<liberationthroughlimitation>

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“My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful, the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles.”

- Richard Diebenkorn

Sounds odd but it works. Limitations do liberate. Working within limitations is a powerful way to expand your creativity. Limitations force you to adopt new points of view. New points of view help you overcome your brain’s natural way of interpreting the world and allow you to see things for what they are, rather than what you think they are. Limitations help you see the familiar as unfamiliar and consequently allow you to make fresh, engaging, creative work. Here are ten simple project ideas that relate to painting. You can follow these ten exercises either with traditional art materials that you can pick up from any local art store, or with your personal computer equipped with Corel Painter IX software and a Wacom graphics tablet.

Here’s a simple materials list if you’re going the traditional route:

Sketch book, 11 x 17 inch size approx, white cartridge paper
Sketch book, 11 x 17 inch size approx, colored papers (black, browns, mid tone shades)
Soft pencils (3B and 4B)
Pencil sharpner
Caran d'Ache Neocolor II, 15 color set (my favorite water-soluble artist crayons)
Ready stretched and gessoed white canvas, 16 x 24 inch size approx
Simple easel to hold your canvas at a comfortable angle and height to work on
Variety of acrylic paint colors in tubes
Plastic palette for mixing colors
Palette knife for applying paint
Selection of brushes for applying paint
Couple of small plastic painting buckets for washing brushes
Some rags for wiping brushes
Some plastic drop cloths for protecting your furniture and floor
Painting overalls for protecting your clothes

Take a Line for a Walk—use a soft drawing pencil and a white piece of paper. Sit yourself in front of a subject (could be a person, still life or landscape). Place your pencil on the paper. Now follow the contours (main shapes) of your subject as much as you can without lifting your pencil off the paper. You don’t have to look at your paper as you draw. Use your eyes to follow the contours you see before you and allow your hand to follow your eyes. As you draw vary the pressure and angle of your hand and see how much range of expression you can achieve in a simple line. As soon as your pencil comes off the paper stop. Repeat this several times on different pieces of paper.
Draw with your Non-favored Hand—create a quick sketch of a subject using your non-favored hand.
Start with Highlights—pick up a white crayon and work on a colored (non-white) piece of paper. Set up a subject with dramatic lighting where there are good highlights and shadows. Begin your drawing with drawing in the highlights (lightest areas) before working into the shadows with a black crayon.
One Minute Drawing—set yourself one minute to draw a subject, using crayon or pencil, and see what you manage to describe within that time. Repeat this exercise five times and see if you start to hone in on the essence of the subject.
Four Hour Painting—put aside four hours during a day to complete a painting (acrylics on canvas) from observation using natural light. Notice how the light continually changes. You can take short breaks but complete the painting within a single day. Use the whole canvas. Use the full four hours. Don’t stop sooner. Keep working into the painting even when you feel like it’s finished. See how it continues to evolve.
One Brush Painting—stick to one brush for an entire painting. Explore the full dynamic range of mark-making possibilities that the brush has to offer. Fill your canvas with paint. Allow at least thirty minutes for this exercise.
Super Selective Detail—create a rough muck up (big gestural abstract brush strokes that quickly fill in major blocks of tone, ie light and shade, and color on your canvas) and then see how little detail you need to add to evoke your subject.
Turn Your Subject Upside Down—Paint from a photo with the photo turned upside down. After completing this try a different painting with the reference photo the right way up and see the difference.
Divide Into Squares— follow an ages old method of image transference and rescaling: the grid system. Set up a square grid on your reference photo and treat each square as an abstract that you paint onto your canvas.
Color Constraint—limit your use of color and tone in a painting. To begin with try describing lights and darks through pure color, without mixing in any white or black.

Liberation through Limitation

Ten Art Projects