Some Paintings Tips that Have Helped Me a Lot!

Paintings in Waiting

A couple months ago, I found these great tips on making paintings which have helped me tremendously. I have found these to be immensely helpful in getting the critic off my shoulder while I try to create: a problem that’s been dogging me for years! Now I have a couple dozen new paintings that I will start sharing with you soon–warts and all–and more in the making.  Yay! 

Here’s the condensed version for the studio wall:

1. Quality through quantity.
2. Do NOT mix generating and editing.
3. When to judge: After you’ve completed a piece, look at it and decide what direction you want to go in next.
4. Don’t be afraid to re-use elements.
5. How to have “lots of ideas”: permute.
6. “Get through your first 50 failures as fast as you can.”
7. Don’t even bother “fixing” pieces.
8. Work fast. Creativity is exciting.
9. Let your level show.
10. Don’t hide your failures.

And here’s the link to the full version, from the Scarlet Letters blog: Notes on Making Art.

Tips for Improving Your Paintings

This entry is part 2 of 10 in the series SAIC Class Notes
Drawing by Rembrandt van Rijn "Reclining Lion" pen and paint brush ca. 1650
Drawing by Rembrandt van Rijn “Reclining Lion” pen and paint brush ca. 1650
Class notes from art camp classes with George Liebert and Dan Gustin, Oxbow, MI, summer 1991.

Make a list of verbs and adjectives about your own work.

When struggling with a work, isolate parts of it and do lots of sketches to come up with a better composition.

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