Overcoming Perfectionism in your Painting

1. Welcome + Class Project: Welcome. Do you aspire to paint with loose competence but sometimes struggle with perfectionism in your painting. In this class, you will learn three painting methods you can use to help you loosen up, push past stiff, grouchy paintings with a focus on painting a subject based on reality. This class will help you to loosen up and express yourself with intuition, gesture, and fun. My name is Kristin chronic and I am your teacher today as a self-proclaimed perfectionist, I have to actively let go. In, in this class, you'll learn a few ways that you can do. I had been working artists since 2018 and I paint nearly every day. My work is represented in both local and regional galleries and often uses intuitive and expressive mark-making. When I started to let go of perfectionism in my work, it transformed my paintings. I also teach art at a local university. And if there's one thing that lights me up as much as painting, paying for the care so many artists gave me early in my journey. By the end of this class, you'll have three methods of painting you can turn to when you are feeling stuck by perfectionism. I know firsthand how crippling perfectionism can feel. I want to share with you a few techniques that have helped me loosen up. And in turn, I hope they can bring gesture and fun into your paintings as well. This class is for painter of any level. Perfectionism can bog down any painter from beginner, seasoned professional. If you have never held a brush, this class may not be for you. It is necessary to be at least a little bit familiar with your chosen medium. You will need the paint of your choosing. The techniques I share work best with opaque paints, such as acrylic, gouache or oil. I will be using gouache for these exercises. You will also need a wider brush, preferably between one-half inch in 1 " and a surface to paint on. I will be painting on nine inch by 12 inch watercolor paper. And that's about the perfect size for these exercises. First, you will learn a little bit about perfectionism, as well as a few cues to watch out for. You can use those cues to remind you to return to one of these lessons to help you snap out of it. We will work together then on three exercises you can use to lose snap. These paintings are not meant to be completed paintings, rather as sketches to get your hands moving. However, if you've loved how one turns out, you can totally use it as a finished painting with or without a few tweaks. That's really who says they can't be finished paintings. Your class project will be one of the pieces that you make in the exercises. You don't need to do all of them to feel the benefits. So choose your favorite or all three. I'm so excited to have you here today. Let's go ahead and get started. 2. About Perfectionism : How do you know if you're struggling with perfectionism? Something tells me if you are here, then you may already have a sense that you need help with. It really impacts your creativity for the better. So let's take a deeper look. Making careful paintings with attention to detail is not the same as perfectionism. Perfectionism is a feeling you, as the artist are unable to meet your own expectations. It's usually coming from the inside. It can really hinder your creativity. A few telltale symptoms or perfectionism include tension, frustration, dread, avoidance, shame, and overall just beating yourself up if not productive. And they usually stops whatever creative ideas you have before they have a chance to start. One thing that helps me is to look at painting as a curious experiment. It can be easy to consider the outcome of the painting equivalent to our success as artists or worse as humans. But when you see your painting does experiments, it's a lot easier to detach yourself emotionally from the outcome. It's kind of cool. Another very common symptom of perfectionism and painting is going over the same spot again and again and again. If you've ever done this, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The exercises we are about to explore will help break you out of that rut. But it's also worth mentioning that there are some non-steady unrelated things you can do as well. When you begin to feel that heat buildup. Take a minute just to calm down, breathe, walk away from the easel. Even if just for a few minutes. It is extremely hard to fake when you feel frustrated and overwhelmed. And just that small step can be a great place to start. Artist's block is another event that can stem from perfectionism when you're feeling bogged down beginning it exactly right. It can be hard to take any action at all. This class, we won't go into artist's block in detail. And perfectionism is not the only factor. But if you feel you may be in one, these exercises Vegas help you loosen up and enjoy the making process. There are many valid ways of making art and it can be helpful to grasp any creative pursuit is a lifelong journey. Slowing down to just appreciate the journey and embrace the growth you've already overcome. Even if that's simply buying your first set of supplies, It's always a great idea to celebrate. Next, allow your paintings, just to be paintings. You have to paint and hyper realism to make great art. They don't have to be exact or like a photograph. If you are drawn to paint realism or hyper realism, that is great. But even in those genres, there's space for letting go a little bit. But there are also a lot of other different styles of painting that might be just as if not more effective in communicating what you're thinking or feeling. Maybe you find it easier to communicate with more of an impressionist expression as our abstract style of painting. These styles tend to celebrate the evidence of the maker's hand with the brush strokes intact. Take a Pinterest deep dive in some of these styles the next time you're scrolling and allow yourself just to feel inspired. Finally, trust the process. I will cover a few processes that you can turn to in this class. But if you already have a few go-to approach to painting, lean into it. Head stretched and shake out your arms and gather your supplies. In the next lessons, we will explore some fun exercises you can turn to anytime you need them. 3. Supplies Overview: