People tend to be creatures of habit, and we all tend to repeat the things we’re most comfortable with.
For an artist, this can be a deadly rut of repeated themes, subject matter, color palette and technique.
If you’re feeling the dreaded blahs when considering your next painting, it’s time to revitalize yourself and break the monotony that may have crept into your studio time.
1. Vary Your Approach To Painting
If you tend to paint the same size supports, try a different size or shape. Paint a miniature or a very large piece. The scope and size makes you think differently about your composition, brushes and technique. If you generally paint in a landscape format, rotate that canvas and paint a vertical piece. For fun, try an oval or a round painting.
Try a different medium. If you’re accustomed to acrylic on canvas, loosen up by painting with watercolor on paper. If you’re using watercolor, try egg tempera on primed Masonite. Oil painters will certainly be enamored with a change to fast drying acrylics on any surface.
Change the textural emphasis of your work. If you typically paint without leaving brushstrokes, try impasto painting and build up heavy brushstrokes.
2. Paint Quickly
Paint intuitively. Don’t dawdle laying down your initial underlayment of color. If your composition has been thoroughly planned, you don’t need to stop and ponder what you’re doing.
Use as large a brush as possible, and keep your strokes to a minimum. You can use smaller brushes for details and refinements in the final stage of your painting.
If you’re a watercolorist, try wetting a section of the paper with plain water and drop concentrated color directly onto the surface. The unplanned movement of the color as it blends with the water adds spontaneity to your painting.
3. Add A Quirky New Color To Your Palette
Add a different color to your repertoire. There are so many new hues that you’ll have no problem finding something novel to add to your palette. The Quinacridone colors are intense, robust and will add a lot of punch to your paintings. Fluorescent paints are now available for a touch of electric detail to abstract and impressionistic pieces.
4. Paint A Series
Painting a series is always a good learning tool. If you’re interested in a particular subject, study and paint it in depth. Choose varying viewpoints from which to paint the subject. Use alternative lighting sources, color families and techniques to investigate the spectrum of compositional settings of your subject.
Try realism, impressionism and abstract styles for a variety of artistic approaches. Mimic the pointillism of Georges Seurat in the late 1800s or the cubist school of Pablo Picasso in the early 20th century.
5. Find New Subjects
If you’re most comfortable doing floral paintings, change it up and try painting portraits or animal paintings. You can certainly become adept at painting more than one subject.
You may slowly evolve from one subject to another. For example, your floral pieces may develop into flower-filled landscapes. As you become more comfortable with the open fields you can develop your skill at trees, streams, clouds and mountains.
If you’re currently painting animals, expand that repertoire to include the two-legged creatures and take a run at painting portraits.
6. Switch Hands
This drastic change may not become a permanent part of your technique, but painting with your non-dominant hand will certainly give you a change in how you work.
You’ll find that you need to think about your brushstrokes and how you physically move when painting. You’re spending so much of your attention on application that you’re less concerned with the other aspects of your painting.
After you worked with the ‘wrong’ hand for a while, take a break from your painting session. Come back and take a critical look at what you’ve achieved. You may be surprised with what you find. Your mind has been concentrating on a different component of the painting process while working on the piece, so you may find an inventive and compelling freshness to your work.
Or, you may see that you’re really not ambidextrous at all, and the painting is a dismal failure. That’s okay. The main point of the exercise is to get you out of your rut.
An artist shouldn’t ever get too comfortable with his or her painting. Art is all about exploring and trying out new things. Pushing the limits isn’t always successful. But if you don’t try, you’ll never grow as an artist.
