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We spend a lot of time as artists thinking and planning. 

I’m all for that—I love a good plan, and would not think starting a painting without a great thumbnail or notan. 

But too much planning can lead to cautiousness, or preciousness.  Planning is your friend when it’s strategy:  what’s my goal, and how can I best get there?   How can I set myself up to create the best possible painting?  

But taking a painting to the next level requires more than a good plan.  It’s got to mean something to you. Simply put, if you want your painting to elicit a strong response, you'd better feel a strong connection to it yourself.

In a recent Uart blog (click here for full article) on her painting process, Lyn Asselta pinpoints the important link between thinking and feeling when she paints.  For a painting to work, she says, identifying the emotional tenor of the painting is primary.  This defines everything else, from composition to color to markmaking.

Lyn explains: “I want a painting that is cohesive as a whole.  I want a painting that combines an exciting subject with a mood or atmosphere to support that subject.  I need to find a focal point (something that grabs my attention) but I also need to be sure to see the other parts of the painting as important support for that focal point.  Using my emotions to guide the painting process helps me to focus on the mood of the entire painting, rather than to try to ‘copy’ a particular part of the scene in front of me. I rely on the mood of the painting to inform my color choices, the way I place pastel strokes on the surface of the painting, and to help determine the composition, including what I choose to leave in or take out of the painting."

Lyn’s painting Solitude, 12 x 12, is a great example of this.  

Solitude, 12 x 12 pastel

The small ochre island floats isolated in a glassy lake, with dramatic clouds and their reflections surrounding it in cool grey blues.  Lyn deliberately simplifies color and shape to support her idea, uses dramatic diagonals to draw attention toward the island, and creates subtle color harmonies with neutral complements to balance the vivid yellow-orange.  Lyn’s sense of freedom to interpret the scene before her, to support and enhance the mood of her piece rather than, as she puts it, ‘copying’ reality, elevate this painting from the everyday to the wow. 

Mood and emotion are too often forgotten in our rush to begin a painting, and identifying our emotional connection to a scene can be difficult to articulate, and thus very tempting to skip. 

I’ve always found that an extra few moments spent during the design stage jotting a word or two of the feeling you aim to convey can help guide your intention throughout the process.

I Can Fly 18 x 36 pastel

Here is “I Can Fly,” a recent seascape I completed.  The phrase “I can fly” jotted down next to the thumbnail connected me to the memory and feeling of bodysurfing—elation, joy, a the physical uplifting and foreward rushing I feel when a wave carries me. 

That phrase just floated there (so to speak) while I painted—reminding me of the movement of the water in a physical, visceral way, contributing I am sure to the effectiveness of the piece--and giving me a title.

A painting’s mood does not need to be anything complicated, or require a visit to an analyst.  It can be attached to a memory, or suggest a desire, or an intention, or a hope.  The main thing about identifying a mood is that it should inspire excitement or grab attention for some reason, and you should be able to articulate why. 

Next time, a quick, fun way to push your paintings toward wow!