4 Obstacles you face when Painting and their Solutions
1. Stuck for images?
Unsplash is full of free beautifully photographed images you can use. But before you do, consider point 2.
2. Subject Overwhelm?
If you've no idea what subject you want to paint and all that unlimited choice stops you from even getting started, think of applying limits. Give yourself a theme to work within - maybe it's buildings, landscapes or portraits. Take the overwhelm away and narrow the scope.
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3. No time?
It's very easy to put the brushes away and spend our time elsewhere and prioritise other activities limited, but you don’t need to spend an entire day painting for it to be worthwhile - try reducing the scale, choose to deliberately loosen up or set yourself a time limit - even 20 minutes is enough to work on your art.
4. Getting past getting Started?
Choose your medium depending on your set up. If you have a designated place at home for painting, you can easily keep the oil paints and canvas out, dipping in and out of a painting. But if you're setting and clearing things up each time you're painting and find that stops you getting started, choose a more portable medium:
Use a watercolour portable palette instead of tubes or choose sketchbooks over a canvas. If working in acrylics, reduce the number of brushes and colours so it's not as much of an obstacle to getting yourself set up to begin with.
Finally, tell yourself you only have to commit to 15 minutes - if after that time you don’t want to continue, don’t. However, usually, those 15 minutes gets you past the main hurdle which is getting starting in the first place and you’ll want to keep working.
Hopefully one of these techniques will help, but do hit the comments section and tell me what is your biggest obstacle and let’s problem solve it together!
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ForM is by far my favourite group exhibition of the year to visit and I am honoured to have been one of artists involved in it this year.
If you missed the exhibition, here’s a round up.