10 Things Holding Back Your Paintings

All right, so the first thing that I see holding back a lot of people's paintings is that they are over-complicating color. Color's one of those things where less is more, especially if you're starting out. I strongly recommend starting out with the primaries in white. That's four colors on your palette. See, the thing is, if you add a whole bunch of other colors, say if you have 12 colors on your palette, when it comes time to mixing a color, you have 12 options to go to, and that's more decisions, and more decisions means more complicated. But if you only have four options, it's going to just simplify the whole process. Also, by just using the primaries, you're gonna gain a stronger understanding of color. You're going to think about color in a healthier way. If you're a new painter, the last thing you wanna do is anytime you're trying to match a color, you just go buy another color to help you get to it faster. Yes, you'll get to it faster, but you really won't understand how you got there. Now, the primaries I suggest are ultramarine blue, cadmium red, cadmium yellow, and titanium white. Now, I know a lot of people out there is like, oh, look, I heard this painter say this, these are the right primaries, or no, you're supposed to use these as the primaries. Honestly, if you're just starting out, that doesn't matter at all. There's much more important things to be focusing on than variations of the primaries. Also, with color mixing, don't think in terms of recipes. People are like, oh, what did you mix to get those skin tones, or what did you mix to get that trees? That's not a good way to think about color. You want to isolate a color and then match it, and try and get any preconceived ideas of what color you think a certain subject should be. It's like, oh, it's a pine tree, it needs to be green. You know, it's like, but sometimes pine trees can be very warm and a lot of reds in them, and other times they can be really cool and have a lot more blues in them. Whenever I'm mixing up a color, in my mind, almost subconsciously, I'm just thinking, do I need to add more red, more yellow, more blue, or more white? Even when I have more colors on my palette than the primary colors, I'm still thinking in those terms, and I'm just categorizing what I like to call shortcut colors into one of those categories. So like a burnt sienna, I would think of as a red, a yellow ochre, a yellow, ivory black, a blue. And see, since I went so long just using the primaries, I can add any colors to my palette and immediately categorize it. So if I was just starting out painting today, I would just use the primaries, and I honestly wouldn't think about adding any other colors to my palette for at least five years of painting. All right, moving on to number two, which is be honest with yourself about your work. Now, I'm sure you have an idea of how you wanna paint, a certain level you wanna get to, what you want your paintings to look like, and that is going to be different for everybody. But when you're not taking steps in that direction, and your paintings aren't coming out the way you want to, take note of it and try and make adjustments to get you to where you wanna go. Don't just say, oh, well, I guess this is just my style, or, oh, it's different, so that's good, right? Like, just because it's different doesn't mean it's good. Only you can judge how good your painting is. And when you find an element of painting that you're not good at, try and get better at it. That's all I did the first 10 years I was oil painting. I would come across a subject or a way of painting that I'd struggle with, and I'd become obsessed with it until I kind of figured it out. Like, the worst I was at something, the more I wanted to do it. Like, when I first started plein air painting, I struggled so much, but the fact that I struggled so much made me wanna do it even more. So I strengthened that thing that I wasn't good at, and it made me a more complete painter. All right, the third thing I see is people are too focused on detail and not simplicity. When you first get into painting, a lot of times you're kind of wowed when you see a painting that has, like, a lot of detail, and you're like, wow, like, look how detailed it is, and all these little marks and little reflections. And that stuff's fine. Like, that's okay to paint detailed like that. Just understand that that's not what's going to make a painting work, and that's not what you should be focusing on when you're starting out. And I think you'll find the more you paint and the better you get, the more you will be interested in subtlety in painting. That's what will start to really impress you. You know, the way John Singer Sargent can communicate an eyebrow with what looks like one stroke, or how Edgar Payne could pull off painting mountains hardly painting any cracks in the rocks. So when you're painting, try and think about things like, how simply can I block out this scene? You know, how can I communicate this shape in as few of brush strokes as possible? You know, how well can I paint this very simple subject? All right, and the fourth thing I see holding back a lot of people's paintings is that they're not practicing enough. Now, I know materials can get expensive, but try and set yourself up in using materials that you can afford. Going back to the first tip, using just the primaries in white can save you a lot of money because you're not gonna buy a bunch of other colors that you're not really gonna use. Now, if you're a beginner and you don't know what supplies to get, I have supply list links in the description of this video. Now, wherever you are, try to have a designated space in your home where you paint. I know this can be tough. When I was in college with four roommates in two bedrooms, I was able to convince them to give me a little corner of the living room to paint. I have had to paint on small little balconies in 90 degree weather. I had to put my easel in my room right next to my bed and my bed