Before we get started, I'm going to give you a brief overview of the supplies that I'll be using. This is not required. You can use whatever you're comfortable with, but this will give you an idea of what I'm using. It's that way if you do have something similar, you can follow along. First, I'm going to be using my favorite brand of watercolor paper or Fabriano. It's just a big old block that I have and I just like to use for these types of projects. I had a cup of water, have a pencil for later on. I have an older brush. This is by simply Simmons. It's three-quarter inches wide. I haven't found out right now. You can really do it everyone you want. But for this exercise, do you want it to be on the thicker ends, so over half an inch wide if you have one. I'm also going to be using gouache paint. And I'm going to stick to the primaries here. I've got a primary black, primaries, cyan, primary magenta, orange, primary yellow, and primary white. You can use whatever paint you'd like. If you'd like to follow along with acrylics or oils, that would be great if you are used to gouache and you can use that as well. Also wonderful. You can do these exercises and watercolor as well. However, I will not be demonstrating those and they do have a little bit different approach. If you are a watercolor artist, That's great. Just know that you may have to tweak a few things here and they are based off of the media. 4. Exercise One: Speed Painting With a Twist: For this first exercise, we're going to be doing a speed painting. Speed painting is wonderful because it helps us to work on focusing on capturing the essence of the object quickly and without overthinking it. For this exercise, I want you to paint the subject of your choice and less than 10 min, you can go ahead and set a timer. I will be using my own timer and speeding up my paintings so you can follow along. For the subject that you're going to paint. You can choose whatever you would like. If you are currently struggling with something, then that could be a really good opportunity to play with that particular subject. If not, I will have a couple of options available for you to download. These will be simple, clean, still-life objects that range and complexity for whichever one you feel up to doing. For this first speed painting, I am going to paint this cute little cactus and a white pot that I have. I'm pretty proud of it. He's spend grilling really well for about a year. So I thought I would give him his moment to shine. And as a reminder, whenever I'm working on these, this is not a class on color and on any specific painting techniques. So I won't be explaining everything in depth about what I'm doing. This class isn't supposed to be teaching you all of those fundamentals. It is just about the exercise itself. So if you want to follow along, I will be painting this little cactus with gouache paint in 10 min. I haven't pencil here, so I'm just gonna kinda sketch them out real quick just so I can see it. This little white pot. I can just do a few things here and there. I'm not going to include every piece as my cactus here. Just, just the little knobs say I find interesting and also how we're going to worry about too much of the sticky things. I'm going to leave out that that one little guy, there's a couple of little guys over here. I'm gonna leave the mouth. I'm fine. I'm kinda distracting. So I'm just gonna do this here. Okay? Yeah, don't forget the cast shadow. I gave them a yellow yellow background. The background, Here's your cast shadow. Here's your occlusion shadow as nice little dark area. And be reading the arch up. Okay, So this is just the base of my painting. I'm going to put my pencil down and I'm going to start painting. I'm actually, whenever I paint in general, I like to go from dark to light. C is this guy strike? I'm going to do a speed painting. I'm going to work on dark to light. So I'm first going to do what? The shadows of the cactus. I'm going to start with the bright green. And then I'm actually going to dull it down a little bit. A little bit of black and possibly some orange just to kind of, again, this isn't a class and mixing color. But I am going to do a little bit of mixing the way I do along, that's fine. But you do it the way you do it and that is just fine. Okay? I like that. Alright, I'm gonna make some big sweeping marks. It's okay if I cover up some of my drawing. The reason why haven't you use a larger brush for this is so that you can't get too bogged down in details. That's usually one of the main problems about perfectionism is just getting lost in all the details. Okay, hold all those little nugget. That's going to be my my dark green. I'm gonna go ahead and go light green in there. That lighter. Speed painting is so helpful and forcing you to just look and make it very, very fast decision. I'm just getting in some of those highlights. This picture I took was just I've put the cactus on a piece of paper, piece of scrap paper about my front door. So it's really simple setup. Okay. Let me keep this really simple. My brush is pretty clean. I'm going to capture the darks of the soil. Orange and black usually makes it really nice brown. Some people are weird about black. I find black, it's just fine. We will have to use it. There's nothing wrong, there's no bad color. Okay, I'm gonna simplify this because I don't want to include all the details, so I'm just keeping it pretty simple. Pretty simple. How much time do I have? Almost 6 min left? I may not even need 10 min, but if you need more, that is totally fine. Okay. Now going to get the shadow side of this pot. It's a white pot. The shadow sides still has color. So I'm going to start with white. And I'm going to actually make it start with a purple color and probably grade down from there. It's my shadow. I'm adding a little bit of magenta and cyan to make this like nice little purple. And I'm probably just gonna be great. I usually grade on my colors a little bit the opposite of purple and the color wheel is yellow's a little bit of yellow. Orange. I think I like that. This is going to be my shadow side of the pot. I will be able to ingest it a little bit here and there. I'm gonna make a pretty bold sweeping motion with my brush. You'll be feeling this feeling like simple shapes