Jane's Art Basics - How To Start A Painting?

 Do you get stuck at the blank canvas? Do you want to paint but don't know how to start? As your art practice evolves you will develop your own go-to strategies for beginning, but if you are new at painting, here are a few suggestions.

• Don't start a painting. Start multiple paintings. 
• Do start with an inexpensive, low-stakes, substrate such as Bristol or 80# Cheap Drawing Paper
• Do focus on the practice, the process, not the 'finished' painting.
• Don't try to finish a painting. 
• Do give yourself a time limit if that helps. 

Here is a video on The Five Minute Painting (this is an old one, not great quality):

 

A group of 9"x12" five-minute paintings

I made these 9"x12" five-minute in one session, which was a total of one hour.

Be assured that there are infinite ways to start a painting, so you can't find the correct way, nor can you start the wrong way, in terms of the first marks you make on the painting surface. You can start with an attitude that will facilitate beginnings. 

Your measure of success is: you showed up and applied paint (or collage or drawing) to a surface. You made marks on a substrate. That's IT. Omit the habitual evaluation and self-criticism. Just leave it out; it is totally irrelevant to this part of a painting practice. 

Let the painting practice be an ongoing inquiry, not a production line. You are discovering what the paint can do, what is in you, who you are as a maker of images. It is a long, slow, ongoing process. A practice. If you set your expectations accordingly it can be extremely engaging and fulfilling. If you begin with the expectation that you will Learn How To Do It Correctly, it can be very frustrating. You will make good paintings - your paintings - when you make a lot of paintings, with attention and focus on process, and with curiosity. Enjoy!

Cat Bennett has several books that are encouraging and helpful for making art as a practice. There are many other books and resources on practicing art, but the real learning is in doing the work. Get the paper out, put some paint on it, pay attention, repeat.

Mashing Up, or Carefully Juxtaposing

 As a counterpoint to my more-or-less orderly stripe paintings, I like to mash things together in my works on paper. These are 11"x14" on Bristol, and they include collage, drawing, and painting.

I also love to cut up gelli plate prints, made with Golden OPEN acrylics, and put those parts together in ways that surprise me:

You can win a set of Golden OPEN acrylics, an 8"x10" GelliArts Gel Plate, and a 6" Speedball soft rubber brayer in this month's raffle. CLICK HERE TO BUY RAFFLE TICKETS.

Raffle Winner!

 The winner for September's painting raffle, "Nowhere to Hide #2", is Rena Diana. Rena is a prolific and accomplished abstract painter. Check out her website here.

October's painting raffle is called "The Fallout". It is another in my scribbles and florals series, this one a little more landscapey in feel. It could be the autumn foliage, a forest burn, or a volcano erupting. Take your pick. Since it's October, I'll go with the autumn foliage at the edge of a marble quarry. Very Vermont.

 

The Fallout, 18x24"

Buy chances to win "The Fallout". The drawing will be at the end of October. All revenue from ticket sales goes to support the Rupert Village Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to creating community in Rupert, Vermont. See our website here.

Painting for Collage

 Here is a little video in which I am painting pieces that will be cut up and used for collage. It is a little different than just painting Papers For Collage, with all-over designs. 

The supplies I use in the video include: Golden Fluid Acrylics, interior latex house paint, cheap bristle hardware store brushes, a blunt stiff brush, Lyra Graphite Crayon (9B), a 2" soft rubber brayer, and a  1" flat brush. Here is the paper I'm using, and you can see the paper holder/cutter here. Links are for your information. I'm not trying to promote these particular items; they're just what I'm using.

Here are the collages I made using the pieces in the video. I used other elements as well. They are all 11"x14" on Bristol:

You can find these images and others as prints or on products at Pixels/FineArtAmerica here. Thanks for visiting. I would love to hear if this is useful, or if it is something you've tried.

New Directions

 I wander into the territory of representational painting every now and then, with the idea that maybe I can explore the abstract content I so love in the context of pictures. I SO love works that walk that line between purely abstract and representational. I'm fascinated by how little it can take to suggest a whole scene from what is otherwise just shapes, lines, colors, values, marks, and scribbles that consist of material applied to a surface.

Jane Lewis's life drawings, for example, are masterful scribbles evoking all the weight and presence of the figures they represent. I see the figure, but I see the charcoal or pastel, and the gesture just as much. Material, process, subject, all have equal importance in these.

Sherri Cassell's Landscapes, countless other landscape painters, Jylian Gustlyn's vessels, Wendy McWilliams' florals, Julie Hamilton's work: these are just a few examples of artists whose work, to me, speaks as eloquently of abstract content and material as it does of its subject. 