sheets ended up getting paint on them. Just no matter what, I've always found a way to have a place to paint because painting is important to me. And the act of practicing painting should be your favorite part of painting. I always say paint for the process, not the end product. It's not about producing a nice painting that you can show to everybody that's nice and that does feel good, but really enjoy the process, the process of problem solving, of learning, of failing, of trying really hard to figure out how to make your paintings better. If you focus on that, the good paintings will come. You know, if your painting budget is really tight, get a pad of craft paper. I'll put a link to where I got this one in the description below, but it's a great, cheap, fast way to practice painting. I'll do little sketches on this all the time. You know, you don't need to bust out a big stretched canvas every single time you paint. Even if you can't paint, draw. Drawing is probably the most important aspect of painting. I always said if you had two people with no drawing or painting experience at all and you had one of them go off and start painting for a year and they never practiced drawing while they were painting, they gridded everything or traced everything, and you had the other person go off and just draw with pencil and paper for a year, at the end of that year, the person who went off and drew with just pencil and paper could actually make a better painting than the person who was practicing painting for that year. That's how important I think drawing is. Even if you can't paint, practice your drawing and it will for sure help your painting. All right, number five. I see a lot of people not willing to get out of their comfort zone with their paintings. Example of this is I see a lot of people saying like, oh, I want to paint looser. You know, I wanna paint loose portraits. How do you do that? And I'll tell them like, you got to really change up how you work. You got to focus on different things. You have to hold the brush differently. You have to build the painting a certain way. And it's scary at first because it feels like you're losing control of the paint and it's really comfortable to choke up on your brush and get really close and use a very small brush and just go little by little on the painting that feels very comfortable and very safe for some people. So when I have a student that's like, oh, I want to loosen up, I'll say, all right, paint this portrait, but use your non-dominant hand to paint it. Or, all right, you're gonna have to paint that whole portrait in 15 minutes. Oh, you're gonna have to paint this whole painting on a six by eight inch panel, but with a very big brush. Again, if there's an element of painting that is difficult for you, that you struggle with, that's probably the thing you should be focusing on the most. A lot of people struggle painting from life. You know, landscapes, still lifes, portraits, all that. I hadn't painted portraits from life for a very long time. And when I came back to doing them, I was like, wow, like this is really difficult. And so I made it a point to sign up for weekly open studios where there's a live model where I could practice my portraits from life. And doing that made me so much better and even made when I painted portraits from photos a lot easier. Whenever I get a student saying like, oh, I don't know what to paint, I say, get an apple, get anything, set it in front of you, put a light on it and paint it. And again, I feel like people, especially painters that have gotten to a decent level of painting, they are so unwilling to part from how they paint. I mean, I was like this too. You know, I'll see it a lot of times, like students, even if they buy a course or a tutorial and there's a certain method being taught, like there is resistance into painting that way because it's different and it's uncomfortable. They want to stay where they feel safe. Certain subject matter that they're uncomfortable painting, that's difficult, but you really got to go towards what's difficult to make it not difficult. All right, number six, if you're not taking time to study, that's going to really hold back your paintings. As I said earlier, I like to use this pad of craft paper a lot. It's how I figure out ideas for landscapes. You know, I can do them really quickly. It helps me figure out the colors, compositions. Just the more I paint, the more I find studying helpful. Now, whether that's doing studies, whether that's looking at master painters and actually trying to figure out how they made the painting that way. You know, if you see a painter and you're like, oh, wow, like I really like how they paint trees, you know, stop and think about it and look at it like, all right, like, how did they do that? Like, how do I, you know, how did they start doing it? How much of the negative space did they bring back into the trees? You know, what color are the trees? They manipulate the colors and the values. You know, how did they utilize shapes? I love doing master copies and whenever I do them, I try and focus on just one element of painting to learn in that study, whether it's the colors or the brushwork or the simplification of the scene. I remember when I was struggling a lot with understanding composition and I made it a point to really focus on figuring out composition. I actually went and bought a course by Brian Mark Taylor on composition and it was great. After that, I would dedicate a certain amount of time every day to just doing small little pencil thumbnails to just figure it out and to get it into my head. All right, number seven, I see a lot of students copying instead of making decisions. Now, I did this for a very long time and looking back, it held my progression so much. When you have a reference photo, whether it's a still life, landscape, portrait, anything, don't feel that you have to paint it exactly. In fact, you really don't wanna paint it exactly. You don't wanna just be a copy machine. You want to be making