later on. Then I'm in this way, in what I already mixed, a little bit of white. That water is getting kind of muddy, but that's okay. And not have to be exact. I'm just going to do my highlight side of the pot. Then. There's room for it to be a little bit more. Okay. We've got about 4 min left, so I'm going to do a quick rendition of the background now. And I chose like a soft yellow background. So in this movie purple, I'm going to bring up my yellow. It's a bit about like an orange-ish yellow. So I'm adding some orange and some white. This is definitely more of an orange. I think this actually might be a good cache shadow color. So I have this light orange, My out a little bit of black. Not explaining why I'm making these decisions, but if you're interested, you can follow along. So here is this kinda like brownish color. This is going to be my cast shadow. I clean my brush, pick up a little bit of that orange and then bring it over here, I need more light. My palate usually gets kinda messy. I just the biggest thing that I want to make sure I at least like tell a story. I'm not trying to make it perfect or refined. Okay, this is gonna be my background color. Gonna go. These big sweeping motions with this big old brush, CY have pain on my table. Okay. There we go. I'm liking that. I have time. I'm going to make this look whiter. It's a little bit, a little bit too purple. There's actually a cute, I'm saying this is a cute little reflected light in my picture that is bouncing up at the top. So she didn't include that in there. Why have this yellow and maybe that shadow. Okay. Then the background is just a white canvas. I am going to, I actually ended up painting even if it's just white and I'm gonna make it echo the white, the purplish light gray of the pot. I'm not going to worry too much about this being exact. I just want to kind of get it in there. That's all we will have a lot of time. So again, this isn't about this is not about being perfect. It's about training our hands to enjoy loosening up. The dog hair is like doesn't shed too much but it's like it does seem like when he sheds. It's always in my stuff. I don't know how it happens. See how much. I'm not worried about staying in the lines. For me, a lot of the mixing happens on the palette. So whenever I lay things down, It's not too, doesn't have to be perfect. I'm probably almost out of time. So I'm going to keep layering this n. Then I made that pot a little bit too purple. So I'm actually just going to take some white into that purple ish, but may see mostly make it white. And then just bring out the highlights a little bit. Really simply. You know, notice I'm not like painting all the little spines of the cactus year. I'm almost out of time. That's okay. Here we are. That is my 10-minute painting. 5. Exercise One: The Twist: Alright, so now that we have our 10-minute painting, we're going to do part two of this exercise. This is an idea that I was introduced to me by entries would she hosts the saggy painter podcast and it's a wonderful if you care to listen. This is derived from the concept of killing your darlings. And I believe it's a William Faulkner idea who would write lots of words and then destroy them, and then continue on and do it again. The idea is two things. First, it is to not be precious with your work. To view your work as is exploration as curiosity. It's not something that has to be precious. It can be something that you're learning. This is one way that's been really help. The second idea is that when you are, when you let go of the work that you make, you will likely do it better again, you have learned something that first-time you've done it while you're painting is still wet. If you're painting in gouache or acrylic, this may be a quicker process and if you're painting in oil, but I want you to either wipe out or use water to scrub out your painting. I know it's crazy. Yeah, philosophy to it. And I'll see you back here in a second. So I am going to take to some of this muddy water. It doesn't have to be perfect as not to be clean. And I'm going to put water all over it. And I'm gonna get rid of this piece. If you're paying an oil, you can just use a rag and some solvent to wipe it out. If you're painting acrylic, acrylic or gouache, you can do this if your opinion, watercolor. It might be harder because the translucent properties, so I might just have you cut off your painting if you're painting in watercolor, I know crazy, right? Okay, so I have some water on there, I'm going to wipe it out. You can still see it? Since I can still see it. I waited a few minutes for that. I'm actually just going to paint over it with some, some hate them already mixed. Skip a few minutes to dry. So this is my painting that has been painted over. And the final step in this speed painting is to do it again. You've already done it once. And so now you have some stored ideas in your mind about how you can make this work. You also have a pretty cool shadow underneath that will allow for some interesting surprises to come out in your painting. I'm gonna go ahead and do it again as well. I'm going to let you watch, but this time I'm going to speed up the video, but it will be submitted and I will show you the result at the end. Now your turn. Wipe out your painting, and then do another ten minute painting on top. 6. Exercise One: Second Speed Painting: Alright, this painting is mostly dry, so I'm ready to start a new one. The only thing I have done since I paused the video was get some freshwater because it was looking kinda crazy. So if you want to follow along with this 10-minute painting, right, time is up. Every habit. A second, ten minute painting. This time, it was it felt a little bit different. I had a few things that I wanted to change from the first time I painted it. And it was kinda fun to have some of those shadows underneath. So go ahead and set up another ten minute timer and do the painting one more time. I'll see you in the next exercise. 