3 ways to loosen up

My last post was about Finding Your Style which is something most painters want to do. This post is about something else that most painters want to do, that is Loosen Up. I want to show you a few ways to begin to free up your painting style so that you can paint in a looser and more painterly way.

And check out my discount offer on my online course Watercolour Fast and Loose at the end of this post.

1. Stand back

Henri Matisse In Nice. April 1950

Many years ago I took some evening classes at Leith School of Art in Edinburgh. I remember being told to draw with a piece of charcoal taped to the end of a long bamboo pole, a la Matisse (see picture above). At the the this exercise seemed rather silly and the resulting drawings were silly as well. I didn’t see the point of it.

I do now! OK, we may not need to paint 6 feet away from our support, but putting a bit of distance between our hand and the canvas or paper does help enormously with loosening up and painting in a much les controlled way. Many painters when first learning, start by holding a brush (or indeed a pencil) as they would a pen for writing. This is great for adding those final details to a picture, but does nothing to help us loosen up. When we draw or paint like this we restrict all movement to the fingers or wrist and the tip of the brush is held tight and only moves a small distance. Usually our nose is close to the paper and often our tongue is out in concentration!

But if we stand back and hold the brush or pencil at the other end, we begin to paint with our elbow or shoulder and produce much more gestural marks. We relax and can see the whole support at once. Yes, we loose a little control, but that helps us in our quest to loosen up. Try it!

2. Shape Up

Paintings are made up of shapes, so we need to learn to see what is in front of us in terms of abstract shapes, not as named things. It’s not a tree, it’s a green oval on top of a brown rectangle. It’s not a rock, it’s a triangle on top of a rectangle next to a circle. When you learn to see the world around you like this it becomes easier to portray it in paint. It is also easier to paint it in a looser style as well because you are not so hung up on the details, trying to portray a car or a face or a street scene. When we reduce it to mere shapes, then we paint shapes, and these can be as loose as you like.

Try painting the big shapes first using the biggest brush you can. Then move to smaller shapes, and only then the small details. Only go down a brush size when you absolutely have to. Keep the details to a minimum. This will all help you to loosen up.

3. Make Marks

Think of painting as a series of marks that describe something. Leave room for the viewer’s imagination. Make the surface meaningful. Use marks to describe emotion, or movement, or something that adds to the solidity of a surface.

Vincent van Gogh is well known for using dramatic marks to create emotion and movement. David Hockney also used ingenious marks to create the sound of applause in his painting for a stage poster.

When you make descriptive marks you begin to loosen up.

I hope these ideas help.

I have a short course on Udemy that is all about loosening up by trying out the styles of other painters who have excelled in this. As a faithful follower of this blog I’d like to give you a discount on this online course that you can start today! Check it out and use the link below to get your discount. The course normally sells for $39.99 but it you can get it on this special promotion until Thursday 21 Sept for only $12.99. Just click below to find out more: https://www.udemy.com/course/watercolor-fast-and-loose-express-yourself-in-your-painting/?couponCode=BLOGPOST17092023

As always, please give a thumbs up to help me know if you have found this post helpful.

#learningtopaint #paintingfast #paintingloose #paintingtips

Finding your style

Over the many years that I have been painting and teaching art online and in person, there is one subject that crops up time and time again – “How do I find my style?”

Many people, including myself, have worried about this. It seems so important to have a style of painting that is different from everyone else, to have a unique voice, to be instantly recognisable. After all, each of us is an individual and each of us has something to say.

I read this quote in the Artists and Illustrators Magazine (July 2023) by an artist called Anna Rose Bain. She wrote: “You only get one life. Yours is a story worth telling. Take the time to learn the language, so that you can more effectively tell your story”.

Take the time to learn the language of painting. That means practising with your chosen medium until you know how to say what you want to say. And I think that what happens along the way, as we practise our art, as we perhaps try new things, or stick with what we know best, what happens is that we develop our own style. It just happens naturally. No stressing. No worrying. No trying to copy other styles that we admire. It just happens as we do it.

In the process of making art we find our own unique voice.

Your voice is unique

I love scrolling through Instagram and saving paintings that inspire me, or making a collection of amazing pictures on Pinterest. Other artists excite me and often I want to be able to emulate their style. One of the things that begins to happen as I do this, is that I learn to recognise each artist’s work. I will look at a painting for literally just a second and instantly know who painted it. When I check the name below the picture I am probably 99% correct. Why is this? Because of their style. The way the paint is applied, the colours used, the brush-marks etc.. all tell a story and show the hand of the artist. Their voice is unique.

Your voice is unique.