decisions but they need to be informed decisions and the way they're going to be informed is by understanding and developing your skills and the fundamentals. That's drawing, composition, color, value, and edges. Now, if you have a photo of a landscape, you're most likely gonna have to move things to make a better composition. If you have a photo of a still life, it might not be picking up the reflected light on an object as much as you could see in real life and you have to know that and enhance it. Or a portrait photo isn't communicating enough the change in values on the planes of the face and you have to have already stored knowledge of the planes of the face to be able to enhance that and portray more form in your painting than what is in the photograph. You can see here in this painting, I changed a lot of the values to make my focal point have the most contrast. I wanted my darkest dark and lightest light to be at that focal point, so I had to change the values in the leaves and certain parts of the ground to make the viewer see the painting the way I wanted them to see it. All right, number eight is another thing that I fell victim to a lot when I first started painting, which was trying to learn from too many instructors at once. Especially now with the internet, there's a lot of instructional painting sites that have a lot of different painters with tutorials on there and most of the painters are incredible. But the thing is, it can get very confusing if you're just starting out painting, watching one instructor build a paint in a certain way with certain materials and a certain method and then the next time you go into a tutorial, it's somebody else with different materials, a different method, a different way of starting a painting, different way of ending the painting and you end up kind of spinning your wheels because you don't have a process to build on and take steps forward. It doesn't matter which one you choose, just choose someone that you like their process, it makes sense to you, they paint in a way that you wanna paint and try and stick with them for a while. And once you get comfortable and you feel like you understand enough of painting, then you can like branch off and start pulling from other people. But if you don't have like a strong base understanding, you're not going to be able to see a different instructor and take away the good things that they have to teach you, you're just gonna probably get confused. I feel like a lot of painting instructors don't even agree on what exact primaries they use to paint. I always use the example of tying your shoes. Like imagine how hard it would have been to learn to tie your shoes if every day when you were learning, someone different was teaching you and they were teaching you a different way to do it. All right, number nine. I feel like a lot of new painters don't take the time to study composition. I sure didn't for a very long time, but once I did, I was very happy that I did. And composition is not just going to help you with landscape, it's going to help you with anything that you paint. I mean, when I set up a still life, like when I'm doing a still life and taking a photo to then use for a tutorial, I can spend like up to an hour just like rearranging objects in the scene to create a good composition. Even with portraits, it's not a matter of just plopping a head on a canvas. You really need to be aware of rhythm and balance and what is in the portrait, what's in the background, how much of the background is there, where's their head turning? All that is based in composition. And I've definitely learned a lot from a few books on composition. One is Ian Roberts' book on composition. I got that back in college and there is so much good information in it. He does a really good job of explaining composition. Another one is Edgar Payne's composition of outdoor painting. I feel like that book is in the library of every landscape painter out there. And right next to that book is probably Carlson's guide to landscape painting. Those three are must-haves if you're trying to learn composition specifically for landscapes. All right, and number 10. This is the most important part of this whole video. The thing that's going to hold your paintings back the most is having limited beliefs about your skill. But you really have to believe that you can become great at painting. There's been so many times in my life when I'd look at someone's painting and be like, wow. It was like a magic trick. I was like, how did they do that? How did they make a painting like that? I couldn't imagine how, it's like, how do I even get there? What do I do? What do I learn? I don't even know how I could get there. But I still knew I could get there. And many times I would find myself finishing a painting and be like, oh, I'm here. But the bar keeps getting raised. Today there are paintings that I look at from people and I think, wow, how do they paint that? I have no idea how they painted that. So it always gives me motivation to continually getting better and always striving for more. But just trust the process, trust practice. Don't worry about how you're gonna get there. Just practice and take it one painting at a time and you will get to where you wanna be with your painting. And the funny thing is, is that it will surprise you when you get there because you will already have created a new destination you wanna get to. I also know that you will be surprised at how fast you can get better if you truly put in the work. Like I've seen this happen with myself. I've seen it happen with a student of mine. I coached a student one-on-one for a year and the improvement he made in one year was incredible. And I know he got there because he practiced a lot and he would identify parts of painting that he was weak at and strengthen them. So that's it for this video. Hope you enjoyed. If you'd like to see what I am painting on a daily basis, you can follow me on Instagram at forza43. I'm Chris Fornitero here telling you to go get painting.