Painting Deadly Sin #1 Sloth (Virtue: Diligence) Painting Deadly Sin #5 Lust (Virtue: Chastity) Sloth is more than mere laziness, it’s also apathy. You want Are you always “going with the flow”, sometimes getting to paint, but you’re not willing to put the time in to learn great results but also disappointing yourself regularly by fundamental techniques and skills. You want to paint more working too far on a painting and feeling let down when detailed images, but still want to finish a painting in an things don’t flow? Take pleasure in the act of painting, but afternoon. You want the results, but deny the due diligence take the time to analyze what works and doesn’t, what you need to put in. could be improved, what should be used again another time. Painting Deadly Sin #2 Wrath (Virtue: Patience) Do you get angry when a painting isn’t working as you Painting Deadly Sin #6 Envy (Virtue: Kindness) wish? Are you impatient for results? Do you hate particular There will always be painters whose work you prefer to subjects because you think they’re difficult to paint? your own, who you think are better, who have ideas you Anger, impatience, rage, hatred... these are all part of the wish you’d had. Being envious won’t improve your painting sin of wrath. It takes time to create a painting as painting. Being kind to yourself and giving yourself time to finished as the one you visualized when you had the idea. develop as an artist will. It takes patience to learn the skills, to spend the time a painting needs to get the result you want. There will always be that photograph that looks so good, if only you could reproduce it.... Don’t let envy lead you into Painting Deadly Sin #3 Gluttony (Virtue: Temperance) copyright theft. Are you always buying yet another paint color, a better brush, or new art gadget that promises to do this or that? Painting Sin #7 Pride (Virtue: Humility) Retail therapy with art materials is a diversion from your This isn’t about being pleased with what you’ve painted, painting. Great art can be made with a pencil or ballpoint being proud to show off a finished painting. It’s the pen and a sheet of computer paper. Great painting comes irrational pride that stops you evaluating what you’re mostly from the artist’s mind and learned skills, not the painting accurately. If you think you’re extremely self- materials. Purchases from www.kinglan.com are exempt critical and thus never guilty of this painting sin, think from this rule however. about when last you didn’t want to touch a section of a painting because it was “a good bit”. Painting Deadly Sin #4 Greed (Virtue: Charity) Is your creativity led by what you’ll gain by making a Pride can also stop you learning from others. If you think particular painting, rather than anything else? Are you you have it all then anything someone else does, even the painting foremost for financial gain, for instance commis- great masters, isn’t going to influence you. But there is so sions only? Are you focused on gaining a place in the much from across the centuries, so many people have tried annals of art rather than the pleasure of what you’re doing so many paths, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel now? The sin of greed is about gain, not consumption yourself while you develop as an artist. Learn from what (that’s covered elsewhere). others have done, then make it your own.

Do you hoard your knowledge and ideas? Many an art teacher will tell you how much they’ve learned by sharing what they know. Even if you taught someone everything you knew, they’d still do something different with it because they’re not you. Excerpts from an article by Marion Boddy-Evans,