RULES FOR PAINTERS

Being advice and encouragements from my tutor in Painting and Colour Theory, from October through to December 2021. Some are highly practical others knowingly philosophical.

  1. Ensure your easel is set up correctly, for you. Is there enough space around it for you to work?
  2. Stand back from your work every two minutes to take stock.
  3. Don’t tickle your painting. Instead, go somewhere one it, do it and then again, stand back.
  4. Painting is active practise not meditation.
  5. Start with overall form then go to detail at the finish
  6. Negative shapes are as important as positive shapes.
  7. Focal point – that is your decision. Consider Van Eyck, his paintings held your eye.
  8. Shadows, any shadows give you form.
  9. Transparent effects are as important as saturated paint.
  10. Speed: What can you do to speed up the process? Avoid making the paper too wet for example.
  11. Time management. Meaning1 tactics to ensure you are not waiting around. Instead have several pieces on the go at once.
  12. Backgrounds – are you loving the backgrounds to your paintings enough?
  13. Never stop making work.
  14. The last surviving painter on this planet is the one truly driven to paint.
  15. What strategies can you develop to deflect influences that stop you enjoying painting?
  16. Never stop making marks.
  17. Look for tone, e.g., the small shadow or shade
  18. Mapping – the vital process of mark making. This is not to be confused with sketching or drawing or illustration.
  19. Composition: if you put the main thing in the middle, you get stillness in the composition, and it may also be dull. Off to one side gives you surprise and thrust.
  20. Whites, colours tinted with white paint and hot colours come forward. Cold colours go back. This is part of the push and pull of colour. E.g., purple forward yellow back.
  21. Painting demands huge reserves of energy, mental and physical.
  22. Look for blocks of colour. E.g., *the painter Keith Vaughan. (*Writer’s addition)
  23. Raw colour (i.e., no added white or black) so, not a tint or shade, exudes confidence.
  24. Don’t sit to paint, it drains your energy.
  25. Painting is knowing we have done our best.
  26. Painting is the belief that if there is a problem in our painting and we can patch it up.
  27. Don’t worry about the system, worry about being an artist.
  28. Study Claude Lorraine, Constable, J M Turner. ‘They all understood the Godliness of nature’2
  29. Again, shape not line drawing.
  30. Painting is about discipline, the long haul and going through hell and back.
  31. Painting is about how you see the world around you.

1meaning mass production

2 direct quote from my tutor


Category: Art Practise