How To Make Painting Easier

5 Things to Help Make Painting Easier

1. Be Kind to Yourself

​Think of your mind as a muscle. What you feed it, grows. If you've been critical of yourself and your work, you've built a strong muscle for negativity. Start today by practicing acceptance and compassion toward yourself, and watch these positive attitudes flourish.
Next time someone compliments your painting, simply say, "Thank you." It sounds easy, but for many of us, it’s incredibly challenging. Resist the urge to interject your stories, traumas, fears, and insecurities, which can detract from the viewer's experience.
Abstract Expressionism allows the viewer to derive their own interpretation from the work. Let them! If someone sees beauty in your painting, let them enjoy that experience.

2. Don’t Worry About Being Perfect

One of my favorite stories about perfection and the importance of quantity over quality goes like this:

A ceramics teacher divided his class into two groups. One group was graded solely on the quantity of work produced, and the other solely on its quality. On the final day of class, he would weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pounds of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. The “quality” group, however, needed to produce only one perfect pot to get an “A”.
Curiously, the highest quality pots were produced by the group being graded for quantity. While the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work and learning from their mistakes, the “quality” group spent their time theorizing about perfection and ended up with little more than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

You’ve probably heard of the 10,000-hour rule? According to Malcolm Gladwell in "Outliers," it takes 10,000 hours (or 10 years) of intensive practice to achieve mastery of complex skills and materials. Where are you in your process?

For context: I’ve been a professional, full-time painter for almost 14 years, averaging 80 canvases a year. That’s 1,120 canvases! Remember, don’t be too hard on yourself.

3. Set Reasonable Expectations

Identify your expectations and consider how they influence your process. Having expectations isn’t inherently bad, but they do shape your approach. For example, wanting to paint something “beautiful” for your home can make some colors “good” and others “bad.”

Here’s an exercise: If you’re struggling to let go of expectations, take a sharpie and write “Fearless” on the back of your canvas. Give yourself permission to experiment, play, have fun, make mistakes, and learn in the process.

In fact, allow yourself to paint something ugly and blame it on me! Tell anyone who asks that you had an incredible (wink) teacher who gave you the assignment to make something ugly, have fun, and learn from it. You got an A+. Spoiler alert: More often than not, it’s the “fearless” canvases we end up loving the most.

4. Enjoy the Process

One of my favorite spiritual teachers, Eckhart Tolle, said: “When you no longer need your story to work out, it actually works quite well.” Let’s adapt that: “When you no longer need your painting to work out, it actually works quite well.” Can you feel the sense of surrender, release, and allowance in this statement?

To create, we need flow. Be careful not to create so much constriction that you choke the life out of the project. Practice awareness in every moment, avoiding spending too much time in the past or future. Often, the process evolves into outcomes far better than what we had initially conceived.

5. Don’t Overthink Things

We were all born creative; some of us just forgot. While I’m not a mom, my siblings have wasted no time procreating. I have nine nieces and nephews, and I’ve painted with nearly all of them. Kids are natural-born creators. Give them a blank piece of paper, crayons, or paint, and they don’t hesitate. They just begin. They work with their favorite colors, are fully present, work quickly, make a mess, have fun, and always know when they’re finished—either because they have short attention spans or they get bored and move on.
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If we can channel these attitudes into our experience, we will be better for it.

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