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Relaxed painting.
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Message
Posted
I was nit sure what to call this thread , hopefully it will make sense as we go along .
A friend told me that I’m good a painting trees , and asked how in go about painting them I mentioned in the discussion thst I actually feel very relaxed when I paint trees. This lead me to thinking about what I paint and what I feel particularly relaxed when painting, trees we have already mentioned but when I started to think about it I always feel very relaxed when I’m painting boats be it sailing barges, tugs or cargo ships . It can’t be the actual sailing as I get sea sick on a duck pond, but I do love the shapes and the way they look with all the rigging etc.
I had a bit of a shock recently when I decided thst I wanted to paint a white horse , the proceeds is on the forum and the painting up in my gallery. Despite it been for me a difficult subject to paint especially as I didn’t want to use white paint when it came to doing the painting I felt extremely relaxed no that I think back on doing it.
I love to sketch horses and have a book of sketch’s I’m doing for my younger granddaughters, I’ve always found sketches relaxing but I could nit get over feeling relaxed when I was doing a complicated painting. So my question is , well two actually .
a) does anyone else feel relaxed when painting , drawing specific things
b) is it because you lime the subject and know it well.
Please tell me I’m not odd well no more odd than usual that is .
I would love to hear that others have a similar experience and what subjects you find relaxing to do.
Posted
I have the same feelings if I am painting or sketching something new or familiar. It's a combination of relaxation, fear, anxiety, happiness, sadness. reward, all emotions rolled up in a ball. When you're a kid and look at the moon, it's out of reach but you would like to go there. For me, I am on the moon and just started to explore, that's how magnificent, art feels to me. I don't know how to round off that emotion. It is an emotion, I've never felt before. I guess everyone feels like that when they discover art.
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by Denise Cat
Posted
I'm most at ease when drawing from my imagination, I tend to get a little up-tight when copying something, the old hands get wobbly. This is a disadvantage because there are many times when copying something would improve things. Drawing cartoons and caricature style provides me with an escape from this need. Caricature, in my personal lexicon of art terms, means drawing cartoons in more detail rather than caricatures of faces. But I do want to do things other than cartoons and caricature, and that's when the unease sets in. At the moment I want to replace two pictures that have been on my wall for ten years or so. They aren't cartoons. I can't think what to do, numerous sketched thumbnails of ideas have failed to get me going. Whilst thinking of these, I've been able to sit down at my sketchbook and happily draw the first thing that comes into my mind.
None of this is in any way serious. I don't draw and paint to sell, merely for my own amusement, so what does it matter when I mess things up? I suppose it matters a bit, or I wouldn't have mentioned it.
So for me...relaxed when cartooning or sketching random items...unrelaxed for everything else. But whether relaxed or unrelaxed it's still an absorbing pursuit.
Edited
by Lewis Cooper
Posted
Interesting discussion folks. At first I thought , well I’m relaxed when painting, full stop, unless not going well. I do think this is generally the case, whatever the subject, or I wouldn’t be doing it. Some results are obviously better, or at least more satisfying, than others.
Then I remembered some of the challenges set in our weekly art group, usually a still life or maybe to paint an abstract or make a collage. None of these do I enjoy and therefore I’m not relaxed trying them, and they often get binned or painted over! That makes my weekly session sound unenjoyable but it’s not because I enjoy the company of people who have become friends over a number of years, and mostly we just produce what we individually choose to!
i imagine that most of us posting here paint because we enjoy it.
I decided during one period of lockdown, when I looked through how many paintings I had produced in recent years, that I didn’t seek to exhibit any more, although I will with our little group. It was a relief at the time not to have to think about framing with the cost and bother that involved for oils. I also decided that I would concentrate on quality rather than quantity, to maybe go bigger and thus produce less but better work during the year. I’m certainly doing the ‘less’, not sure about the ‘quality’! This may change. At present not producing much but constantly waiting for weather for Plein air work.
Edited
by Tessa Gwynne
Posted
I suppose we all paint for the same reason, because we enjoy it. My only rule is that I have to like looking at the finished picture when it's on my wall so I do tend to keep returning to the same subjects, pretty young women, trains and landscapes. I generally don't paint men because I wouldn't want to have the picture on the wall. I do enjoy trying to copy great pictures from the past in my own way.
