Oil Painting: 3 Keys to Formulating An Idea

When you are approaching a subject, or deciding to paint experimentally, based purely on feeling, it is often helpful to ground the work in an idea. Most of my paintings have been done from memory, so always the dreamlike quality of memory is one of the subjects of my paintings.
Here are 3 Key Concepts to guide you toward a more powerful and cohesive work of art.

1. Base the work on one set of emotions, but challenge it with opposing emotions.
2. Keep a philosophy in mind.
3. If working from life, remember your subject is only a representation of reality, and in the end will be a symbol.

Take the above painting, "Red Light" as an example. My goal was to paint the idea of walking through a city alone, sometime outside of a normal time of day, a time of tension, like 2 a.m. or something, but my interest was not in painting a 'night' scene, rather I wanted to conjure the idea of reflecting light from all around and create a feeling of 'timelessness.'
The emotions - I'll call them that- I had in mind were a blend of individuality and strength; but challenging those feelings, were loneliness and desperation. I was thinking of all the cities I've walked alone in at night throughout the world just trying to make sense of life. The philosophy I had in mind was that we are all in a sense struggling on our own.
It being a cityscape, another main psychological component of the painting is the tension between man and the city of course - I wanted a sense of power and chaos challenging any feelings of beauty.
Now, if I had painted this scene from a photograph or from life I would have arrived at something completely different, and I often paint that way if I am inclined or studying, but ultimately the feeling of memory and transcendence that is evident in this cityscape is was makes it feel 'real' and alive.

 

Related Posts: 
What's Your Painting's Story?
Painting As Music - An Introduction
Developing Your Painting Process Part 1
Painting Infinity and Symbolism

Painting the Dominant Theme-Painting As Music Pt. 1

Oil Painting: 3 Thoughts

Endings- Know where you are headed and balance repetition and variation. It may change, but try to keep in mind where that final stroke will be, where are our eyes headed.

To be successful, all drama requires opposition. When I paint, I consider everything is in opposition, color, stroke, energy, line, format, shape, subject. Smash things together. Don't be gentle, beauty will rise from and feel the tension of chaos.

Colors should have experience. I'm not a fan of the put it down and leave it school. Get in there and rough it up, get lost, and find your way out through painting, you must learn from the act of painting, give yourself fully.

Oil Painting: On Space and Time Part 1

What do I mean by defining and having control over Space and Time in painting, or for that matter in any art? 

Typically, you don't start off with a misshapen piece of canvas or paper, you start off with a shape, more often than not, a rectangle or a square. 

You have defined space and begin reflecting on your subject, the way the eye moves around a square vs. a rectangle are different and bring to mind varying emotional states and ideas.

Always remember, "What are you painting and why?" Think of your piece as a piece of music with an intro, a developmental section-often broken into various parts- a climax, and an end. In screenplay, movie or novel terms, your hero, your main idea, is beginning a journey. You must choose shape and size first, then how do you begin to break down the shape into sections and guide the eye?

Time is controlled with all of the elements of art, you have the opportunity to define them in each piece, create a key or a map, everything represents something special to the work. Think of what goes into a musical composition, somehow, the whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, etc... mean different things in different pieces, Bach, Beethoven, U2, James Taylor, Classical to Hip Hop, Folk to Metal, they all use the same notes but they have a completely different meaning.

Each song is defined in its first moments, then develops, grows, comes to an end. The rhythm and tempo reflect on the words, the words on the feelings, and all comes together to make the piece work, to allow the listener to follow along with the idea of the artist. Make sure we can somehow follow your ideas, give us an opening idea your work hinges on, create a sense of rhythm and tempo with a recognizable series of intervals, whether it be through shapes, lines, colors, or values or something else, give us an idea of what is to come...

Part 2 will further explore specifics...

Evolution & 5 Key Concepts

If you want to learn to really paint, and not just mimic a style or copy the world or pictures of it, you have come to the right place.

Everything you do will make you better. Move forward, learn, grow. Don't worry about over-painting, you must go through that wall over and over again to get at something new. Hesitation will hold you back.

A great artist with a piece of charcoal and a scrap of paper can say so much, can in effect, describe the world, and everything in it.

Begin today by limiting variables.

If you are not yet in full control of your materials, you must take a hard look at what's in your way. How many colors are you using and why? How many brushes? Knives? Mediums? Do you know why you are using this and that, what it does?

Today and tomorrow, think about simplification, subordinating all thoughts and complexity to pure feeling. What you want at the end of your next few sessions, if not all your painting sessions is to be looking at something raw, real, full of feeling and human nature. Evolve onto the canvas.

Start with just black maybe, or just red, or blue, or yellow. Do a 10 minute study of the energy of something immediately available, something solid, or paint a quick sketch of your face. How are you feeling, that's all that matters, not what you look like, but how you are feeling.

1.Power: A painting must be alive, what the painting is about should be in every aspect of the painting, it must embody the power of the subject and be infused through and through with the one feeling the piece is actual about.

2.Energy: Similar to power, but maybe mellow, soft, calm, depends on what you like to paint, how you feel, and how you want to express yourself, works of art span the spectrum of feelings. Some artists seek to disturb, some to offer peace, my goal is to stimulate people to clarity and understanding by translating my real feelings of existence into paint.

3.Weight: What is the substance being considered in your work? Are you painting a sky? Buildings? People? As painters we're all too often thinking about light, shadow, and color, but you must feel the weight of things to get at a new sense of reality.

4.Direction: Everything about a painting has direction, even if it is merely implied:line, value, color, brush stroke, shape, everything in one way or another changes as it moves and develops across the canvas. Everything must be controlled in the end, but during the process of creating you must in some ways be out of control, so let it go and bring it back, let it go and bring it back, just be conscious of the way all aspects of the painting are moving the viewers eyes in this way or that, and why.

Don't fear mistakes, you will only get better.

5.Stimulus and Response: Everything is connected, you are telling a story that maybe only you understand, like improvisational music, a dialogue is going on in your unconscious, let it flow but stay connected, act and react again and again, stop thinking, think, stop thinking, think. How do you respond to a hard black line? With a small soft one, or with an equally hard line in the opposite direction. Interacting with a painting is like interacting with people, what is the energy of the piece. Point-Counterpoint, Peace and Struggle, Strong and Weak, Strong and strong.

Are you fighting with yourself or flowing? What are you feeling today? Be yourself, fighting or flowing, let us feel it, be real, become on the canvas.

Show us who you are, evolve now on the canvas and show us your evolution.