Solving compositional problems in paintings

I’m starting a proper blog. I hate myself. "Don’t try and write it with a tuxedo on" is Will Cox’s tip for a good bit of writing. 

I’ll try.

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So I asked on Insta stories if I was to start a blog - what do people want to read about. The two people who replied so far voted for 'painting/creative process insights'. So, Sarah G and Darcy Green… this is for you guys. Haha. 

I thought I’d start with one of the tricks I use for solving paintings that aren’t behaving themselves. Please keep in mind that I’m just sharing my own process here. I really do think that the most interesting art comes from people leaning into their own thing. So I’m just sharing this on the chance that something that works for me might work for you in some way - or lead to something else that might help your own process.

To step back a bit first - this first trick works for me because I keep the first steps in painting pretty open. I might have something vaguely in mind that I want to play with - a colour, a technique that plays with backdrop lighting, some sort of form, some sort of texture. But that’s about it. I try not to go into a painting with an outcome in mind. The few times I’ve done that (like when I’ve had to recreate a piece), it kind of feels like the magic drains out of it... Everyone’s values and processes are going to be different, of course. This is just how things go for me.

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Starting feral

So there’s the fun part at the start - my friend Lana Daubermann would call this part ‘intuitive’. I start with the vague thing that sparked my interest in the first place (ie, a colour) - and I try to paint as unapologetically as possible. By that I mean - not thinking about it analytically - keeping it playful. At this point I often try to bring in gesture - so, paint strokes that hold personality, and aren’t constrained by what’s needed for a finished composition.

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Moving on to 'solving' mode

Once I feel like I’ve ‘caught’ something worth holding onto (ie a bit of the painting I particularly like) - I move on to starting to ‘solve’ the painting around that element.

What do I mean by ‘solve’? I mean - finding a way to finish the painting that manages to keep (and hopefully expand on) the things that I like about it from when I was in ‘feral’ mode. For me, that means it needs to end up looking cohesive somehow - in composition and colour. Sometimes this is easy and a painting finishes quickly. But sometimes a painting will misbehave (I like to call the impossible ones ‘cursed canvases’) - and I need a few tricks to help me solve them. Since I’m working in abstract - the composition of the piece can vary a LOT. So it means having to look at each piece’s strengths and weaknesses each time. It’s hard to explain what I mean by ‘strength and weakness’- pretty much the composition feels right - it feels strong - like it’s not contrived, but it still has some sort of balance…

If I had to describe weakness - one example for me is when a stand-out feature (a shape, a dividing line, a noticeable colour, a strong gesture) is sitting in the middle of the painting. It never feels right. It somehow feels too obvious and purposeful. A LOT of artists will disagree - but this is just what my brain says. So if I ever accidentally do this, I have to find ways to fix that - whether it’s moving that point (most likely), or (if there’s something there that I love and really want to preserve) I try to bring the eye away from the centre. Below is an example of a piece with a feature in the centre that I decided to preserve. This was initially a white patch - but I pushed it back with a wash so that I didn’t have to mess with the rest of the painting. Now the eye is drawn towards the light patch on the bottom right, or the dark patch on the left. I do still think about that centre piece when I look at it, but the rest of the piece is so raw and wild, I felt it was worth it for this one.

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Compositional tip: Rotate the canvas

The trick I’ll talk about today for solving 'weakness' is rotating the canvas. I do this one on pretty much every piece. I tip the canvas upside down and look at the piece again. This lets me look with ‘fresh eyes’. It also does this magical thing of bringing negative space to your attention more. For example, you might have a good shape that you were focused on, but when you tip the painting upside down, you can see that the area around that shape is awkward in some way. After noticing that, you might go back into the original shape you were working on, but tweak it, so that the negative space around it also looks good. 

If that makes sense?

Sometimes with super tricky ones I’ll tip the canvas 45 degrees and work on it in every direction till I’m back to my preferred way up. And that final way up might even end up being a different way than when I first started the painting.

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More tips to come. Cheers for reading. If anyone finds this handy or has any other post topic requests, please do let me know.

xxx

-c