How I Simplified My Oil Paintings

Why So Much Detail?

When I started painting in high school, I was fascinated by the details of the Jim Booth paintings in our home. Learning about the Renaissance painters in art history strengthened this love of detail. For the past twenty years, detail has been the focus of my paintings. Look at any of my portraits and you see hyper focused brush strokes. But perhaps the secret to a good painting is not the details at all, but the effort to capture light and composition in a more meaningful way.

Paint Loose

Often, I watch oil painting videos on YouTube. Recently I found this one, challenging artists to paint in less strokes. Intrigued and up for a challenge, I tore a sheet of canvas paper and taped it to my work board. I decided to do a painting in 50 strokes, tallying them as I went.

The results stunned me! Not only was the painting good, but it was also surprisingly easy to dial back the strokes. So impressed with this new process I did a second painting immediately after. Again, I was WOW’d with my work, something that doesn’t happen often.

The Details of Less Detail

When I say, “one brush stroke”, what I mean is every time I lift the brush off the canvas that counts as one stroke. I try to keep my color shapes very large and connected if possible. Something I have changed in my process is the use of a palette knife to mix paint instead of mixing directly on the brush. I’m finding this helps stretch the brush stroke longer. After adding all the large shapes, which take about 10-15 strokes, I use the next ten strokes or so to fix any value or composition. The last strokes I save for a few well-placed details.

“Friends in Cades Cove” quickly became one of my favorite pieces I have done. For the past few months, I have been doing this process and tallying up my brush strokes as I go. Sometimes I go over 50 and have caught myself getting hung up in detail a few times. But overall, this new process has “freed” up my style, and I thoroughly enjoy it.

Like I said, I don’t always stick to the rules. But this process makes me more mindful of my strokes. Which in turn makes me more mindful of stroke placement, value, and composition. I’m excited for this evolution of loose painting and hope to try a larger piece soon.