Loosen up! Try painting with a long stick.
A lot of people get caught up in the little details when painting. By concentrating on exact and precise details you can be missing out on freer, more expressive strokes and paintings can end up being leaden and lifeless.
How to overcome this…
One way is to make yourself have less control. Try taping your paint brush to a firm, metre long stick, a metre ruler or piece of dowel is ideal. Tape the brush on firmly with masking tape and then apply the paint to your canvas with the brush, you will not have the same control, your works will be freer. Using a flayed twig is another good way to loosen up your mark making. Try using a different size brush, larger or smaller brushes so there is variety in your mark making. Happy Painting 🙂
Having difficulty finishing that painting?
There are a few common mistakes that beginning painters make that will make it difficult to complete a work. Check out the new page on painting mistakes and how to fix them and see if you can finish that painting.
Make Your Own Rules
‘An Endless Sea with Orange Sky Stretched Out Before Me’, Jane McKay, 100x150cm, 2010
Art Inspiration 12 – Make Your Own Rules
Painting by a formula or a rule you have created can produce some wonderful results in your work and it gives you a framework or guide to work within. Making a rule can limit the colours you use or how the composition is constructed. See Art Inspiration 12 Make Your Own Rules. for more details on painting using a formula and for an example to try.
What has mask making to do with abstract painting?
‘Sunshine Warmed the Six-Legged Cow’, Jane McKay, 75x75cm, 2010
Art Inspiration 11 – Mask making and Abstract Painting
Mask making, (no not the wearable kind), can be done by tearing up pieces of paper and laying them onto your canvas. Tear three sheets of paper from your artist’s journal. Tear each sheet by hand … see Art Inspiration 11 for more information.
Jane McKay 