Painting from the imagination

Blue and Orange

I've been practicing creating paintings without any references or preliminary designs. I wanted to try both a floral and a figure painting. I chose simple color schemes and just started drawing on the canvases with a paintbrush, sketching rough outlines and then blocking in the colors. I intended to work loosely, and wanted to see how lively I could make each painting.

After painting from photographs for so many years, I'm excited to see what images I can come up with just by working first and thinking after.

The vase and flowers came together really quickly, and the only repainting I've done is to balance the pattern of flowers and add bits of the accent colors.

Out Of The Rain

The figure painting took several days, and while I liked the design and general color scheme immediately, I had trouble making it interesting enough for its large 16"x20" size. I tried several tricks from Robert Burridge's website videos, and each one of them was very useful. The first one was using alcohol in the foreground to create the splash effect. But I still had a flat, featureless background where I wanted to add texture and interest without adding any detail. I found it impossible to imagine a satisfactory pattern, so I got out a soft pastel and just scribbled a looping random pattern of circles over the whole painting. I took different shades of pale yellows and oranges and just filled in the circles to look like vague and maybe blurred light sources. It was simple to remove (with a wet paper towel) or paint over the remaining pastel lines that I chose not to use. I've never used pastel on a canvas before, but I'll certainly do it again. In fact, I'm looking forward to playing with it a lot more.

I did wonder why it was so quick and easy to paint the background on the flowers and so hard for me to figure out what to do on the figures. On the flowers, I knew I wanted a gradation from light to dark,  and instinctively threw on a bit of violet with the blue, and those two things provided enough variation in the proportionally smaller background. But with the figures, there's a lot more background, and though I put in a range of colors at the beginning—almost white to shades of yellow and pale orange—it just wasn't adding enough to the design. The only idea I had was of building lights, but that was more detail than I wanted. When I decided to try the pastel to generate a pattern, circles were simply the first thing I thought of, and as I drew them, I could see how they supported the feel I wanted, that it was really all about the figures. I didn't need to imply direction or movement or any other objects, I just wanted a supportive pattern. And that's what happened.

I think the point is that any painting can present challenges along the way, and it isn't always easy to come up with solutions. The more things you try, the more ideas you're going to generate, and trying things generates ideas much more quickly than thinking.

The last trick I used was streaking with a cheap decorator's brush to create the effect of rain falling.

I've really profited from Burridge's videos. You can find them HERE.

The painting toolbox

Volcano Country

What makes a style? I guess it's a summation of all the ways you choose to make a painting—color schemes, types of designs, subjects, and approaches, what media you use, how you put the media on the support. I used to think that in order to be a good painter, I had to develop my style, a consistent set of these things I prefer to do when I paint. Painting media are so variable, so flexible, that there are probably endless ways you could combine effects to achieve a style.

In the experiments I'm doing now I've thought of a few things in particular that I want to explore. I want to add more tools to my painting toolbox. One is using acrylics as I would use watercolor on all the rough and cold press paper I have left over from years ago when I used do watercolors. I want to continue trying different color schemes, and see if I can't find more that I really like. I want to learn more ways to use brushes, more ways of getting the paint on the paper. I want to try to do paintings in which how the paint goes on the paper is just as important, if not more, as the subject.

If I Were The Wind

The last thing I've thought of so far, is that I want to make a painting of every idea I have, even if I don't really trust it as an idea. And if I have an idea that I really, really want to paint, I want to try it even if I don't know how to make it really work yet. If an idea really appeals to you, it's worth a few sheets of paper and a few days of your time, even if they turn out this boring:

West Side Of The Mountains

In the throes of experimentation

This week's hot spell gave me my first chance since Art In The Garden 2012 (which was wonderful!) to stay inside and paint again. In between going outside to move the sprinklers around the garden and check all the newbies and transplants for hydration, I pulled out some old 9x12 watercolor blocks and set about experimenting with pretending that acrylics are watercolors. Watercolors were the first paints after elementary-school finger paints that I ever worked with, and I'm feeling those roots strongly right now. It's been really fun! I started with no ideas, basically, except to just see what I could get away with. The first one came out pretty fanciful:

Sky To Earth

I really had fun just playing with decorative color, but I wanted to do something a little weightier. For the second one I started out the same way, with a pattern of different-colored lines on wet paper, but when that dried I came back with a different brush and the same colors and played on top of the first pattern. It took a while for it to take form, so long that I was getting nervous, but eventually I liked it. It reminded me of a spring landscape in my local hills.

Springscape

Next I tried a different line pattern with a new color scheme. This time I tried painting color into a wet gesso surface and that gave a completely different effect, much thicker paint—thick enough to scrape into, and basically no wet-in-wet effect. Painting into wet gesso is almost exactly like painting onto dry gesso. When I came back for a 2nd pass, I wet the surface, which was completely covered with acrylic so the water couldn't soak in. I was able to get some wet-in-wet effect that way, and with very little lifting of the previously laid colors. I did 3 more passes, adding one color at a time until I was happy with it. I used my hair dryer on each layer to speed up the process.

Light As A Flower

When I picked up my brush to start this last one I decided to draw a flower shape. No gesso this time, and I made use of the same layering and wet-in-wet techniques I'd used on the previous painting.

Bright Flower

In between each painting I felt a familiar anxiety—the fear of starting a painting with no idea of what it was going to look like. Two of the 4 times I had to take a little time to screw up my courage to keep doing the same thing, before I could actually sit down and start a new painting. And partway through both the second and third paintings, I had to go through the mental argument of "Why am I wasting time on this? No one's going to buy these, they're just exercises." I seemed not to have quite grasped the point of doing exercises.