Here are a few examples of my latest foray into representational images. Consider these all in process. They are on 18"x24" Bristol.

Thank you for visiting!

Studio Work

 Here are a couple of pieces I have in progress:

48"x60" unstretched canvas. This is where it is today. Below are a couple of previous stages.

Several layers in, but establishing the stripes

More layers in, establishing the bottom section of stripes

Another work in progress, on stretched canvas, 40"x54". This is where it is today. My next task is to vary the values on the bottom row of stripes.

An early stage of the above piece

A few more layers later. It is starting to look like a pinstriped suit to me, so that is why I started obscuring the top area of stripes.

Thanks for visiting!

Free Live Demo with Q&A

 I am offering a FREE DEMO at Winslow Art Center on Tuesday, March 23. This is part of a series of freebees Winslow is offering next week, in their "Spring Fling".

Slack Tide #6, 11"x14" acrylic on paper

I filmed the process of painting this image, which I will narrate live on Zoom, sharing my thoughts on composition, as well as tools and tips. I will take questions as well. Hope to see you there.

Even though it is free, you do have to sign up for this session. See details and sign up here.

Practicing Composing

 Composition - the arrangement and qualities of elements in your painting - is a topic that seems to mystify people the most about art making. This is my impression from teaching thousands of students over hundreds of workshops over the course of ten years. Here are a few beliefs that some of you might hold. The 'you' is hypothetical.

• You want composition to be a set of rules or guidelines.
• You think composition is something you can learn and then apply.
• You want there to be, or think there is, a set of rules that guarantee 'good' composition.
• You approach abstract painting differently from representational painting from a compositional standpoint.
• You may thing of format as the bulk of composition: the cruciform, the abstract landscape, the grid, for example.
• You think there has to be a focal point
• You believe in a rule of thirds
• You think of 'spontaneous' painting as different from a composition, a composed painting.
• You think a composed painting, a composition, is planned.

Any of this sound familiar? None of it is true. Where do these beliefs and assumptions come from? I've probably contributed to some of these beliefs myself, in earlier workshops. But believing any of the above does serve as a starting point.You can begin to un-learn. You can become aware of assumptions. This is where real composition begins.

In an attempt to address these issues directly I am offering two new workshops this year:

Abstract Composition Bootcamp

Fridays on Zoom, beginning April 9.

 

Paint Solo #9, 22x30" acrylic on paper

In order to become fluent in visual language, you need to become aware of what you do by habit and what you can do by choice. The more fluent you are, the more spontaneity and freedom you can bring to your art practice. See workshop details here.

 100 Paintings

Online with a blog, no zoom. 10 weekly lessons beginning September 8.

Pink Shape, 9x12", acrylic, collage, drawing on paper

 Join me for one or both of the above for a deeper look at what it means to compose.

More of the New Stripes

 These ones are made from the stripes in the last post, plus some paint, collaged on bristol.

They are available as prints and products at Pixels/FineArtAmerica.

These are all 11"x14" except the square one, which is 13"x13".

Leaning into Subtlety

 Do you ever feel that your art is "too busy"? You know you have too much going on, but you are not sure what to do about it? Afraid of wrecking it, or 'losing' some of the parts you like best, you get a bit creatively paralyzed over it. 

Join me for Leaning into Subtlety, Friday, February 12, 2021, at 5:00 pm EASTERN time. This is a quick (hour and a half) demonstration hosted by Winslow Art Center via Zoom.

I will demonstrate a few go-to techniques I use that keep me loose and unafraid of painting over. These techniques are about building subtlety as part of the process, but also toning down high drama, or 'editing' to bring your piece into focus. 

Here are a few examples:

This one includes tone-on-tone collage in the yellow area, plus a little spatter of yellow ochre. 11"x14" on bristol.

Tone-on-tone mark making, collage, and spatter bring a little depth to this piece. 11"x14" on bristol.

Fog, lower right, is the main technique I demonstrate on this piece. 11"x14" on bristol.

This piece has a lot of texture, but I've toned down some if it using a dry brush technique. 11"x14" on bristol.

This is another example of toning down texture. This is the "after", so the texture is considerable more subtle in parts than the "before". 9"x12" on bristol.

My Great Canadian Border Crossing

 Here are a few images, before and after, that have come out of my Canadian Border Crossing project, which you can read about here. This has been so much fun! And there are a lot more art pieces in the works. THANK YOU to my Canadian friends who have participated.

Patricia in Alberta

Marylou in Alberta

Lorna in Québec

Karen in Alberta

Deirdre in British Columbia

Brenda in Newfoundland

I have just named the provinces, not the cities, of the artists. My additions to the works are merely additions. I was not trying to 'finish' the pieces, just take them one more step along their journeys.