The Process of Painting: Inspiration

Creative people never lack for ideas. Ideas are everywhere around us, waiting to be snatched up and put to good use. The only problem with ideas is that there are too many! How does one pick and choose from among them?

When I first began painting from photo references, I worked with photographs I’d taken. I strolled through our city park in early November. One day I walked to a nearby fishing lake. My husband and I spent an afternoon visiting beautiful North Lake. I chose these scenes because I was familiar with them, because I liked them, and because I felt they would be fairly simple to paint.

Lake at White Oak

Harrisonville City Park

North Lake

An important point in teaching — choose assignments that are neither too easy nor too difficult. Look for opportunities to reinforce previous learning while moving slightly beyond that point. This was the approach I took in choosing these particular scenes.

After a while, though, just choosing pretty scenes I liked wasn’t enough. Ideas only become truly inspiring when we look not just at what we want to paint, but also why we want to paint that scene. 

At this point I began using reference photos I found online. I browsed through autumn scenes and downloaded several that appealed to me. I then spent a lot of time looking at those scenes and understanding why I had been drawn to them. In some instances it was the colors that appealed to me. Other scenes had interesting arrangements of trees. The important thing I realized, however, was that all of the scenes affected me at an emotional level.

I began looking at ideas as expressions of different moods and emotions. What does this scene make me feel? I asked that question often. What is happening in this scene? I asked that question, too. Even though these were landscapes — no people involved — I tried placing myself in the scene and asking what I was doing there. What happens next? That was an important question, too. To make the most of an idea, I wanted to build a narrative around it.

Although I was able to feel emotions and build narratives, I wasn’t too successful with any of my attempts to re-create those thoughts and feelings through my painting. Of course, much of that comes only through experience. In time, I hope my paintings do become more expressive.

Regardless of the outcome for my paintings, finding an idea and understanding the inspiration behind it is the real starting point in my process of painting now. It’s no longer enough to have a vague idea of where I’m going and what I’m going to paint. I’ve  learned the importance of being intentional in art.

Of course, intentions are often waylaid by happy accidents or sudden bursts of insights. Being intentional doesn’t mean being rigidly confined to an agenda.  What it means is having a basic plan in mind, setting a course, and moving on from there.

Which means, at this point in the process, it’s time to choose a canvas and get started.