7. Intro to Exercise Two + Mixing Colors: This next exercise, we're going to count our strokes. We're gonna do a painting for different times in as little as strokes as possible. First it's gonna be 20 strokes than 15, then ten and then five. This is where having a thicker brush would be very helpful. The ketone is also, is to mix a few colors ahead of time. For this image, I'm gonna be using a picture of some oranges that you can download in this class. If you have your own method of painting the color orange or mixing the paint that you would like to for this? Absolutely. Go ahead and do that if you want to follow along with me, I will be demonstrating it here. This is where having that palette knife will be a little bit helpful if you'd like to mix along. The first thing we're going to do is take our pencil and watercolor paper and divide it up into four sections. These don't need to be perfect. If you'd like to use a straight edge you make. The point is just to separate your piece of paper so that we can use it for this project. I'm just going to use the straight edge and kind of estimate. It doesn't need to be perfect. This needs to be something that we can use. That looks about right? I am going to write down the strokes for each one is to remind me. So this top one corner, I'm gonna, we're gonna be doing a painting with 20 strokes than 15, then ten, then five. And that's just to remind me. The next step is going to be mixing paint. The background here is white. There is a shadow at the horizon where my floor and background we're kind of meeting. I'm probably gonna ignore that. I'm probably just going to paint it white and we're going to mix the colors that I'm seeing. So again, if you have your own way of doing this, this is not meant to be a, an intense color mixing class. But if you'd like to follow along, you absolutely make so remember, I'm using a primary white, I've got primary yellow. I'm going to add them this orange, obviously orange, oranges, not a primary, it's a mix of magenta and yellow or red and yellow. But I just find it sometimes helpful is a shortcut. Put my blue over here. Then my primary magenta. I'm going to hold off on a black for now unless I can eat it. So if you happen to have a palette knife, you can use it. If not, you can use a popsicle stick or even your brush. I don't always love using the brush because then you get a lot of pain up here in the bristles that I just find it hard to work with. So what I'm gonna do here is just try to condense this orange in my mind into basically like three or four very simple colors. I'm gonna start with the darkest first, which is going to be right at the right where the orange is touching the surface of the paper of the floor of the ground. It's almost like a reddish color. So I'm going to take out some magenta, orange and mix is a super rich color wheel like that. I'm actually leave it the way it is. We'll leave it really strong. The next one I'm seeing is the shadow side of the mandarin orange where there's two stuck together. So this is, again, this is not supposed to be a class on color and it's not supposed to be about that. So I'm not gonna go too much into that, but I'm seeing that side of the shadow to be a darker orange and the possibly a little bit grayer. I'm going to bring out some orange. I still have some magenta on my knife, so I'm going to mix a little of that and kind of see where we're at. Tiny bit of magenta. Then it's starting to get this. This is where it can be kinda funny, but trust the process. I'm at a little bit of blue. So this is a slightly like dirty version of an orange. So blue is the opposite of orange and a color wheel that will basically make it a slightly grayer version. Then I think this might be a little bit dark as well. So I'm actually going to add a tiny bit of white, not too much, just enough to kinda dull it down. I think that's gonna be about right. So this was following along. We have some orange, a tiny bit of magenta, a tiny bit of blue, and then a little bit of light to color. The next color I'm going to mix is the meaty part of the orange with a light is passing through. So light is really cool things, but it goes through something. It can be, it glows and it almost as like a richer color. So again, I want this to be a pretty pure color, orange. And I'm actually going to mix orange and yellow at first to see where we're at because it's a lighter orange. And I like that. I might actually do. A little bit more yellow and just kind of add some drama to this. I really want this to glow. They can sue me a really, really lovely bright orange. And since we only have a few strokes, we have to be pretty judicious about what we're going to all the marks that we're going to make. The next thing I'm seeing on this orange is the more meaty parts of the orange that are against the light. So it's going to be basically a wider version of our yellow orange. I'm just going to move it over here. I already had some orange on. This is the only thing that Mike was just a little bit of leftover orange and yellow. That if you're following along and wonder what the heck I just did, I just didn't do anything. I just added some white to what was already on my nice It's just a little bit of orange or yellow and some white. And I think I think I'm gonna add a little more yellow. This is just me kind of spit balling. She would've follow along. You may. And you can also. I like that. We'll go with that. Maybe a tiny bit of blue. What happens with the tiniest, tiniest bit? Like it's a barely anything at all. See that? Hardly anything at all. Just a little bit. Dull it down because I want to make sure that other light is really glowing. Okay, That's about right. The last thing I want to do on the orange is the white areas. So there is one part that seems very, very white. I'm not looking at that. I'm actually looking at the midi. The parts that come from the rind that have a little bit of a yellowish orange to them. So this is just some white and again, this is just some leftover paint on my palette knife. I need a little more. Let's actually just going to grab a tiny bit of orange, just go out. She says wash paint dries very fast, so I'm happy to work quickly. Okay, that's a little bit too dark. I'm going to add quite a bit more white. I actually went to way too much. So I'm just going to put this to the side for now when I start over and try this again. That's okay. That happens, especially if you haven't mixed a lot of paint before. It can be really easy to this. This can get, this can get messy and it's normal to use a lot of