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Loosen Up!!
Loosening Up and Letting Your Painting Skills Flow
 

Madeleine Jacobs
www.ArmChairPaintClasses.com   

Tip 1. Use the 'opposite' hand:
If you're left-handed, put your brush in your other hand, and if you're right-handed, put it in your left. It'll feel weird and you'll want to go back and use your correct hand again, but don't do that. Stick with the opposite hand. It will force you into opposite brain mode and therefore, a more creative one.

Tip 2. Work in the dark:
I don't think pitch dark is a good idea :) but reduced dark maybe where you work more by feel and you can use your pencil or brush to follow an outline of what you have in your head and draw and paint it on canvas. Then you are going by an ideal, not following and exact photo replica.

Tip 3. Leave stuff out:
For some reason, our minds can fill in details (in pictures and in books) so we don't really need to put in all the details in a painting. So you can look at your photo before you decide to paint and decide what is important to put in and what is not; then you can decide later if more detail is needed or not.

Tip 4. Don't paint outlines:
If you do this, it will look like a cartoon character or a coloring book. Outlines, as I see it, are needed only as a general rule when drawing a basic sketch to get a general placement for the design of the painting. The outlines should be faint and easily painted over.

Tip 5. Let the paint drip:
Have fun with dripping paint! And sloshing! and splashing! and splattering! and don't clean it up, either. Just make sure you have a place bit enough to do this in. Your kitchen or living room might not be the best place for an application of splattering and splashing and having this much fun :)

Tip 7. Paint with water:
If you're working with watercolor, fill in your area with clean water first and clean apply with water color paint next. The paint will flow int all the places where the water was applied first. This is fun to watch bercause the paint will flow into the previoius wet areas and if you have more than one color, the mixing is inpredictable and interesting. While still damp, add a slight sprinkling of table salt; that will add another interesting twist to the mix.

Tip 8. Apply masking fluid:
Masking fluid is not something I've used a lot, but it's something you DO need to keep on hand when you are working with watercolor and are needed to block something out that you do not want to have painted over accidentally. Like something small that you can't paint around. Like teeth in a portrait. You can then paint freely safe in the knowledge that your white petals will appear while and clean when you rub off the masking fluid (do it as soon as your painting is dry; it becomes harder to remove the longer it's on the paper; I know....I've often left mine on too long and have torn off the paper). Masking fluid can be applied with a toothbrush in a spattering technique and then you can use the following tip to apply paint. When dry, you can remove the mask and have some interesting spaces left behind!

Tip 9. Use a BIG brush:
Painting with a big brush makes it hard to put down detail. A big brush encourages you to use your whole arm to make broad, sweeping strokes. Use a flat brush not a round one because you're wanting to increase significantly the width of the painting strokes you make. Sometimes, I've even uses a brush as large as 3 inches which can make some very interesting detail.

Tip 10. Use a really long brush:
Take a stick at a yard stick and then tape it to a regular brush. Put a large piece of paper on the floor. Now paint as if you were in kindergarten. The long brush handle accentuates the movement of your hand and arm, creating longer sweeps on the paper than what you'd normally make. Don't try to try to stop and correct this or control it. Just let it flow. Now, do the same thing with a pencil, or a pastel stick. The idea is to see what kind of designs you get.

Use a flat brush not a round one because you're wanting to increase significantly the width of the painting strokes you make. If you feel that the brush is too thick, cut half the hairs off with a pair of scissors. (This is easier to do with a cheap decorating brush than a artist's quality brush!)

You need to mix up a lot more paint than you'd usually use because the brush will pick up a lot more. You want paint using the entire width of the brush or it defeats the object of using a large brush. Work on a large sheet of paper (at least half a sheet or full) or a large canvas.

This exercise works with any subject. In figure painting, it makes you concentrate on pose and shape rather than details such as wrinkles because the brush you're using doesn't allow you to paint such small lines. In a still life of a vase of flowers, you can't get caught up painting tiny, neat, individual petals but the tip or edge of the brush will still give convincing gestures that'll capture the essence of the petals.

It also helps to set a time limit, say 20 minutes, to force you to concentrate on get the whole of the picture down quickly and then stop. Your painting may feel 'unfinished' but it'll help you think about what makes you decide when a painting is finished (and stop you reworking what you've done). It's often hard to know when to stop, and endlessly reworking a painting usually destroys its liveliness.

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