The best way to start a painting is to have the urge to paint. You don’t need a plan or a vision. You just need to feel a desire to create something. Feeling this desire is the start of my creative process, and I encourage it to be the start of yours.
In terms of knowing when to create something, I value the feeling of wanting to paint much more than having a plan or a vision. I can honestly tell you that I rarely start a painting with a direction or an expectation in mind. The majority of my work comes out of the simple desire to touch paint to canvas. If you struggle with initiating your creative process (i.e. starting any piece of artwork), maybe my method can help.
What follows is an explanation of how I go about my paintings. This won’t be a long blog post, but I hope it will leave you feeling a little more okay with abandoning the planning and preparation stage of your creative process (if this is something that’s not currently working for you!).
When I began painting, I was obsessed with portraiture. I wanted to recreate my favourite movie characters as perfectly as I could. This became a very frustrating and unproductive process because I could never be happy or fulfilled with what I created. My expectation of what I wanted to paint was never met because I was too caught up in getting the perfect sketch, the perfect proportions, and the perfect colour matches. It wasn’t until I dumped this intention to create ‘perfection’ that I truly started to enjoy painting.
When I abandoned the pursuit of ‘perfection’, I adopted a process that provided me an entirely new and healthy relationship to art. This process allowed me complete freedom to create and paint for the sake of creating and painting. It allowed me to follow my creative instincts without getting caught up on the accuracy or exactness of my subject matter. It even allowed me to capitalize on the imprecise portrayal of my subject matter!
My inaccurate and imprecise creative process involves three key features: 1) Inspiration, 2) Trust, and 3) Flexibility. (I intentionally refer to them as features and not steps because they are not systematic – you can flow freely between them as your work through your own process).
Inspiration can come from anywhere. For me, it mainly comes from seeing the work of other artists. But it also comes from observing and learning about the world. When I see something that inspires me, I develop a very strong urge to paint. As discussed, this urge is never to create something specific. It’s just a fire that ignites within and burns on until I am actively painting something. It’s this feeling that initiates and carries me through the creative process.
Here’s 3 quick tips on how to ignite this fire:
Find 5-10 Instagram accounts of artists that make you excited (you’ll know when you’ve found them). These are some of the accounts that I follow for this specific purpose: @irisscottart; @max.dore; @abstractpainters; @jeanniedouglasart; @juliaspowellart
Subscribe to cool contemporary art magazines like Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose Magazine, and Create! Magazine. Flip through these regularly!
Visit local art galleries as much as you can! I almost always paint after I visit an art gallery.
Trust is the next component to process. When I say trust, I simply mean trusting your creative instincts and your personal talents. Trust that your desire to create is leading you to where you want to go with your artwork.
The notion of trusting yourself and trusting your process is especially important during times of uncertainly. When I have no idea where a painting is going, I act 100% on instinct. I roll with whatever it is I am doing until something starts to take shape. When I am happy with a vision or direction that is starting to take form, I trust that I will continue to make the right choices for getting the painting where it needs to be.
Here are 2 very simple tips for trusting your process:
If you’re not enjoying the outcome of something you are making, change it.
If you are enjoying the outcome of something you are making, keep following whatever ideas and thoughts are driving you to create it in that way.
Flexibility is the last piece of the puzzle. Being flexible in your art just means being comfortable with a mouldable and ever-changing vision.
The notion of flexibility is huge for me. I’ll often change the entire direction of a painting 2-3 times before it’s in the final form. I’ve put 10-20 hours into paintings, only to paint over them and start again (its actually absurd to reflect on how much paint lay on a single one of my canvases…).
If your outcome doesn’t feel true to where your creative drive was directing you, don’t be afraid to try again. Don’t be afraid to douse your painting with white paint and start over. I actually find this exhilarating! It means I am not bound to the direction that I chose the first time around. I am free to create something entirely new.
My paintings endure an evolution. They are highly textured from all the paint layers detailing my previous attempts. If you look closely, you can follow the transformation that each piece took to get to where it came to be. This is my favourite aspect of the process. The final product is so enriched by the visible journey it took with the artist.
Here’s my #1 tip for inviting flexibility into your process:
Don’t get too attached to anything you put on that canvas. It’s very likely to get covered up or altered in some way. Get attached to your painting only when you trust that it’s in its final form!
Let’s be honest, the best part about being an artist is that there are no rules. There’s no objective measure of success or quality or excellence to your artwork. There’s just the measure of whether or not you honored your genuine desire to create something. When an artist pursues their creative urge, they always build a masterpiece. Now go and build yours!