Until I started playing with color schemes last fall, I had never actually done a painting except with the single goal of completing a saleable, or at least a hangable painting. I've picked up a few skills in the process, but there are so many things now that I want to try, to experiment with, that I really want to just focus on these experiments for a while. When I do get back to landscapes, I'm hoping I can make use of whatever I'm able to learn by just playing.

But beyond the practice of trying lots of different things is the desire to see if I can keep it up—just sitting down and starting to paint, without a preconceived plan or any idea of a subject, and end up with a satisfying painting. I want to develop a habit of painting without thinking about it.

I think I'll get a lot more painting done.

A limited color palette

Last week I started work on another one of my recent landscape shots, one of the Tualatin River near the historic community of Willamette on an overcast afternoon. I worked on it for a few sessions, trying to make something I liked out of it. In the end I felt happy with the colors I got, and some of the brushwork, but it still falls way short of what I'd like to be able to do. I was looking at one of my favorite books on painting, Ted Goernschner's "The Workshop Experience" and decided I want to do some experimenting with limited color palettes. I wanted to reuse the same composition, using a split complementary color scheme of yellow, red-violet and blue-violet. For the first time, I succeeded in getting some photos of the painting process. I only did one session a day on this, as I needed to take that much time between sessions to screw up my courage and go forward with these rather unfamiliar colors.

The first session was limited to blocking in the larger masses, except for the tree foliage on the left. Not sure why, but I left that till last.

In the second session I worked on the background, the foreground, and the shrub and tree structures.

In the last session, I finally laid down the tree foliage and made a few more adjustments in the shrubs in the foreground.

I'm going to stop here for now, even though it doesn't look finished to me. I want the colors to soak into my brain for a while. Maybe they'll help me grow some new brain cells that aren't bogged down in a rut. I keep thinking of something Carolyn Lewis said in her video, about painting from photos: "Make your painting look better than the photograph."

And by the way, Happy 2012, and I hope it's a great year for everyone!

Forsythia and Pussy Willows

Want to beat the winter doldrums? Painting a bright bouquet really helps.

Spring Colors 8x10
Acrylic on paper

I've been finding that trying to change my approach to painting, even just to try approaching painting in a different way, is more complicated than I ever thought it would be. After spending many hours admiring the abstract compositions of Claire Harrigan, I was very curious to see if I could come up with a loose, colorful background that would complement the foreground subject and add design elements that contribute to the overall composition. To make a long story short, even after I had arrived at a color scheme I liked, it took me four different passes to come up with an arrangement I was happy with. It went through stages of randomness for the first two passes, and then I observed a bit of a pattern emerging and I began trying to develop it. As the pattern of lights and darks moved around, I noticed the different effects it was having on the flowers and vase, which I had already largely painted in. I also realized that I wanted to not worry at all whether the background shapes actually looked like anything, as long as they made a pleasing design. The fourth pass gave me a background that I felt supported the design of the bouquet and added some interest on its own.

But it wasn't fun painting around the blossoms on all four of the passes, so I thought the next time I would at least try to develop a background I liked before I started work on the subject. Here's the first pass:


Ultimately it's going to be a patio in a garden. I'll be developing it over the next few days, and will add the new versions to this post. I don't know what will happen, but I hope it will be interesting.

Experimental, without the mental

It's really hard not to think when you're painting. It's also hard not to worry, especially if there's a deadline or a specific goal or client or a shrinking budget or basically, *ANYTHING* to worry about. No one suffers like worriers, because we get so incredibly professional about it.

I've spent a lot of effort for several years to lose as many worries as I could, and I have to say, I enjoy my life a lot more than I used to. Practicing meditation made the biggest difference, and finding out that thinking, and therefore worrying, can be shut off. You do have to learn how, and you do have to work at it, but it can be done.

Painting abstracts turned out to be a major training ground for me, for learning to not think. Robert Burridge is a great teacher for not thinking. It turned out that my creativity did not depend at all on thinking, any more than it depends on brushes. The thought process is just another tool you can pick up and use, or put down and go forward without. It turned out that "things come to me" as soon as I start working. I can stand over a piece of paper waiting for an idea for hours, or I can start moving. As soon as I reach for a color, the right color "comes to me". As soon as I start cutting or shaping a mask, the right shape "comes to me". Without thinking. I don't have to think "There's yellow and red and blue, and green and purple and orange...", I just grab for one or two or three, and there they are.

Some ink, some wet paper and masks, and pretty soon I have a background, like this:


So now I've got a recognizable shape on a background, what next? I know, I'll worry about it for a while. Hmm, pretty nice colors, how many different ways can I ruin this? What if it doesn't turn out any good? Can I turn it into mud? It's a multi-colored horse—who's going to be interested in this? What was I thinking? What is this hang-up on horses? Why did he turn out green? Who ever thinks of green horses? Was there ever a My Little Pony who's green? I doubt it.

Okay, let's be bold. Let's try something I haven't tried before. I'll import the photo into Photoshop and play with it. I like to scribble, I'll just scribble on it. I can do that without thinking, and I might even stop worrying. For a little while, at least.


Oooooo, look what happens when I throw some red & yellow lines on there, ooooo I like that. Suddenly he doesn't look like a My Little Pony any more, he looks like a dream or a phantom, or something electric. I like scribbling. Let me try it with the other background I made:


becomes this:


Ahhhh, that felt good, those pinks and reds and blues and greens. Lots of energy going on there, lots of play. Energies in the people, activity and life. Thoughts and feelings, pulses and emotions. Visual imaginings, not anything I ever saw, but something I could feel, something inside me. Did I think it up? Nope. Did I do it anyway? Yep.

And so the little old painter translated her computer scribbles into pastel drawing on the ink backgrounds, matted them and took them to the gallery (without taking photos of them, duh), and went back to her studio where she worried happily ever after. THE END.