painting. So I'm just going to mix extra white into what's left over here. So really this is just a lot of white and a little bit of orange. And then I'm going to add a tiny bit more yellow as well to co-create that may be part of something good. Then the last thing I'm going to paint is or make is the shadow. So when I'm looking at the cast shadow of the orange on the surface, it's kind of a gray shadow color. We've got a little bit of these darker red, pink areas, and I think I'm going to take some of that color and move it in with the shadows. I'm just taking a tiny bit of magenta up here. I'm going to add in a bit of white and we're going to start with this magenta white and then I'm going to go from there. Let me get less what's going out to the side? There's definitely gonna be obviously an orange cast to this, but it's not orange. It's just gonna be reflecting some adding some yellows right now this is magenta, yellow and white. Little bit more white. And it's got a bit of a green cast. So I'm going to add blue. This is going to change pretty drastically. Basically like a muddy color. But once we put it in context, it'll make a lot more sense. This like muddy color. I'm getting a lot of it, some of that sum to the side. And just take a look back. I'm add some more yellow to it in some more white to it. This is a little bit of everything, but it was a lot of nuance to it. I'm paying pretty close attention to how this color relates to the other colors. I think I'm going to like that actually, I think I'm going to stick with that. Then the last color will be our white. I find pre-mixed to be extremely helpful when playing with these ideas. So here we have our palette. We have mixed 123456, we have six colors. And we also have some extra of our primary CEUs just in case. In the next video, I will demonstrate how to make a painting by counting your brushstrokes. And I will see you there. 8. Exercise Two: Count Your Strokes : This exercise, I'm going to demonstrate counting your brushstrokes and how you can do this. If you chose to mix paint with me, then you likely have a palpate the videos if you, if you don't want to do it that way and that's totally fine. But I would encourage you to consider remixing to make this easier on myself. I think I'm going to draw out these oranges first just to kinda give me a baseline. I'm going to look at some of these shapes. Sometimes when we're, when we're struggling with perfectionism, we're looking more at what we think we see versus what we actually see in this exercise is really good in helping us draw. We actually see these are very basic. I'm just drawing these oranges. And very simple, simplified forms. See it's really just the shape. And I'm noting where the orange will be. I like to always simplify things into simpler shapes. I'm actually going to basically repeat this drawing three times, three more times. I'm kind of starting off by capturing that front of the double slices. And then there's this like little, I don't know. Maybe it's like a heart shape almost of where you can see the edge and then it curls up and it comes back around. So that's gonna be another one. Is that shadow here? It's this again, half-moon. I'm going to speed up the video and draw this two more times. Alright, so now I have my drawing down. I'm going to work on these paintings by counting my strokes. I'm going to go from dark to light. That's usually how I like to approach paintings with this type of materials. So I'm going to get a little bit of my dark bread already starting to dry, so we have to move quickly. I'm going to count. I'm seeing this dark red shadow shape under here. That's 12. So when you're working like this, you have to really be careful about the economy of your marks. Every mark you make matters. You have to. I'm gonna pick up this other dark orange here. What kind of media side? 34 with it, this will waste and strokes. Six. Now I'm going to tackle where that oranges really, really dramatic. I'm going to use that bright orange that we mixed. We're at six. I'm going to mix another white one here. I'm mixing some of that shadow and down here, I'm letting me outright income at ten now. I'm going to have to keep double-checking. The way it does, quite a bit lighter. Now I'm going to use this other lighter one for this side. 13, 14. Does that count? I think that counts. You see on this side is another little, little left edge. And that's kinda back to this darker one. I'm going to make that gray that we made into the orange again. 16. There we go. Now, going to lay down the shadows before I laid on the highlights, I think we're at 16:16 or 17. I haven't double-check. So I'm really done. This highlight are the cast shadow here. 18, 19, 0 without we're not going to have anytime for the the white background, but that's okay. I'm down to the last row or last two strokes, 18, right? So that's gonna be this little bit. That little bit. That is a mandarin, orange and 20 strokes. We're going to take this now. We're going to try to do it in 15 and it's going to get harder and harder to finish. Once again, this is not supposed to be this perfect finished product. It's more to just help you loosen up on what you think painting could be. That we're going to take what we learned and we're going to try it in 15 strokes. I definitely spent way too much time in those shadows here. I think that's one thing I'm going to have to have to change. I'm going to start with I really read under shadows underneath it's called the occlusion shadow. And I'm gonna try to do this in 15 strokes. Alright, so here's my orange and 15 stroke. Definitely running out. And it may have been better to stick to just one little sliver. One thing I'm noticing here is that I think they either way too dark and you're losing the forums. This is also a really good opportunity to refine what you're seeing and to try to simplify it even more. So, but with ten, I'm gonna see if I can do it even better. But with just ten strokes. I think I might change my process. Actually think I might do the cast shadows first. Maybe don't even worry about that red. Let's see how that works. Why would this be a lot lighter? Monday, dad's white? I think I'm missing that. No. Alright. That's what that's what ten strokes looks like. It's starting to