If your paintings look overworked and lack spontaneity, Gerald Green has some advice that will help you keep immediacy in your work.
Most people do not paint to deadlines, unless working on a commission. The natural inclination is to take all the time you have at your disposal, and there may appear to be no reason not to. But the time you think you need, compared to the time you actually need, may be quite different.
Productivity
The inclination to strive for a more authentic interpretation can put you in real danger of painting the life out of your subjects. Setting a time limit is a very useful way to offset this tendency. This does not mean rushing the painting process, but finding ways of working more productively. The result is likely to be more spontaneous, instinctive and less laboured.
To achieve this you will need to be well organised, both in practical terms and in how you think about what you are going to do. Be clear at the outset exactly what it is about your subject that you want to portray, because this will focus your concentration and, in turn, reduce the necessity of having to waste time by constantly reassessing things. Think of it like planning a route for a journey in order to avoid several stops and time consuming changes of direction.
Christine, watercolour sketchbook study, 12x16in (30.5x40.5cm)
Time taken – ten minutes.I began with a brief pencil drawing then, using a complementary palette of ultramarine blue and burnt sienna, I laid in the coloursin a direct way, working out from the face, my focal point, in oneapplication, blending the colours on the paper. The remainder ofthe figure is mostly a negative shape contained by the darkerbackground forms, which I kept understated to retain the dominance of the face and head
Decisive
Adopt a more decisive approach: paint in a direct, thoughtful and considered manner. Get used to laying in your colours in a single application in which you try to get both the colour and its relative tonal value correct.
Resist the temptation to retouch, neaten, or tidy elements that you might consider less than perfect. This will allow the immediacy of the medium to come through and will give your painting vitality. I produced the study of one of my students, Christine (left), during a painting workshop. I knew the subject would be unlikely to remain still for long, so I had to work decisively, suggesting elements rather than depicting them in detail. The result is a spontaneous study that catches the essence of the sitter’s concentration. Studies like these have to be done relatively quickly and will force you to concentrate on the essentials of your subjects.
Painting against the clock
Male Nude, watercolour study on Bockingford cream toned paper, (38x28cm). Set time – five minutes.
For this time-constrained study I used burnt sienna and lamp black, blocking in the colours directly and as near to their correct tonal values as I could, while also generally simplifying the forms.
Time-constrained studies are a particularly productive way of refining your observational skills and correcting a tendency for elaboration or fussiness. Life studies are excellent genres for this treatment, they become more about establishing what the figure is doing, rather than how it is put together. Five- or ten-minute gesture studies, produced at the beginning of a session, can be useful warm-up exercises that will help you to tune in to your subject. They are particularly effective when done as monochrome, two-colour complementary, or near complementary watercolour sketches. They can be further enlivened when produced on grey, cream or oatmeal toned paper, with individual highlights in white gouache or Conté. For Male Nude (right) I concentrated only on trying to get a sense of the lighting across the figure, without worrying about defining individual features. I also varied my edge treatment as I went along, reducing the definition of the less important ones by blending them into the background, to further simplify the image.
Painting outdoors
When painting outdoors there is the additional difficulty of having to adapt to changes in the light. The movement of the sun will, over one-and-half hours, radically alter the distribution of tonal values in your subject, making it virtually impossible to continue working on the same painting. In order to finish something in a single sitting you will have to adapt to working productively, decisively and directly. Help yourself by choosing a relatively straightforward subject and work to a manageable size. If you are new to painting outside, I recommend you start by working quite small: A4 size is a good format for a watercolour, or you could go even smaller for oils, 8x6in (20.5x15cm). My preferred size for outdoor watercolour work is 12x16in (30.5 x40.5cm), as it is a convenient size pad to carry around. For oil studies I use 14x12in (35.5x30.5cm) or 12x9in (30.5x23cm), in conjunction with a pochade box. An alternative is to make sketchbook studies, as in Water’s Edge (above, top), to record the general characteristics of your subjects, which you can then use as the basis for more considered studio paintings. Producing on-the-spot studies in a restricted palette of two or three colours will considerably simplify the process
The successfulness of such studies is best judged a day or so later. By then the detailed memory of the actual scene has faded and you have the advantage of a fresh eye.
Rio San Barnaba Venice, watercolour on Arches Rough paper, (40.5x30.5cm). Painting time – just over one hour.
Coping with continuous changes in your subject is a necessity when working outside. As well as the constant movement on the canal, the shadow on the line of the left-hand buildings gradually moved downwards and towards me. The three shaded faces of these buildings became progressively darker and one of the foreground boats moved away
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