You KNOW it’s true and you don’t want to hear it again but I’M GOING TO SAY IT ANYWAY:
The best way to learn how to paint is to paint. And that means to paint in a sustained manner, or at least in frequent bursts. And the best way to do that is to set yourself free – that is, to avoid putting too much psychological weight on your results.
It’s our own impatience with a necessary process that slows us down. One way to fight it is by just doing it – pretend you’re just going for quantity. Just for a while! However, if you want quality to go up when you’re literally doing more, you have to help it along. That’s the paradox. If you have the energy, time, discipline and patience for careful draftsmanship (learning to draw) that’s great. If you’re not there yet, instead of trying (and inevitably failing!) to make a “perfect” painting, work longer and smarter (not harder) and you’ll inch closer and closer to making a painting you like (or can at least live with).
To ramp up quantity (and thus improve quality) try the following:
Set a goal of making, say, three of the same kind of paintings in rapid succession, or painting every day for a set number of days in a row (even if it’s only two).
Summer memories: Mary Garrish, Fun in the Sun, oil, 8×16 inches
Developing new skills involves the creation of new thought-patterns in the brain. The more sustained experience you put in trying out what you’ve learned, the more new pathways in the brain you make. Read, watch, look, and think all you can, but actually move paint (or charcoal, or pastels) around on some kind of consistent basis. Again, even if it’s just two days a week, as long as it’s two in a row.
Seems obvious, but how many of us actually paint as much as we say we want to? It’s not a discipline thing. That’s for work. Art is supposed to be fun (or at least an enjoyable “adventure” 😉 The problem is we judge our work not by how well we’ve put learning into practice but, mistakenly, by how far we think we still have to go.
Education is key – you must learn the technical skills, but learning by doing is the only way to discover what works for you and what doesn’t. You will get better much faster by “making more pots” – by working at what you do often during sustained periods – as long as you’re smart about it, which simply means applying to the next painting what you learned in the last.
Working in series – three flower paintings or three skyscapes in a row, for example, changing things up each time – fosters the essential skill of treating each painting as a learning process rather than an ultimatum on whether you’re “good enough.”
Mary Garrish, Twilight Reflection, 12×24 inches
The goal is to synthesize what you have learned through doing it. But you have to do it! (Lots.)
Two things to try:
- Practice alternating your attention from what you’re trying to paint to what the paint is doingon the canvas. Do this by replacing anxiety about how what you are doing is falling short with observation of what the paint is actually doing and why. You will never stop learning about how your chosen medium behaves, and that’s a good thing. Instead of asking why something isn’t happening the way you want or expected it to, soak up what ishappening and apply it.
- Slow your mind down and process what is or isn’t working and why, and if you get stuck, work on a different part of the painting. You can often take a painting that seems to have gone off the rails and totally turn it around just by working on a different area than the one you’ve been stuck on.
Mary Garrish, Diffused Light, 12×12 inches
Some of this may seem self-evident, but it’s nice to have it broken down like this, so you can reflect on and fine tune your learning process.
Design is one of the more confusing aspects of painting, and learning and practicing it is one of the surest ways to improve your work quickly and dramatically. Check out Mary Garrish’s video Six Elements of Design for a sound tutorial. (This post features a number of Mary Garrish’s expertly composed paintings.)
