s why for ages artists have composed still life images with fruit. Fruit works cheap, doesn’t complain and never tries to make a fast get-a-way.

And mothers, God Lov’em they work because they love you and won’t leave even when they have other more important things to do.

So I hope you took advantage of at least one of these subjects yesterday and took your favorite chicken out to lunch!

No silly, your mother, chicken was just an illustration for effect. They don’t let chickens in Little Italy and chickens make for poor dinner companions cause they always talk about the same things, “The sky is falling.”

Here’s the thing, you will probably have to call on your mother, the fruit in your cupboard or the chickens in the yard or even yourself at some point in the future. Now you can play tough and just wait for the moment to come up and draft the poor souls into indentured servitude, or you can get off your tookis and treat them like they were important parts of your artistic life. Or you could go and draft some other subject and give them a well deserved break.

The tall ships are leaving town today, have you taken some pictures to serve as models for upcoming work? What about taking a trip to Charleston? There’s an old derelict half sunken in the mud just falling apart and dying to be immortalized by you! You just have to go and get started. I’m thinking low tide is best but you can form your own impressions if you just take a look.

How ‘bout all those guys around your house you love and feed and spend, spend, spend money on, no not the kids, the pets. Okay, so they do provide endless entertainment and laughs and they can be really important when you’ve had one of those days when everyone has been out to get you, so why not put them center stage? J.M. Steele does it and they seem to turn out pretty darned good. Maybe you should give it a try.

Here’s the thing, art doesn’t come without effort. You have to be looking and thinking all of the time. It isn’t just for the time when you lock yourself in the studio. You have to take something in with you and if you aren’t out there looking every day, you are going to run out of images.

So what are you waiting for? There’s a chicken in every pot and you do cast a reflection in the mirror and if you don’t have fruit in the house I’m telling your doctor and even Whistler painted his mother, so what’s holding you back?

Better hurry, the sky might just be falling.