If you’re an artist whose ideal painting is thick and crusty, a smooth canvas will never feel finished. Addressing this mismatch by layering on more paint may help you finish your work.
4 Tips for Finishing a Painting When You’re Feeling Stuck
Dentists know when a filling is finished, and builders know when a house is built. Painters, in contrast, struggle to know when their canvases are complete. They often rework pieces for unreasonable stretches of time. Amateurs and experts alike suffer from this indecision.
Art history is ripe with painters whose canvases were perennially in progress. Edgar Degas was notorious for reworking paintings that had already been exhibited. He was even known to request works back from buyers in order to make revisions. Mona Lisa (ca. 1503–09), which measures just 30 by 21 inches, took Leonardo da Vinci several years to complete.
Such protracted working methods are sometimes appropriate. They can generate paintings imbued with the gravity and power that a swift approach might not produce. In other cases, however, putting endless hours into a painting may simply indicate a desperate struggle. It may mean that a painter is trying one method after another in the hopes of creating a coherent work of art, or reaching some unrealistic ideal.
Grappling endlessly with a problematic painting can be frustrating and dispiriting, sucking the joy out of artmaking.
If finishing a painting is a struggle, the following suggestions might help you resolve your work and rediscover some ease and joy in the studio.
Stop when you’ve said what you wanted to say
Before you begin a painting, make a clear decision about the concept that you’d like to explore. Whether your work is representational or abstract, it’s helpful to start an artwork with an organizing idea.
If you’re painting flowers, your idea might be to show the uniqueness of each bloom in a bouquet. You won’t have achieved your goal—and finished the painting—until you’ve used small brushes to depict the veins and eccentric angles of individual petals and leaves.
Conversely, you might decide to show the dazzling color harmonies of the bouquet as a whole. This goal could be realized by applying rich color with big brushes and avoiding detail entirely. When the colors sing, your work might be complete. If you find yourself veering into extraneous detail, refer back to your initial, broad concept and stop any unnecessary tinkering.
Look at the painting with fresh eyes
To get you a fresh perspective on your painting, you may need to take a break from it. Instead of forcing yourself to resolve the work, put your painting on the backburner for a few days or even weeks. You’ll gain some necessary distance and will be able to see the canvas more objectively. When you return to the painting, you might discover that it’s not as flawed as you thought. Areas that were a source of frustration might not bother you after a cooling-off period, and you’ll often have a new idea for how to complete the piece.
Another way to see the work anew is to enlist simple technology. Looking at your painting in a mirror can help you see errors in composition and proportion. Along with doubling your viewing distance, mirrors also reverse images. These effects will expose underlying problems with the painting’s structure.
Similarly, examining the painting upside down, or in a photograph, can also be useful for gaining a fresh perspective.
Finding Inspiration
Happy Sunday friends! Today is the last day of January, and I am ready for February! We had a lot of snow this morning in Ohio (about 4-5 inches and it is STILL snowing!). My daughters played outside almost the entire day and it was amazing! Now everyone is back inside, cozy and by the fire.
Besides playing out in the snow this weekend, I have been brainstorming lots of ideas for new paintings. It has been super fun and exciting.
How to Find Inspiration
I am so inspired right now and I want to share with you a couple different ways to come up with new ideas in case you are feeling stuck and uninspired. Trust me I go through these moments also.
This is what I do to find inspiration and it really works. I hope it helps you to find inspiration for your next artwork.
Look through books and magazines .
Look through your personal photos for ideas for inspiration. What do you have a lot of pictures of on your phone? I have so many landscapes, flowers and sailboats. I am constantly playing around with my favorite subject matter and trying to come up with new compositions and pairings in my sketchbook. Think about doing a daily painting challenge. This by far has been the best way for me to get ideas. Painting something everyday has been the most effective way I have figured out ideas and discovered my personal style. If you have not tried it yet, I highly recommend it!
Sometimes when I feel totally lost on what to do, I look at some of my favorite paintings by Vincent van Gogh , Claude Monet, Fairfield Porter and Henri Matisse. I look at why I like certain paintings and then I begin making color charts of the colors I see in their paintings and look at their subject matter. My latest painting series I am working on is inspired by looking at some of my favorite paintings and thinking of ways to make something my very own but inspired by it. Maybe it is using similar colors in my painting or painting the same subject matter but in my own style. Find out what you love about your favorite painters and figure out a way to make it your own (no copying!)
