Wednesday, November 4, 2015

The Five-Minute Painting

I wanted to explore the idea of doing a painting in five minutes, or rather, to see what would happen if I tried to do a painting, 19"x25", in five minutes.  It did not have to be a finished painting, ready to frame, but the idea was to create a strong visual statement in that amount of time.  I normally work in many layers: painting over whole passages, changing direction often, then tweaking a LOT.  So the five-minute painting is a distinctly different approach. 

This video is mostly unedited, and the camera does not encompass the entire paper I'm working on.  I have a bunch more of these which have a better view, and which I will post at various points.  But thought I'd share this first one, despite its flaws.




First in a series of Five-Minute Paintings

I will fill you in more about the concept behind five-minute paintings in a future post.  Just wanted to get this out.  Just to be clear, this is five minutes of painting without the slightest idea where I'm going with it.  Definitely a practice of being In The Moment!

23 comments:

  1. Oh wow, it is a great start, but will you stay there? Even I got stressed at the end!

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    1. I would not call it a "finished" painting. It's really an experiment in focus and process. Of course, I will treat it as a beginning, and keep working on it, but the point of the exercise is to see how much of a visual statement I can make in five minutes, on this size of paper.

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  2. The paper is gessoed.. What kind of paper? :-) Thx♡

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  3. The paper is gessoed.. What kind of paper? :-) Thx♡

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  4. Yay, you are doing more videos! I'm surprised you were using tube acrylics.

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  5. Wow, Jane, you sure got a lot of shapes into this piece in a short time. Looks like fun, a good self-challenge. I will try it too. Thanks for the idea and good example.

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  6. I love your videos, thanks so much for sharing. This exercise is one I am definitely going to try!

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  7. I will try this for sure. It's a great way to stare down the white paper.

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  8. Great exercise. Thanks for sharing.

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  9. Dear Jane,

    I have been watching your website and tutorials for the last few months. I just want to thank you so much for it all. It has inspired me so much in getting up and painting something, in stead of thinking about it, planning it, fantasizing about it ;-)

    And this last exercise was just great! I took the timer, and just painted! No time to think or to analyze (or not analyze too much at least).
    I hope and want to do this exercise regularly, since it helps me to just freely let the paint flow.

    Thank you again!
    Simone Gwenda

    (for anyone who is interested in my experiment: http://gwendawaterink.weebly.com/blog/6-november-2015. The 5-minute painting is second in line).

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    1. AWESOME! THanks for the link. Thanks for trying this.

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  10. love your free wheeling enthusiasm for painting. this look like fun

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  11. I love this one! The scribbles especially.
    vicki jordanides

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  12. I love watching you think too. Am not too particularly drawn to this piece but as you said in the intro…this is just the "draft" and then you go back. I like the colors. I am reminded of one of my favorite art teachers. We would start each weekly lesson with a critique. She was always so positive but then also helpful. One day she looked at one of mine and thought a long time. "Nice Frame" she said. And we all fell apart laughing!!!

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  13. That was fun to watch, and inspiring!

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  14. Thank you for this great video. What a wonderful way to approach a big blank piece of paper!

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  15. This made me laugh! What a great way to loosen up, try anything, confine trials to the materials at hand ... everything about this is encouraging. Can't wait to give it a try myself. Thanks for the inspiration.

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  16. I think you used your favorite green in this painting but I forgot what the color is and I think you said it's from Dick Blick..can you share this again?

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    1. Hmmm... I think it is a Golden heavy body paint - light teal, or something like that.

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  17. Did you ever answer the question about what kind of paper? (And what size?). Many thanks.

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    1. Look at my Favorite Materials: link is in the right margin. It's the Cheap Drawing Paper, but you can use whatever you like.

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