However a change does you good so a friend at art group and I set each other a challenge at the beginning of each month, taking turns........we choose a subject and both paint it. She tends to use water colour and I use acrylics so the results can look very different but it's fun and we both end up painting things we wouldn't normally consider. It also gives the other members of the group a good laugh!
Art needs to be relaxing, we're doing it for fun after all. I take the view that a picture needs to please me and if other people like it that's a bonus. When they do it's a great feeling!
Posted
We must have been writing at the same time Peter. I like your idea of you and your friend setting a subject for each other! I also like the monthly challenge photos in The Artist magazine which I have started doing, though not necessarily in the medium suggested.
During 2020/21 when there was no art group , we did an online monthly subject, which I found fun. Subjects included dance, junk, the contents of your kitchen cupboard etc!
Posted
It looks like we were Tessa! I belong to two art groups and neither tries to tell us what to paint so Sue and I just started doing it ourselves...it began as a one off and just carried on. In May it's my choice and I've got a lovely picture of Ribblehead viaduct with a steam train crossing it....she'll hate that but in April I had to paint a red bird sitting among red blossom, not my sort of thing at all.
It's all good fun and it stops us getting stale.
Posted
Our art class did something that was both challenging and fun. We were each given an A4 size canvas (we could chose any medium we wanted) and a photocopy of a section of a MUCH larger photograph which we never saw. All pretty obscure, we were asked to keep to pretty much what we saw (particularly colours) but I can tell you each A4 copy had very little context. After 2 weeks we handed them in and then the art teacher put them all together and reformed the photo for us all to see both what it was and how our paintings worked together. Extraordinary to see it - covered about 8 feet by 14 feet. And it worked! Definitely took me out of my comfort zone.
Posted
Heather, we used to do that each year in my watercolour art class at Christmas, but we did it all in one morning. It was fun trying to guess who the artist was and which painting it was - and, as you say, it was amazing to see how all the individual pieces came together so well.
Edited
by Jenny Harris
Posted
I felt most relaxed when I painted around Christmas (I did not know the forum then) very small format cards, so max 15x12cm about size. I knew: 1. paper no matter if it's nothing. still have so much paper to make cards. 2. waste of paint: no, so small pictures - little material. 3. you can throw them away if they have become nothing - no matter. 4. you don't have to give them to anyone. 5. do small experiments, duudle, christmas trees, snowflakes, etc.. I had taken away all fears, with the small format - and had the greatest desire to try out different things - and most "Kärtli" are actually even good enough to give away:) What also reassures me: color swatches to create! No idea why, but it calms me immensely. It's like painting a mandala: think nothing of it, just color in the squares:) hihi
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Posted
Well a big thanks to everyone for joining int he thread , I though it would be one of those that disappear without any comments.
It’s really interesting to hear what people feel and experience when they paint . Like Denise I find it totally absorbing when I’m sat there with a brush or pencil, time just melts away , I tend to forget aches and pains to be honest I forget what’s going on around me. I started painting when I was recovering from a spinal injury, despite the difficulty of physically doing anything I found it relaxing even back. When I work in daycare I used art group as a means of relaxing for mental health clients and learning disability. I do think that if you can relax when you paint you get a better result , it somehow shows in your work thst leads to another question, is it the painting that relaxes you and you het a better result or is it been relaxed that creates a better painting. I bet there is no real answer to that .
Edited
by Paul (Dixie) Dean
Posted
Very interesting to read what everyone says..I'm quite an anxious person and I find that painting as well as being outdoors (sometimes both at the same time!) are when I feel most relaxed. I'm a bit of a panicker over finding time to fit it all in... but it's no good if you then feel too uptight to paint! It's a bit of a cycle I think which ties in with your last question Paul. As for subjects I agree that familiarity with a subject can help you get into the 'zone' as it were - for me my most comfortable subjects are probably trees and water. Like others have said it's good to get out of your comfort zone too, even if it's just by switching medium.
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