From Laboured to Loose

This is a rather more personal subject for me, but I suspect it is a struggle shared by many watercolourists, or even more generally by painters in all mediums. My early work in watercolour, which admittedly was also a lengthy investigation into how to handle the paints, the different properties of the colours and the other materials and tools, I found myself producing more and more ‘over-worked’ paintings. It was tempting to blame the materials or the medium but this was clearly not true given the wonderful work that is available to see with a finger tap on Instagram.

So how to get there and feel at least moderately more pleased with my end results?

I think that first I needed to define for myself what I meant by ‘loose’ painting, noting that this will be a different answer for everyone. There are many brilliant artists who produce abstract works and while I appreciate or even love some of this work it was important for me to be clear with myself that this wasn’t my initial goal.

Other artists paint beautiful figurative paintings with painstaking detail which I admire, not just for their technical skill but for many, their ability to create these images without the ‘over-worked’ look, remaining fresh and vibrant as well as detailed and entirely figurative. But the work that I really love, which feels like ‘me’ (if I can get there) is the loose, splashy, colourful paintings when the subject feels as if they jump off the paper. The lion that looks like it is about to shake its mane or the bird that appears to be flying out of the frame in a flurry of colour splashes.

I recently listened to a podcast ‘Creative Perspectives’ hosted by Tom Shepherd where he was discussing various tactics for handling artists block. He described using a private Pinterest board to collect all of the images that inspired or engaged him at that moment in time. He then used this collection to analyse any themes which came out for him on what he really loved about the images. He then took these themes and made them the goals for his own art practice disregarding all other considerations like whether he thought the direction was commercial, or unique or reflected any part of his previous work. In this way he described finding what was really engaging for him, what it was that he really liked about the images and distilling this personal investigation down to give himself a defined and refined artistic direction. (I hope this is an accurate summary of what he was saying – in any case that is what I took from it!). I found this very helpful and have tried it myself. Honestly, when I started looking I didn’t imagine that I was going to learn much about what I really like or what inspires me. Meaning that I thought I already knew what I liked… BUT it was a very different exercise if you actually do it – I recommend you give it a try!

I discovered that it was the sense of movement that I was actually compelled by, along with the contrast between bold and subtle colour. This realisation led me to consider if some of my problem was within the choice of subject reference and an attention to designing in the ‘movement’ early in the drawing stage before I even pick up a brush. With new goals I need to remind myself that I will necessarily go back to the ‘incompetent’ stage for a time as I try to achieve this, and that this can be hard… but if I fall back into old processes and decisions for the comfort of familiar ground I know that repeating the same actions cannot result in a different outcome.

I will be posting paintings that start to work on Instagram, but I’m accepting I will have to take my time! If you’re at a similar impasse I highly recommend the Creative Perspectives podcast and the watercolour work of Tom Shepherd.