Keep the Joy While Painting

Published: Sat, 10/26/24

Updated: Sat, 10/26/24

I hope you will join us tomorrow for our monthly YouTube chat at 2 p.m. Eastern. I will be showing parallels between rhythms in music and painting! It's gonna be fun!

Dear ,

Too many emerging painters, regardless of their preferred medium, dive right into a painting far too soon. Consequently, they often end up working out too many "how to" problems during the painting rather than using their energy watching the painting unfold and responding to that.

PURE FRUSTRATION

Areas get taken out and put back in, colors get revised again and again, the paint starts getting dull or building up--the excitement about painting turns into frustration until the artist becomes sick of it.

TAKE A CLUE FROM MUSICIANS

Any musician spends hours of practice time becoming comfortable with their skills and refining their ideas before giving a concert. Painters, though, want to cut to the chase and get right to the painting. Another thing musicians do prior to a performance is find ways to warm up, to get focused and into the flow of what is about to happen. Too often, painters dive right in and wonder when the flow will come.

If any of what I have just described is familiar to you, it's easy enough to regroup and make your painting life one of joy and anticipation, rather than one of dread or spinning tires.

Some Ideas You Might Try:

1. Find a routine that works for you for warming up, such as

○ Spending several minutes doing gesture studies of your subject like I show you in show you in Quick Tip 131 or

○ Warming up with a few watercolor or gouaches quick studies in your sketchbook ○ Mixing a value/color line for your palette

○ Or something physical such as I show you in Quick Tip 100 (try to ignore in this Quick Tip the wind and fireworks)

2. Get to know your subject prior to beginning the painting

○ Through gesture drawing

○ With color studies in your sketchbook

○ With value studies

3. Plan a composition off your painting surface (in your sketchbook or on scrap paper/canvas)

○ Consider the direction of the light source and what kind it is

○ Consider the visual path

TAKE FREQUENT BREAKS

I can't stress this one enough--even the most accomplished painter will reach a point of no longer being able to see the painting if they stay in front of it too long. Be willing to take a walk or engage yourself in something else periodically while working on a painting. You'll come back to it with a fresh eye and will be much more able to see what's really happening in it.

Happy Painting,

Dianne

dianne@diannemize.com

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Clarkesville Georgia 30523
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