After having an epiphany two years ago, I changed my approach to painting in oil. After many years of trying to produce good paintings and trying to finish them no matter what, I realized that the ideas in the book "Hawthorne On Painting" (by Charles W. Hawthorne) were exactly what I needed to embrace.
Basically, I can summarize it all down to this: "A good painting is a start that stopped in a good place." In other words, just get good at starting paintings, and stop when one or more of these occur: 1) I like what I see on the canvas and want to keep it, 2) I run out of interest in it, 3) I run out of creative energy (enthusiasm) for the painting, or 4) I come to the end of my skills and anything more I do to the painting won't help it.
I realized to never try to finish a painting and never try to produce a painting, just let them appear when they're ready to appear. Make learning more important than anything else. If I like what turns out on the canvas, I keep it. If not, I wipe it off.
It's all a question of learning how to learn and from then on it's practice, practice, practice!
My usual practice routine is to hop out of bed early every morning and paint for two to three hours on a blank 30"x36" canvas. I often freeze movie frames and paint those. A recent study is from the 1968 movie "Romeo and Juliet".....
Early in the movie, the Prince is on horseback scolding the Capulets and Montagues for fighting in the streets of Verona.
This example is typical of what I do every day: I ignore details, and work on color notes and how they interact. The main goal is to improve my ability to start a painting. Later on painting journey, I will break down the larger areas of color into smaller ones and paint the details (such as facial features).
The next study is from "Lonesome Dove." Roscoe Brown is talking with Janie, a girl who is escaping from an abusive situation and trying to convince Roscoe to let her go with him on his journey to Texas. Roscoe, on his horse, is telling Janie he can't take her because he's in a hurry. (She ends up riding with him anyway.)
Again, no facial features, just color relationships.
What I'm doing is probably difficult to understand for non-painters. So look at it this way: a serious violinist practices daily for hours, working to get the sound and skills they're after to improve their playing. That's what I'm doing only in painting. I practice to improve my color notes and the effect they produce in combination on the canvas. It's how I now approach my painting in oil.
Please stay tuned as this all unfolds. My paintings will become more complete, facial features and all!
Beautiful. I've never painted in oil. But I can relate and find value in what you are describing. It doesn't happen to me so much with other media, but when I paint I find it is rather difficult to know when to just stop. I know very well that at some point I have to say, "no more" because I will make it go from lovely to ugly if I'm not careful.
Thank you melibee. The medium doesn't matter, knowing when to stop is the main thing, is very important, and learning that comes with experience. I have finally learned to not finish anything and stop as I described in my post.
It's a really great way to think of it... I'm going to hang onto that... I'm not trying to "finish" anything.
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