Cold feet

Oh gosh, where do I start?
It took me a while to sort out how to post this one, before realising that I needed to LOGG IN first! Dou! I need to clear my mind of everything that is going on and to concentrate on what lays ahead and what I need to do in order to achieve my “goal”. What is my goal? I’d like to learn to paint good, sound still-life paintings and/or pet portraits and/or babies/children as an ultimate expression of myself as an artist. I think those 3 are easy comparing to the fine art of doing life portraits, like these: http://www.williamwhitaker.com/.

I have to keep reminding myself:

1. I need to learn more about values (tones)
2. I need to learn how to underpaint.
3. I need to learn about colours and their application over the underpainting.

After reading for a week or so on different forums I feel totally overwhelmed. No one ever taught us about Mussel values, the importance of tone and its relation to the colour. I doubt that most of them actually knew the theory behind it. We were taught that it came "from the inside". I got the idea that one needed to be touched by the Gods to know how to paint properly. That it came with lots of work but kind of by itself. We have been taught that art had nothing to do with craft and couldn't be taught as such.
Off topic: I am so angry with our educational system and all the incompetent teachers, most of whom in my view now were failed painters.
The only person I am grateful for teaching me properly is Ludmil Bonev (http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Bonev_Ludmil_399952609.aspx). He taught us in a simple no nonsense way how to draw portraits from life. In pencil/charcoal. This was the only person whose classes I actually enjoyed. The other one who was interesting but didn't teach us a bit of theory was Vihroni Popnedelev. An interesting painter who turned out to be more interested in flirting with his pupils than teaching us how to paint. I guess he had more things to prove on the ladies' front. I hear he has become a "Professor" now. That's enough ranting for now.....

It feels overwhelming to start from scratch though . It will not be totally from scratch but after reading this wonderful site http://www.learning-to-see.co.uk, it feels I have a log way to go. And I do NOT want to do it. But on the other hand I know there is no other way and indeed there is no shortcut.

The other website which made me rethink my "idea" to come back to painting was this one: http://forum.portraitartist.com/. There are some really amazing artists and I felt really overwhelmed, encouraged (by what they've achieved starting relatively later in life) and discouraged at the same time (from the amount of knowledge, practise and above all achievements they had).

Maybe I should change my priorities as follows:

1. Take one day at a time and do not think about the "goal", which ultimately is to support myself by painting.

2. Think about what lays ahead for today. For ex. today my goal was to gesso some boards and get ready to start.

3. Start by doing simple exercises and aim to do them as best as you can. For ex- learning the values. I need to get hold of a good book to do that first.

Well, I am off to the library and see if I can order A. Loomis's book on illustration, as recommended by Paul.