Painting Loose
By George Allen Durkee
A common lament of many
painters is, "My paintings are too tight. I need to loosen up."
So how does a painter loosen up? What, specifically, can you do? Is it
enough to just relax and stop trying so hard? That would be a good start,
and there is more.
Painting loosely is
painting with confidence. The more you understand the process of painting
- how to begin, what to do next and so on - the more confidently you can
paint. If you struggle with your painting procedure, forget about painting
loosely for now and take yourself to school. Instead of laboring for days
on a large elaborate canvas, trying to make the perfect painting, work
small so you can get through the entire painting process in one sitting.
The idea is to educate your mind, hand and heart to follow through to
completion without hesitation. Volume is more important than perfection at
this stage. Paint a lot of small paintings. Dozens. Hundreds!
Work at a pace that is easy and natural for you, and don't try for careful
refinement in these studies. When you've gotten a satisfactory overall
effect on your canvas, move on the next one.
Good painting, whether
loose or tight, is good drawing. If your drawing skills need improving,
you know what to do. Practice. While not many people have the freedom to
paint all day, every day, nearly everyone has blocks of time that are too
short for a painting session, but long enough to practice drawing.
Painting is drawing with a brush, so to paint well you need to be able to
draw well. (Sorry, there's no way around it!) Brush strokes are like
handwriting. They can be precise, sketchy or a less controlled scribble.
The composite of all those marks on your canvas need to add up to
something your viewer can read.
The essence of loose
painting is in the way you render edges.
An edge is the boundary
between one shape and another in your painting. If you begin your work with
a line drawing, the lines will at some point disappear beneath subsequent
layers of pigment. Nevertheless, a transition will remain where the line
was. It may be abrupt (a hard edge) or gradual (a soft edge). Transitions,
or edges, can also be ragged or even intentionally careless. Dare I say,
loose? If you have difficulty painting loosely, it may be that you try to
hold too firmly to your initial line drawing. You've probably heard it
said that there are no outlines in nature. Drawing outlines is a
convention we use in our attempt to contain
the shapes of things. Perfectly rigid containment of shapes, however, is
the antithesis of loose painting. Rather than simply painting up to the
boundaries of objects in order to keep from losing your drawing, paint the
forms of objects and let their
boundaries occur organically.
I'm going to say that again because it is the single most important thing to know if you want to paint loosely. Your beginning lines, if you use them at all, are simply guidelines for shape and placement. Don't fill in between outlines, coloring book style. Paint forms. The boundaries of forms will take care of themselves. And that, provided you draw well, is the key to painting loosely.
Or just buy it!
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