get more and more abstract, but these are actually beginning so much fun. Alright, I'm gonna do the five steps now, let's see what we can do. This means a very big economy of mark-making. And because there are two objects here, basically I have two shadows to shapes. And then just that one side. I think I'm going to have to do it that way. I'm going to have to flatten them a lot because there's just no way to get everything in there. So I think what I'm gonna do is stick with the shadows again. I do like this color. I think it's working for what it is. I'm gonna make a mark for each shadow. We can absolutely moved up. If you notice, I was moving my brush in circles, kinda make it fit the shape and that's totally fine. I'm going to choose I'm going to choose this lighter orange I was starting to mix. I just realized was a little bit too dark as I was painting. I'm gonna make my very best to make this orange and one mark my brush a little bit small for my drawings. So that may be a lesson learned for next time. Okay, now the same over here. I'm going to use the corner to kinda like tap it to make it that edge. And then there we go. Then the only allele get five strokes. So I think all if anything else I'm gonna do, I'm ignore that edge and then just do that one side on the white, the light side. Let me use this like more muddy, lighter orange that we've mixed and try to go to orange slices, five strokes. So once again, obviously this is not meant to be a framed piece of art. However, you can do this if you're struggling with perfectionism, you can try this method, tried to convey whatever it is you're doing and say 15, take a step back and then look at it and then give yourself maybe five more marks to finish it and then you call it done. Giving ourselves limitations can be such a helpful way to manage our wrestling with perfectionism. 9. Exercise Three: Surrender Control: In this last exercise, we're going to play with letting go of control by using your non-dominant hand and allowing ourselves to draw like we did when we were kids. I have my paint is still left over from the county strokes exercise. And I have a fresh sheet of paper and I clean up my water and rinse out my brush. So obviously if you're ambidextrous, this may not be as effective. However, most likely you still have one hand that you're more comfortable with. And I recommend that you use the one that you're least comfortable with. This, a really fun way to start a painting. And it allows for some fun undertones that maybe are less expected. So I'm right-handed. I'm gonna keep my pencil and my left hand, and I'm actually going to draw my sketch with my left hand first. I took these fun pictures of my mandarin orange with the peel. So I'm basically just like drawing, I'm Andrew orange. I am going to draw that center area and just kinda hint to the slices that are coming off. This is like an upward view. Also in my image, the shadow is with me and my shadows. I'm going to highlight, just draw my shadow there and then draw my shadow here. I can just tell that's where we're looking. And then I'm going to draw this peel, obviously in with my left hand. So this is not gonna be a perfect thing. One thing I'm noticing is helping is instead of putting my hand on the table and drawing with my wrist, I'm just drawing with my shoulder, so my hand is actually completely off my paper right now. Drawn like this can give such fun. Just marks that are really enjoyable to look at as well as to make and painting should be fun. So we have our peel and it's going in a circle. Then we've got our cast shadow over here, then our other cash shadow over here. The last thing I'm gonna do is make some scribbles where I'm seeing am I clear shadows? So I had already drawn this out as a shadow. I'm gonna go ahead and do that again. But then just like, Oh wow, my hand to scribble, this is so fun. This makes for some really fun marks underneath that you may be either the viewer isn't expecting. Again, you can always refine things later. I'm seeing another really strong shadow over here. So scribble, scribble, scribble. We'd love to stay in the line. And then we finally have some shadows over here. Scribble, scribble. Here we go. Then I'm seeing some shadows here, will be here. Then definitely sound as well, where it turns following along with me and you still have your paint out as well. I'm going to use what I already mixed because it's still pretty wet. If you need to go back and re-watch that part of the video to mix your colors than you absolutely can pause this video and go back to that right now. So the first thing I'm going to do again, here I am starting with my right hand. I'm going to start darker lights. I'm going to bring up a really deep red. I just liked that read. I think it's fun with my left hand. I'm just going to use my brush pen and make marks will make blobs. I'm seeing where I'm seeing that red dark shadow. There's a few spots here and there. But for the most part, it's going to be really just kinda some of these edges. That's it. Alright. I think that I'm going to now pick up that more dull, dark orange. This is like a darker orange with some blue in it. And use that to paint edges. This is pretty thin gouache because actually it's becoming pretty translucent. So if you're into watercolor, this might be a good, good time for you as well. Seeing that also, I'm going to pick up kind of a middle ground here. I always feel so weird to be developed and the cap, my families are lefties but I am not seeing a little bit of a darker orange around here. Right next. We've got this more medium, brighter orange. I definitely, I'm going to want some to be a bit lighter. I'm going to pick up a few spots, even mixing with my left hand. Y'all, this is great. So he doesn't have been friends ever seen people smile while they're painting. I'm like That's right. That's what it should be. We should be smiling. This is fun. We're painting. You're smashing pigment around on a paper. I'm just making this a little bit later. It's great. What a privilege when they bring out some of these lights over here. Then also definitely more of a red orange. So I'm going to save this more yellow orange for this half. It's not, I'm not gonna I'm not really worried about all the white little white crusty