Every time you draw a few lines or put brush to paper you are making your marks. Just think about your handwriting and the way you sign your name. Literally this is your signature style! It is unlike anyone else. Perhaps you developed your signature when you were first learning to write. I remember trying out various ways of writing my name that looked cool and stylish, but ended up with something rather fake and un-natural. Only later did I develop, quite sub-consciously, the illegible scrawl I now use when signing my name.

But, love it or hate it, it’s mine!

What has this to do with painting style?

Well, the same applies to our painting. Our style just happens along the way. I always thought I did not have a style, largely because I was teaching art and was using many different styles to do so. But now, when I look back over my paintings I do see a certain style emerging. It comes from the way I apply paint, the colours I use, the way I paint trees and the way I make marks.

And when I am in the act of painting, I tend to approach the canvas or paper in the same way each time, and paint in a similar way. This alone creates style.

Developing and changing your style

David Hockney is an artist who is constantly developing and changing his style. He tells a story of someone looking at a new and different piece of his art who said, “That doesn’t look like a Hockney”. And David Hockney replied, “No, but it will”. He believes that as artists we should continually be developing our art (I think we would all agree to that!), but that must mean developing or changing our style as we go along. So, how can we begin to do this?

Possibly, here is a clue:

I personally don’t want to copy or steal from others. However, I am happy to learn from them. To pick up techniques, ideas, inspiration, and then make it my own. Perhaps this means painting a different subject, perhaps using different materials or colours, perhaps using my paints in surprising and unconventional ways. Whatever it is, I want my style to progress and flourish, and not stagnate and fossilise.

I suspect we all want that in our painting life!

So relax, be chilled about your style. Recognise that you already have a style that is unique to you. And then see how you can change it!

Happy painting!

#learningtopaint #PabloPicasso #findingyourstyle #davidhockney #paintingstyle

How cave painting rescued a Portable Painter disaster

I’ve been playing around with ways to use the Portable Painter palette so that I can use it for gouache outdoors. The problem has always been that gouache paints dry out fast on a palette, so you often need to dig out the dried crumbly bits and then refill from the tubes. This obviously wastes paint, so I wanted to find a way of keeping the paint blobs moist on the palette and thus useable for a number of days.

My solution

The solution that I thought would work was to glue some patches of thin sponge (the kind you can buy to use in the kitchen) to the three large palette areas that fold directly down onto the paint wells. These could be dampened and would keep everything moist. The Portable Painter palette has two containers that slide over the closed palette and act to seal it from the air, so also helping to keep the paint from drying out. A perfect solution, I thought.

The problem

The problem was that I added too much water to the sponges, and when I ventured out to paint I popped the closed palette in a trouser pocket. I took Eli the dog with me and we went on her “long” walk which is about 40 minutes around the olive trees. Stopping at one spot where I saw something to paint, I pulled the palette from my pocket, opened it up and… out poured a bright green liquid, followed by red, blue and yellow slop. Yep, the paints had liquified. I was covered in paint, the palette was covered in paint, the tissue I used to mop up was covered in paint, and I used up all my water supply trying to clean everything.

Next time I need less water on the sponges!

So, there I was, determined to paint something, but without any supplies to do it. And this is where the caveman came in.

From the dawn of (painting) time

I thought, “Why do I need all this painting stuff anyway? Surely there is a way of painting that doesn’t need paints, palettes, brushes or pots of water, and tissues! What did cavemen do? They didn’t have all this equipment!”

They had mud and sticks, and sometimes their fingers or their hands.

On the way home I had to cross a tiny stream, and there was water and there was mud. And a twig. So in true caveman style I squatted down on my haunches and began to play.

It wasn’t that easy to pick up the sandy mud that was at the edge of the stream, but with a bit of practice I found what was just the right consistency of gloop that would stick to the stick and make marks on the paper. I needed to scrub and scratch it onto the paper in my sketchbook and build up layers to get the darker passages, but I found that the marks the twig made were great for depicting the upward growth of the olive branches and leaves. It was also good for making the striated bark of the trunk. I rubbed with my finger to soften the shadow area under the tree a little.

So, there we are, back at the roots of painting, using basic earth colours (literally earth colours!) and basic mark making tools. And so much can be created from so little. I feel as though I am on the edge of a new creative thing – using nature and natural colours to enhance my sketching and connect it directly to the landscape I am trying to paint. Who knows where this will lead… Thanks Mr Caveman!

I hope you enjoyed this post. Please give a thumbs up if you did, and I’d love to read your comments as well. Happy painting!

#enpleinair #paintingtips #PortablePainterpalette #sketching