Something out of Nothing
It can be difficult to imagine what your paintings might look like when they’re finished. When you begin with an empty sketchbook or blank canvas, there are so many ways they can go, it’s almost endless. How do you decide the direction to take? In my own work, I like to let doing the work show the way. I have a creative process that allows me to begin very simply and build step by step until I approach finished work.
Rather than imagining a finished end point, I let the process guide the way. Using this approach, I avoid having preconceived ideas of what the finished paintings will look like, giving me a lot of freedom to experiment within the process but still working towards a goal.
You might want to make a seascape painting, you have sketches or photos that give an idea of a direction to go in. But you need more than a static image to work from, otherwise you’ll end up with paintings that are increasingly static. Like photocopies of photocopies, ever deteriorating. The studio work needs to be experimental so that it’s work in it’s own right. Each piece a further development of the one before, referring to your original sketches or photos but not slaves to them.
This is why it’s important to collect as much material as possible when you’re outside. Whether that’s sketches, photos or written notes. This way you can recreate the experience of what it was like to be in a place, rather than just recording what it looked like.
This is how I make my own work and also what I teach in my courses. In this video I go through the process I use from initial sketching to working in the studio. Watch Now >>>