stuff. I might add that at the very end. But for now, I'm just going to use this to kind of suggest. The parts of the orange that were the tangerine, whatever that is, mandarin oranges, cuties. Keep TDS. I'm just gonna suggest them and I'll go back and later. Unlike before, we're not worried about counting our strokes, but we still don't want to take up too much time energy making things perfect. Remember that's what we're trying to work on is just letting things go, allowing the paint to speak for itself and to just be interesting. Interpretations are subject. They always have to be perfect. And once again, remember, these can always act as underpinnings for finished work. Use this way to start a painting and then you can finish it with maybe something a little bit more controlled. Alright, so I want to work on the rind over here. It's basically like a, it's still, it's a pretty red version of this orange. I'm going to include this. Just orange and white and no yellow. So it's just a less yellow version, maybe even a little bit more of that pink. I feel so weird mixing paint with this hand. I'm going to bring that around. Then. I keep wanting to to switch hands, but I keep I'm going to make a very yellow orange and just kinda like bring this around and nod to some of these places where you can still see the rind here. And the next thing I'm gonna do is bring out that like inside yellow look, that's on the inside of the peel. So I might need this, this is from before, this is just orange and white. I'm going to add this to this pile like a white at already have and then probably just add a little bit more yellow. Just keep it simple for that first layer. I'm actually going against what I normally do and going lighter first, but that's okay. So I've got this like yellowish color. I'm going to bring it around. And then to that lighter yellow, I'm actually going to add what we have we mixed for our cast shadow. That's some water to that kind of get it going again. It's almost dry. And that's going to be this is just a little bit lighter than a cast shadow was before and I'm losing it now. So awesome. Redo it. That's okay. And that's going to add those, that shadow that is wrapping around. Definitely losing it. I'm gonna have to add, I'm gonna, I'm gonna use my right hand for a second just to mix paint. I'm adding a little blue a little rule. She much bank. That happens. There we go. I already had it to begin with. I didn't need to do all that bad. Mixed too much and then I have it. Here. Is this a little darker colors? Can believe me, that shadow more dramatic. Sometimes it's fun to paint like this because you get some really cool marks that you weren't maybe don't use whenever you're more control. So would that same shadow color, I'm just going to add a little bit of white to make it a little bit lighter and maybe add a tiny bit more blue. This is all arbitrary. This is just new painting, but if you want to follow along and participate, you may always helps. Sometimes it can just help to watch how somebody else does it. I'm going to use this just like kind of muddy brown to suggest the cache shadows might be used to making these really concise marks after that one exercise. So, okay. In this just seeing the shadow in there, I'm actually going to just allow the white of the paper to be what the light is going to look like. So now what I wanna do is make everything just a little bit wider because it's definitely looking a little bit too dark for me. And so I'm going to add white to this mix that we already have made. And maybe this more muddy orange first to second, that's gonna be mostly white with a tiny bit of orange. I might just use the corner of my brush to kind of like suggests that it's some of those little, you know, crumbly parts. It's dried a little bit for me so I am able to do this a few paint thicker, you may need to give it a little bit more time to dry. These are all the highlighted areas. So basically when that lighter oranges, I'm kinda allowing some of this stuff. To go on and pop up. And same idea in, within the writing itself. It's definitely a bit more yellow, more yellow to this. So there's already a little bit in my brush, so it's like kind of a muddy color and that's actually totally fine. I'm just gonna use that left hand to like not to some of those highlights, but I'm not trying to get a really specific, I'm just trying to make likable inbox my brush and that's it. And then I think, Okay, I'm going to add some more white on this. This is like some reflected light back here and just actually it's too dark. Let's make it just, this is just some white and that, this is magenta and orange. So it's white, magenta and orange. And I'm going to like, kind of bring out a little bit of that texture of the peel, but not too much. Again, not supposed to be a masterpiece. It's supposed to be an exercise that is fun. It's more white every year that I actually want to bring out some of the fleshy parts back here again. This is gonna be, I'm gonna bring out some of this shadowy color back in our white and maybe a tiny bit of blue, like the tiniest, tiniest little bit of blue. I think that's gonna be about right. My hands are getting so tired. My left hand is not used to doing all this work. I think it could use a little bit more. I eat some of those purple. My left hand is like, you do not only use me like this. Why are you doing this? Kind of like do the same thing I was doing in the highlighted areas with this like more gray, muddy gray. It's just that fleshy part. And see my brush and maybe just bring out a few more pops of a really dramatic orange again. It makes it straightening here. Tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny bit of magenta, mostly orange. Those are going to let these colors seeing. Just going to bring it around. Just be fun. Minds. Definitely not a masterpiece and it doesn't have to be. Then wanted to change hands and finish it with your dominant hand. You could, we'd have a really interesting foundation layer that you may not have had if you had started with a lot of control. I'm not going to include all the details because I don't want this to be too long for you, but I think you can kind of see where it's going. I'm going to finish it off with painting the background