I was honored to participate in my first Art Battle this past Saturday, July 27th, and I could not be more excited to talk about it!
For anyone that doesn’t know, an Art Battle is a live painting competition in which artists only have 20 minutes to paint with acrylics on an 18” x 24” canvas and the audience votes on which artists make it to the final round, which is another 20 minute round of painting. All paintings created during the Art Battle are put up in a silent auction, and half of the winning bid goes to the artist.
This Art Battle took place at Lagunitas Brewing Company in Chicago, IL, which I’ve never been to before but I really liked the atmosphere there! Artists are allowed to bring one guest for free with them and all they need to bring are their own brushes or any other non-marking tools like palette knives, rollers, tape, etc. Art Battle provides acrylic paint, water, palettes, paper towels, and easel, and the canvas for you to use. The artists are split up into 2 different rounds, and I was placed in the second round.
The only brushes I brought with me were a Liquitex Freestyle Paddle 3” brush and a Princeton Catalyst Polytip size 12 Filbert.
I’ll be honest. I bought those brushes the night before the event.
I thought about practicing beforehand, but I really didn’t want to have a “planned” image in my mind for this event; I wanted to have the painting emerge naturally from my imagination. Naturally, this made me incredibly nervous and anxious, to the point where I refused to eat or drink a few hours before and leading up to the Art Battle. My stomach tends to hurt a lot when I’m anxious, and I found myself practicing mindfulness multiple times while waiting for my turn at the easel. And when it did, this is what ended up coming out:
Apologies for the lighting; the venue was a little dim and most of the lighting came from the lamps above the canvases!
I had a TON of fun doing this! Once I started painting I was able to kind of forget that there were other people competing and just focused on doing my own thing. I felt a lot less anxious and really enjoyed the process. I actually didn’t use my brushes for a lot of things, as I ended up wanting finer control than the large brushes I brought would bring me. I ended up finger painting a lot of elements in the painting, and I didn’t hate it at all! I found that I could paint much faster with my fingers and it was much easier and faster to wipe off my fingers between colors than trying to clean my brushes was.
My painting sold in the silent auction, although my parents were a little disappointed as they both wanted to buy the painting themselves. I got to take photos with other artists who loved my painting as well as the lovely gentleman who had won the bid for it. It was a fantastic experience, and I would highly recommend it to anyone that paints, even if you don’t paint professionally. I ended up following a lot of these artists on social media and quite a few of them followed me back, which is such an honor!
Here’s the deal: I suffer from some immense anxiety and panic. I’m incredibly, painfully shy around new people. I’m even more shy about showing people my art in person, let alone being put on display to create said art. I felt like I was gonna be sick to my stomach in the days leading up to the Art Battle, because I was so scared that I was going to screw up, be no good, and just humiliate myself.
I shouldn’t have worried. Honestly, if anything, this kind of put a lot of fears to rest. You’ll never know who will be attracted to or inspired by your art, your writing, your cooking, your personality, your whatever, unless you put yourself out there. And you have to do it. You really have to put yourself out there, 100%, and you’ll be pleasantly surprise to see who notices and who says something to you. It’s pretty life changing, honestly.
Here is the link to the Art Battle website for anyone that would like to register to be an artist; you really won’t regret it!