Just as Michelle finds inspiration from photographs, one of my favorite ways to start a painting is by finding inspiration from home decor magazine covers. A professional design team has carefully considered the layout, composition, color scheme and details. This is an excellent starting point to expand upon by following your intuition as you listen and “dance” with the painting like Megan does.
Use your inspiration piece as a guide without getting too attached to it. There is a balance of finding inspiration and using it to create your own original art by following your impulses. You can go in your own direction and depart from the magazine cover at any point. Just follow your heart and see what happens. I suggest working quickly without thinking or worrying about what your composition looks like.
Work quickly to add elements. If you don’t like what you are creating, don’t give up! Keep painting wet-into-wet, adjusting and adding elements. If at any point you feel like you might be muddying the canvas, take a deep breath, then a break and let the canvas dry.
The job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.
—Ken Kesey—
STEP 1: Looking at what you’re deriving inspiration from, ask yourself, What do I like about this? What attracted me to pick this up? Take notes and make a list of elements that draw your attention. Don’t think too much—just write whatever pops into your head.
Now that you have made your list, circle words from your list that you can apply to your painting such as light to dark, vertical lines, horizontal blocks, watery, tasseled, bumpy, round texture, diamond pattern.
STEP 2: To capture how the space is arranged, block out sections with paint. For my cover, I created a green mixture with teal, white, yellow and blue for the main background. You don’t have to try to match the color exactly; just mix paint until you have a color you like.
STEP 3: Continue blocking the bottom half of the magazine cover. I am not painting the couch, just blocking it in with a similar color. Squint your eyes to help you focus on the overall composition rather than the details of the magazine.
STEP 4: Study the cover and add some elements, such as colors and shapes, that capture your interest. I am loosely painting a diamond pattern from one of the couch pillows and black lines that mimic the base of the side table. I also begin indicating some floral bud shapes with blue.
I add pinks and other colors from the magazine cover. At this point, I am aware I may paint over the entire thing, so think of this as a starting point. Paint stems and leaves to ground the flowers and draw the eye with vertical lines.
STEP 5: Because I don’t know what to do next, I step back and look at my painting in a different way. Often when I am stuck, I will see if the painting would look better with vases holding the flowers. This quickly transforms the piece and is a great way to contain and preserve areas you like while painting over other areas to quiet down the painting a bit.
STEP 6: At this point, your canvas may be feeling a bit chaotic. Continue to quiet the areas that are distracting, while leaving some areas of the background intact. Here, I am going around the vases with a light paint color to define them and help them pop.
STEP 7: Step back often to see the painting as a whole. I never plan to paint vases, but it’s an element I like to use to shift the painting’s look and feel. It’s working for me as I paint this piece.
STEP 8: If you cannot decide what details to add, go back to your list to find what elements you liked about the magazine cover and start adding those small details to the piece. Because I am drawn to the lime green color of the typography on the magazine cover, I’m adding a lot of that color as flower buds.
STEP 9: If you feel stuck at any time, refer to the magazine. However, if you like, you can also use it as a starting point and freely paint. Add details to pull everything together and create a finished piece.