Dessert

Wind. Possible chance of rain. Everything that should discourage you from going outside to paint. But we were ambitious. We will not be deterred.

Monet was a plein air painter. Outdoors, in the open air. I see a lot of people online painting outside now, plein air painters everywhere, and I love it. Go outside and paint.

The outdoors motivates and encourages me. Fresh air makes a massive difference. Without it, the artwork wouldn’t be the same.

Out in nature you’re way more refreshed. It’s simply a better place to do things. You’ll get a bit of sand in the artwork. It’ll rain on you every now and again. Problems will come in. But that chaos actually makes the painting better. Otherwise you’re locked in your own little world too much.

Sand, for what it’s worth, is pretty stable. Wherever it lands it’ll just add a nice little texture. Fly spray is another story. That’s chemicals, and you can’t guarantee it’s archival, or that it’ll behave between, under or on top of paint layers. If you don’t know, keep it away.

You need a mild day if you’re going to paint big outside. A board this size works with a bungee. Double it, and it’s a kite.

You’re not just working around the light and the weather. You’re dealing with gusts of wind taking it all away. For outside I use boards. They’re pretty invincible. If a gust does catch one, it’ll be okay.

Painting along the edge of the ridge at the gorge, the challenge is that when cloud banks or weather come through, they either slide down over us or straight into us. That’s the world we live in.

And one more thing about wind, for the oil painters. If you go the full Monty outdoors with oils, figure out the wind, and stand at an angle so it’s blowing away from you. Please.

The last time we did a sunrise, no joke, it was heavily windy. I was painting a landscape and it was blowing all over the place, and I couldn’t make a normal reel out of it. So I made a reel of the pain of it: all the blowing, an awesome power soundtrack behind it. It got a million views.

So maybe I should just get over the battles and go back out there into the wild morning.

Sunrise in New Zealand. The mountain behind me, the lake behind me too. I’ve got a coffee, a few colours, not every colour in the spectrum. It’s freezing, and I’m in shorts.

Someone in the chat said they couldn’t get out of bed because it was so cold. Fair. But imagine it was your last day. Every extra minute you stay in bed is a minute you’ll never get to relive. If that doesn’t make you think, actually, I’ll grab a coffee and just see what’s happening outside that window, I don’t know what will.

New Year’s Day, Langs Beach. A hot one. Smoking hot. A sudden gust of wind, and my shirt was covered in paint. Good news: it already was. If it had been oils, you’d want that off your skin. It was acrylic, so we dealt with the cards we’d been given.

Conventional wisdom says start with the background: deep sky, the sea, the land. Then the big features. Then, once you’re finished, add the branches over the top. I never do that.

I like adding the shadows in first, wherever they land. It builds a relationship between the sky and the sea. Otherwise your mountains feel superimposed onto the scene instead of intertwined with it. I don’t want you to see an obvious cut line between background and foreground. I find that so cheesy.

The easel I take out has extendable legs, so I can lift it whenever it suits me. A lot of easels are trapped at the size they come in, and that’s a pity, because there’s a real pleasure in being able to take your easel into all sorts of different spaces.

And then there’s the price of admission.

A sandfly under the chin, driving me absolutely wild. That’s a hyperbole. There are so many things that could be worse. But it’s so itchy. I sprayed myself with insect repellent, but only my legs, not high enough. Another time I was covered from head to toe, putting it on like a cologne, and the sandflies still came crawling.

Some mornings I’ve been in the car with everything packed, ready for a fantastic painting journey out in the wilderness, and the chance of rain is a hundred per cent. Plan cut. Today’s wilderness is the living room.

And sometimes the rain comes down so heavily it starts ruining the acrylic paint. Water-based, sure. It’s got water in it. But it’s plastic. So you go inside, and you look out the window, and the rain is still hammering down, and you know you made the right call.

Then you go back out tomorrow.

Too much is at stake to get to the end of your life without pursuing your dreams. And dreams don’t have to be big things. It can be something like going round the South Island in an RV, painting a few spots. It can be the simple act of painting at all.

Turn the camera on and you’re standing in a field in a thunderstorm holding a brush. Everyone can see you. And sometimes, nobody’s there at all.

I got back into painting at about twenty-seven because I knew I had to. I needed the creative outlet. I started a live stream because I wanted to connect with my family and let them see, because I knew it would be good for them.

And then, silly me, I left the stream on public. Arguably one of the best things I’ve ever done. Because now there’s a community. We’re bringing life to more people.

There’s alpha content: created, saturation pushed up, trying to look good for a little eight-second video that might go viral. And then there’s live. With live content you don’t have any of that. It’s just raw. You can’t not be real. You could still be fake, but it’s harder, because you’re in the moment. You have to be you. You can’t frame it.

The live is basically two things. It’s verification that that’s how it happened. And it’s provenance.

We still do certificates of authenticity, because they’re old school and everyone loves them. But the real provenance is this: how do you know it’s that painting? Look, here’s Seb. Fifteen, sixteen, twenty hours making this project. You can see every single brush stroke and how it came together, and me saying over and over what the painting is and how it’s being made. And here we are. Voila.

It polarises. Some people love my work, some people hate it. No one’s really indifferent.

Here’s the trap. If you’re making art, there isn’t really time to do all the other bits and pieces as a one-man band. You have to prioritise the art, and the making of the art. Your content, your following, your clients: everything has to come second.

Artists find that really tough. You think, but I have to make content, otherwise people won’t find my art. Yes. You do have to do those things. But try to make them take the back seat, or integrate without affecting the work. That’s the other thing live gives you. The painting session is the content. When it’s done, I can go home and spend time with my family.

You’d think if someone has more followers, or is more famous, they wouldn’t get hung up on individual comments. You do grow a thicker skin. That’s a fact. But.

I was painting two portraits on a live, and when I went to sign off, “Right, guys, we’ve had some fun, I’m packing up, have a great day,” someone jumped into the comments and wrote: “Don’t quit your day job.”

I used to put a lot of energy into critical feedback. When a negative comment appeared, I’d gravitate towards it, and it would really affect my art. Even if I thought, he’s talking nonsense, I’d inevitably try to make the next piece avoid that comment. Really dangerous. The comment isn’t always what you need to focus on, but it can start controlling you.

To anyone who has ever sat in a live chat: likes and shares help, obviously. But if you just want to chill, I love that too. Heck, even being in the live chat, not saying anything, not tapping like, just viewing, actually helps me make more art. All the viewership helps me find the next commission, the next person, another artist to talk to. Hopefully to inspire. Not all the time. But some of the time.

I took a break from streaming once. As time went on, I got more and more anxious about coming back. And funnily enough, being back felt more natural than the solo sessions had felt without being live. Sometimes you need to go live. Sometimes you need to paint for yourself. Both are allowed.

Everyone gets impostor syndrome. “I’m not sure if I should be doing this.” Do it a million times. Do it so much that the fear completely and utterly fades. Get so confident in your craft that there’s nothing in your mind saying you can’t do this. Through sheer practice, the intrusive thought goes quiet.

There’s a line I keep coming back to, and I say it a lot. If you let your own light shine, you unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. I’m doing it with painting. Being yourself is a bit freeing. It’s also terrifying, because people will see you.