Welcome back to my studio today,
I'm going to be talking more about how to develop your loose painting technique,
and I'll be looking at a few questions that have been asked recently by artists
who are struggling to get to this technique and and when they
do, how to stop themselves from falling back into old habits.
Let's have a closer look.
Now, many of you are trying to loosen up your painting style to get a more
impressionist look or just to break away from that tight impression where it looks
like everything's been stuck onto the canvas.
Now, I've been asked recently by an artist
if I have any tips on how to get that loose style,
except for repeating the same thing about brush size and using more paint.
I thought about this for a while and I
realised that maybe this particular artist had been trying these two tips out
and then inevitably reverting back to the old habits.
So I asked the artist about this and he came back and admitted that he was picking
up the small brush and falling back into that pattern of painting.
Now, another artist wrote back to me as well on YouTube and said
that she starts off the painting and it looks really great.
It's nice and loose and it's fresh and vibrant.
And then the habits kick in again.
And it's that pursuit of perfection or just something else.
I do have my views on this and it might not apply to everyone.
Of course, this is a very personal type of thing.
I believe that it's more than just trying to be a perfectionist.
That it actually comes down to a mental programming.
One that is really based in fear.
You may say that, I'm just exaggerating.
But really, it does come down to the fear of presenting a finished work that is not
going to be appreciated by people that are important to you.
Could be your family, your partner, your friend, whatever.
It means that they may not understand your
work and say to you, oh, that's nice, but it's not finished
or I'm not so sure, it doesn't really work for me.
That doesn't look like that.
It should look like this.
And on and on.
Responses like that are things that a lot
of us actually fear and we get better with, dealing with it with time.
And eventually you'll get to a point where it doesn't matter.
But if it's someone important to you, their opinion does count.
Is the tightening up of the painting
a way to prevent that type of response, the type of response that really
gets to you personally and is upsetting or just chips away at your confidence?
Because, believe me,
it does take confidence to make progress in your painting.
Positive reinforcement is important.
And a lot of people who don't paint don't understand that getting to a point
in your painting is, in fact a journey of ups and downs.
But it takes time and a lot of practise.
It's not a switch that you can just flick
and instantly you've created an impressionist masterpiece.
Or hey, today I'm going to do a realist painting and I'm going to do a portrait.
And
the portrait is a perfect, realistic image of of the person.
Or, you know, today I'm just going to do
some trees and do a landscape with lots of trees in it.
And I'm going to do it like Claude Monet and with a flick of a switch, there it is.
It's not that simple.
It is a case of adjusting your mental approach to the painting.
Without that approach
and resetting of your thoughts and ideas and how you deal with potential failure
and fear of somebody calling you out on that.
How you deal with that mental aspect is critical to how you handle your technique.
The two go side by side.
You will not be able to adjust your painting style and build on it if you
still feel that it is going to fail and make you look bad.
So I'm going to play around with a big
brush and just emphasise the technique I'm talking about.
You can apply that as well,
provided you are able to resist and also resist the fear of not making a perfect.
Right, does that make sense?
Well, let's play around with some paint on a big brush and see what happens.
I'm going to use this reference because it's really packed with details, so.
We first compose it, but no pencil, we're going to use no drawing.
Just get straight in with this big, long, flat brush.
This is a size eight
and the format I'm painting on is very small.
About a six by eight, but could even be slightly smaller.
Mixing paint with the brush and getting
in a nice mix of colour that has variety in it, not over mixing it.
And then just choose a place to start.
Put in the first big shape.
And work yourself logically throughout the painting.
Just observe your subject really closely.
Most artists paint almost unconsciously.
They just glance at the subject and then
just dab away at the canvas and hope for the best.
I want you to spend your time looking
at the subject, spend more time observing than actually painting.
And then you will get much more accurate.
And remember, clean that brush off.
That's very important. So you're going to get a much more accurate painting
by just observing.
Like this, blue is a little darker than the blue above,
we're talking about the sea, you know,
not the sky, the sky, of course, it's much lighter and warmer.
Now into that sky,
and I'm just cutting in there, getting it placed more or less correctly,
using a little bit of yellow in the white and blue to make that sky.
Cut in.
Big shapes, big strokes, big brush marks.
That's what you're after.
And there we go.
Now I've got a size 12 to get in the flowers.
This is a really large brush on such a small surface.
But you know what? This is an exercise to help train
your muscle memory and build your confidence with a big brush.
So let's go for it.
Big,
juicy brush marks.
Dirty brush?
clean it off with tissue and you get a clean colour note.
Now, there will be a little bit of mixing
here and there and and confused edge, maybe that's no problem.
If it's serious go over it, if not, leave it alone.
The idea is to keep moving,
get into motion with the brush and put down the paint strokes.
Look at these steps and the wall packed
with little details, but I'm not going to paint them, absolutely not.
All I want to suggest is a path or steps going down.
And if I can do that, then I have achieved what I need to do.
A bit of burnt sienna.
A bit of ultramarine or a bit of white. Whatever that's all you need.
Mix the colour, value and temperature approximately correct and put it down.
Highlights on the greenery,
tons of tiny little leaves just put a big mark down, that's all you need.
Absolutely no little brush allowed in this exercise.
The number eight and the number 12 is all I'm going to use.
By using the edge of the brush or
the corners or the flat surface, I can get vastly different shapes.
Varying the pressure of the brush
gets me different shapes again.
Place the colour on top of the other colour and move the brush away.
And then you will not muddy up colours.
You're using reds and greens together and all remain vibrant,
just putting down that clean colour note and lifting the brush away.
These highlights? I'm not worried about the detail.
I just want to suggest them.
On this up in the foreground, lots of texture and it comes forward.
The branches? Just get the main ones.
Now, this is no more than a sketch, but by the end of it,
I want to get a nice and vibrant, loose looking sketch of this scene.
One that if you stand across the room
and look at it, it will make sense and look really interesting.
Maybe another day you'll get out the large canvas and do a larger version,
but this one is giving you the confidence to paint big shapes.
Oh, know, for some artists,
this is a very, very tough exercise. And it's almost like they got to hold
themselves down from grabbing the small brush, but just do it.
Do it for me and then do it for yourself.
Just just get it done and you won't regret it.
Practise this quite often.
Do one of these a week if you can. And that's it.
That was really fun, quick and effective.
Well, I hope retouching on this topic
of big brushes and lots of paint and the size of the painting
and the mental aspect to it, I hope that sort of comes together a bit
more and that you can recognise and be aware of what's going on.
Once you have that awareness,
progress can happen quickly and you won't fall into the trap.
Or if you see yourself heading for it,
you can stop and remind yourself, hang on, this is a process.
Let me stop here.
Put this painting aside, start another one and then map this progress.
Have fun with it.
You know what the results are going to be.
Don't worry about anyone else.
They will come on to your side soon enough.
Well, I hope that helps.
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OK, don't forget, you got your free course over here and a lot more on my website.
Well, I'll see you in the next video soon. Until then.
Cheers for now.