I found the tips links in my siggy helpful –
Leave some calming areas , so the eye can rest and painting is not overly busy.
Does this object enhance the scene or not/is it really needed or not?
Where is the focal area and is there a interesting visual path that helps me move thru the painting to it.

You have already received some great advice so I will try add a little to it.
In my experience and from teaching, I have found that you can spend more time looking at tutorials, reading books,etc than study.

What you need to do is actually practice. The easiest method and one which I teach is to put yourself together a folder or collection of paintings you admire and enjoy. It doesn’t matter if its landscapes,portraits,etc, just something you enjoy and inspires you.
Next, draw them out with a time limit of 20 minutes. Make little thumbnail sketches. Concentrate on big shapes and light and shadow relationships. At the end of 20 minutes, write some notes under each about the composition and what you have learned. Whats the light source, how do we read the composition. How has the artist done this or that. This will force your brain to draw with a reason, and not just mindless copy. Do an absolute minimum of 1 per day. After 100, you will see such a difference to your work. Better if you can do an hour at least. Remember its not about the drawings here. Its an exercise, not a work of art. No need to show anyone them. Work on inexpensive paper. I suggest the little “post it” stick pads. They are a great size and you can carry them anywhere with a pen and draw anytime. A4 printer paper is cheap and great too. All you need is a pen or HB pencil.

When your learning, its a long road, when you become a more experienced painter, its still a long road. Its a skill that requires more than one lifetime to master. Don’t be in a rush, take your time and enjoy the journey. Put in the time and learn the fundamentals and you will be rewarded. Happy painting:wave:

In the words of Solomon J Solomon, “We do not get stronger by watching others lift weights”.

Hi Eric,

I think everyone struggles to simplify and edit. SilverSwallow’s advice is excellent. Doing the thumbnails forces you to leave things out because the thumbnails at 2”x3” or so are so tiny. You can do the thumbnails in three values, dark, midtone, and light. That will help you to simplify even more. Use a soft, medium, and hard lead pencil or use markers or watercolor pencils.

I also use an ap on the iPhone and iPad called NotanIzer. You can import a photo and view it as a notan (two values) or as three or four values. You can adjust the values to determine the value pattern. It helps me to find the big shapes in a scene.

Maybe another thing to read up on is “selective attention,”—how our brain sharpens what we are focused on and blurs everything else. It helps to remember this as you paint. Keep the center of interest of your painting sharp and more colorful and intentionally soften/blur and mute the colors in other areas of the painting. As we paint, our selective attention is on different areas of the painting and we tend to want to make each area we are working on sharp and detailed. I actively combat that urge continuously.

The techniques below can be useful in those “oops, I did it again” scenarios when, despite your best intentions you have included too much detail AGAIN. These techniques are useful to me as I paint alla prima landscapes in oil.

When I am struggling with a painting, at some point I start judiciously swiping at it with a rag. It might improve it, but if it doesn’t I can just wipe it all off and start over. Some of my better paintings I have started to wipe and continued. I often use a mask in my well ventilated studio and spray solvent and quickly and gesturally wipe areas I want to erase. Unique effects from the spray can become part of the painting. I keep the mask on for 10 minutes or so after spraying to give my ventilation system time to get the solvent out of the air. You might be more comfortable dipping the rag in solvent.

As a painter of atmospheric landscapes, I sometimes use what I call the “fog brush” to unify and mute colors at the end of the painting. I take the colors from several different areas of the painting, mix them, and judiciously soften edges or mute colors. It helps to create a harmonious painting. A more aggressive use of the fog brush can obliterate details as it creates harmony.

Best of luck,

Laura

This is such good advice and am saving it

Well…this is a common problem for many early painters. Welcome to the group!

My suggestion: before starting to paint, figure out what story you want the painting to tell. What idea, emotion, feeling you want to share. Identify your point of interest, or your area interest, i.e., the “star” of the painting; the most important thing in the painting.

When you have identified the “star” of your painting, remember that everything else–everything–is secondary and has only one role: to support the star and direct the viewer’s attention to that star.

Ruthlessly eliminate everything which is competitive with the star or which is not needed to direct attention to the star and support the viewer’s focus on the star.

A final point: if you are doing landscapes, keep in mind there are up to three planes in a landscape–foreground, middle ground and background. Not every landscape has all three planes but many do. Whatever plane is the one where your “star” is located is the most important plane. The remaining planes are simply secondary and exist only to get the viewer’s eye to the most important plane and the “star”. Downplay the secondary planes and focus your attention on the important plane.

Said differently, don’t throw a lot of detail into the foreground if the star lives in the middle ground or background.

Good luck with your painting!

Sling paint,
Virgil

The design of composition is an archaic subject these days as it is not generally taught by most art schools. It took me a couple of years of study on the Internet and from out of print books to start to come to an understanding of composition at it relates to painting. Then I found Ian Roberts’ book “Mastering Composition”.

Ian in his introduction, describes five picture planes of a painting, a framework in which to develop a painting. Basically: decide the format and size, consider the division of space, block in the main abstract shapes, refine these into subjects, and finally add the details. Great! Five steps. Big steps no doubt, but a framework I understood.

Perhaps this is a bit too mechanical for some people’s taste; almost a paint by number design. It probably doesn’t work for all genre of painting and it leaves out mood, tone, colour and many other elements that affect our painting process.

Does anyone have a framework/process whereby the develop their paintings?

My brain wants to put everything it sees into the painting. It isn’t possible. I’ve been told to “use my artists eye” to filter elements out and only paint what is essential. I have no intuition for this and it causes me to avoid anything but single element still lifes. I can take one thing out of a complex photo but pleine air is out of scope. I’d like to progress.

Is anyone aware of tutorials, videos, books or anything that can help with training my brain to filter out all but the essentials to compose a good scene? I know I just need practice but I don’t know how to start. I’ve tried using random reference photos for practice but I always try to put everything in, I’m not sure how to filter. Youtube or online is fine but a dvd/video or book would be better for me. Any suggestions at all are appreciated and will be attempted.

Thanks.

Start from the extreme opposite. Draw only ONE big shape. Notice I said SHAPE, not object. Draw one Big FOREGROUND shape that encompasses everything in the foreground.

Do that for several images, then you advance to draw 2 shapes… ( that is easier to do with color to keep contrast high) just 2 coherent and in a single segment each shapes ( that means no disconnection between 2 parts of the same shape)

That type of exercise should help.

The other thing to learn is the concept of gesture, or the flow . Look for this concept in youtube as there are several videos about it (most are applied to human figure, but the concept applies everywhere)

The suggestions can apply differently depending on your preferred style and preferred subject matter.