again to use my right hand to clean and then just pick up. My hands are getting so tired. We should set a time limit to this, like, you know, 15 min or 10 min. I just have this is just the white with a tiny bit of the color we used for the shadow. Just because we already know that it's pretty cohesive to do it that way. You could do a different color if you want it. But since I kinda had this like brownie color shadow, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go ahead and just use that to kind of like tie it all together. Wobbly. My left hand is what's kind of fun. Some water to thin that the funding that gouache. Again, you can use oil, acrylic gouache for this. You'd probably use watercolor to sticking to more opaque paints that, That's typically how I liked to work. I like to kinda layer in that way versus the other way. But there's no right or wrong. Also, you can kinda see the scribbles through it. You can leave as entertain them out. Whichever. Scribbling kind of just helps you. Loosen up, have some fun. Sometimes you can leave as little things in there like happy accidents and oh, I'm actually going to mix that is to kind of soften up some of these hot like that look a little too much. The last thing I'm gonna do, just make this a little bit, this darker, burnt orange again, I just wanted to like clean up some of these edges is definitely a little bit, I think might be to read, but that's okay. That's also why we can do these as warm-ups and you can always go back over it and make it white what it needs to be. Yeah, that's why I love opaque paints, because you can go over them again and again. Sometimes it makes for some really fun effects. All right, There you have it. Then we have our orange painted with our non-dominant hand. 10. The Final Step: There is one final thing that I like to do. Walk away for a period of time, a couple of hours to two to three days is the sweet spot for me. And then come back to it. This is quite possibly the best thing you can do after any painting session, but especially with one you're struggling with. Walking away gives your eyes time to rest. And that helps your brain relax as well. Oftentimes, it is by returning to a piece and you can see with more clarity what needs to be done, if anything at all. It's not uncommon to return to a painting and think it's pretty much done. If you choose to make adjustments, tried to keep them as simple and concise as possible. Shopping before you think you need to will help keep your paintings fresh. I tried to keep these adjustments to less than five per cent of the painting. Now come see how I adjusted one of the paintings from this exercise. This is just an example of how you can go back over some of these. So this was my non-dominant hand painting. I'm just seeing a few different little areas that I want to clean up and I don't want to lose the soul of the painting. So I'm just seeing like the shape of the orange itself with a little bit off. So I'm going to clean up that side, but I'm not trying to overdo it. I wanted to still have the feel of very loose. Like doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have to be just like your reference or your picture or whatever you're using. But I am going to use it just to clean. So I'm just kinda using a smaller brush here to refine the shape a little bit that was bothering me. That's all. Just a few things here and there. So may take so far all I have done to touch it up is fix the shape. I'm just going to add a lighter orange around and kind of show off the perimeter. And then maybe a little bit more of that, like light yellow, orange to define the edge. Anymore. Not too much orange. This is really the part where you can just kinda be intuitive about it. But everyone looks good to you. I'm not making too many marks here. Just a little bit more. I love the foundation. Funding it really fun. And gestural. Most important thing are you having fun because it'll show up in your paintings if you are. Alright. That's all. 11. High Fives All Around! : Thank you so much for joining me in this class truly, I know your studio time is so valuable and I'm just thrilled to spend a little bit of it with you. I hope you've had fun in this class playing with ways to loosen up and just explore paint. In this class, we talked about how perfectionism can impact our studio practice, as well as ways to spot it. The first exercise we did was a speed painting combined with starting over followed by another speed painting. This is one of my favorite ways to start paintings and it can be a really great reminder early in the process to trust your hand and not to worry too much. You can adapt this to any kind of pain you want to do, varying the speed duration for the process. You can even adapt this to watercolor by doing a lot of small sketches and a sketchbook. Next, we did an exercise where we counted our strokes and incrementally decreased our available marks. The key to this exercise was to be very intentional about the color type of marks and the process that we took. This exercise is so helpful for developing strategy and competence and your painting. Finally, we intentionally gave up control by painting with a non-dominant hand with no time limits. This is also a very fun way to start a painting as it allows for some surprising brush marks and you can choose to leave in. You can adapt this by painting blind as well, by not looking at your canvas and only your palate and reference photo for a short period of time. The last step in this process of tackling perfectionism is to simply walk away and give it some space. This can vary from minutes to hours to even days and weeks. But when you come back with a fresh perspective, you may find this piece is further along than you realized. If you choose to make additional marks, try to keep them concise to preserve the fresh underpainting. If there's one thing you can take with you from this class, it's to remember that when you were making a painting, you have so much space to include your personality. In any loose painting, you'll inevitably share a little bit of your handwriting in your brushstrokes, and that's half the fun of it. Now, go ahead and share one or all three of your paintings from the exercises we did together. I can't wait to see your work.