Intuitive painting: When painting, you need a bit of planning, but it is also nice to leave some space for surprises and use your intuition. The more I paint, the more I plan before painting but also the more I allow myself to change my mind and not follow my plan.
Here is how you can use acrylics to paint a semi abstract landscape, leaving some part to intuition and chance.
Here are a few tips for intuitive painting:
- It is easier to leave some part to chance in the first steps of the painting as you will get many opportunities for corrections. This is the time to have fun, splash paint around, and let the paint do its own thing.
- You can rely on a reference picture for inspiration and maybe to help at some stages of the painting, but if you can manage to distance yourself from that reference picture, you will probably see more of a personal style emerging and leave more space for interpretation versus precise depiction.
- Depending on your style, you might be more or less interested in being exact, but letting go of the idea of making everything perfect and leaving some space for trial and error can also be helpful with painting intuitively. It will also make the process of painting more enjoyable Messy can be pretty.
- Change your mind as much as you want. Some paintings paint themselves and some are a struggle from start to finish, but it is the struggle that sometimes allow us to try to solve problems in a different ways, be creative and take risks.
Here is a video of the first layer of the painting, it is all done wet on wet with fluid acrylics and I did also spray some alcohol to add textures.
If you like working from an abstract background, the next step is usually to draw outlines of your designs. You can use charcoal for that step if you would like to add a bit of smudging or you can also use Prismacolor Art Stix that won’t smudge. You can draw patterns of your choice, like here I am drawing leaves or try to see shapes in the abstract patterns.
Negative painting is also a very efficient method to work more intuitively, here I am painting everything except the space inside my outlines with regular bodied white acrylic paint.
To finish, I used Gamblin, Gamvar Picture varnish which is a very fluid varnish. I like it because I find it less prone to make drips than a thicker varnish.