Watercolor sketch, line and watercolor landscape, one point perspective
Posted on by Inesepaints

How to create better art with less effort

Everything requires effort

Is it even possible to create great art with little effort? Yes, and no. The most important part is probably wasting less time and materials. We need a plan to achieve that. A good plan for creation of a painting means a sketching, drawing or a value sketch. In my personal experience, it is pencil, pen and watercolor sketch which is the best preparation stage for a painting.

Not only result matters

When somebody wants to apply for classes I am usually told this: “I’d really like to paint”. Something like that. Points to some landscape or floral, or still life. Basically, everybody is interested in the result and not that much in the path which led me to it. I spend a lot of time practicing and exploring the subject from different perspectives.

Exploring art supplies

If you are one of those artists-to-be who jumped straight to brushes and did not take your time to explore the elements of an artwork, I can understand you. People usually think watercolor and sketching is for watercolor artists, who mask out white spots or those who get ideal washes just by swinging around the brush with some paint on it. However, there is a missing link between the idea of our art and it’s draft.

Seeing subject artistically

The real life shows that any potential artist and anybody, who does art as hobby, would have gotten much better paintings sooner if they considered sketching as an important step. That refers to painting with any medium: watercolor, pastel, acrylic or oil. The truth is, they all originate in one place: in our brain, through our eyes and senses. Therefore, we should exercise our visual abilities and our visual perception. I’m talking more about importance to learn seeing in my previous posts:

Attraction of drawing and Overcoming painting issues

Lack of values, proportions and contrast

The problem with not well developing painting is not only the technique of applying paint. That usually works fairly well after a few attempts. The problem most often is in our eyes: we do not perceive values, shapes, proportions and potential composition; therefore, we cannot come up with a neat plan to make painting elements work.

Watercolor sketch
This sketch became a large watercolor painting afterwards

Advantage of sketching

Sketch is done much faster than a painting. Sketching out objects or just values, putting them in a draft composition allows making a decision momentarily if that will or won’t work. Sketch isn’t the entire painting, but by doing it one learns much more about their subject. We find out that we need to look at it more carefully, more intensely, more accurately.

Watercolor sketch
Thin and thick black pen and watercolor for creation of perspective sketch, 1-point perspective
Watercolor sketch
Rough black pen and watercolor wash sketch to use as reference for larger acrylic painting

Skills are based on knowledge

I can compare creating art with writing. When people say “I don’t want to sketch and I don’t want to know anything about drawing”, it is like somebody who intends to write a novel would say “I don’t want to know anything about spelling and grammar. I just want to write a novel, so give me the idea and off we go”. The entertaining painting events also do a bad service: not only the entire idea does not allow anybody to really learn anything about creation of art, but the approach is just so wrong and materials are so bad that many people get a wrong idea.

Sketch results in painting
White birches, recent class demo, 20 x 24 inches, painting is sold

Art is more than moving paint around canvas

When somebody is just moving paint around the canvas in hopes that it miraculously will take the right shape and become the right color, I must say, it won’t. Painting is a summary of things we put in it. It is also the energy we put in it. Therefore, the sooner one learns about values, relationship between light and dark areas, values, softness or roughness of edges, proportion and compositional layout, the faster their paintings take shape and have volume. The missing link between our idea and its incorporation into artwork is the value sketch. Creating value sketch and color sketch is not a waste of time and paint.

58 Replies to “How to create better art with less effort”

  1. Inese, I’m relieved to hear you suggest we should sketch first. For me, painting without sketching would be like driving somewhere new without a map. I’d get lost.
    Blessings ~ Wendy

    Reply

    1. And I am glad to hear that. I’ve been watching so many people over very many years, especially the moment when they try to start the painting. It quite often simply doesn’t work because most people think it’s technique of paint application, some tricks or color mixing, but, in fact, they don’t know what goes where or what should be placed in some particular spot. I am always suggesting learning about values and doing a preliminary sketch first, but it is most often assumed a waste of time by those who are beginners. Most people also assume that sketching is a standalone activity or necessary for watercolorists only. Which is wrong.

    1. Thanks Inese! In my opinion, this is definitely the missing link in creation of art, and I hope more potential artists and not only artists use this very important aspect and create sketches to see the draft of their idea.

    2. Absolutely. Even in photography, I often sketch before I shoot a project. I want to see what my final result is going to look like, especially if it is a diptych or triptych, or a series of images.

    3. It means you are serious about what you want to achieve. I can only congratulate you on that because I really regret seeing wasted efforts just because it is quite often assumed sketching out the idea is sort of step which can be omitted. That’s why your photos are so impressive: you work on the idea and draft a plan for its implementation.

    4. Thank you so much! I don’t know anyone who writes, or paints, or photographs for themselves. Each of us does our work for a reader or a viewer, and it means that the work has to be attractive in some way or another. It has to have an idea and a composition. Even if I leave background wild and blurred, I focus on a model very carefully. If there is no particular model, I make sure that the details are in my control as much as it is possible, and the composition looks pleasing. I need that sketch 🙂

    6. I don’t have enough serious works to fill up the blog at the rate of about 10-20 images per blog, but I do my best to make my pictures presentable and diverse both in subject and technique. It was my plan from the beginning to blog about different things and post very different images. I cannot post portraits of people, and I don’t want to, unless it is a part of an artwork, and the person doesn’t mind. I am trying to be very careful on the internet.

    7. Yes, we have to be very careful with posting pictures of other people. I have started even to avoid taking pictures with people, too. I never understood parents who are posting pictures of their kids. Honestly, that’s not needed. I don’t agree with those who say they want to show these pictures to family. There are so many much more private ways.
      You have plenty of great pictures, I’m always taken away by the diversity they represent. I cannot travel too much, once a year at the best, and the immobility kind of ties me to just my backyard and my place.

    8. I don’t travel much, Inese. Most of my pictures were taken in the past. You are tied to your backyard and I am tied to computer 🙂
      Sometimes I share pictures of children, but without any description, and mostly the old ones.

    9. That is amazing! Well, I was drawing and painting, but I never had a camera to take any pictures before 2004. I started doing this here in Canada. Isn’t it problematic for you also to find a storage for all pictures? I just keep deleting and deleting and re-sizing, still way too many.

    10. I have 1000Gb external drives – Passports. Haven’t lost anything so far, but sure there is a risk, like with any electronics. There is a paid cloud space in the internet, but I have never used it.

    11. I have a few external drives, too. I am thinking to get everything archived on some external drive. There are pictures which I definitely don’t want to loose. I don’t want clouds because I have hard times with signing in in any of these applications, I can get so messed up with Windows passwords, and Microsoft and Apple. I also have lots of places for which I do medical work, and there are passwords everywhere, that is horrible. I think having external drive is good, especially if it’s marked up with dates, etc. I have a few for certain years. Need more.

  5. I love how you painted those silver birches. I remember painting silver birches with my aunt. We would watercolor together when I was in law school. I miss that. I have one of her paintings. I found myself planning a painting recently. I compose one that same way I do poetry. I start with an idea. I consider what the focal point is. I think about how the background or foreground should interact with it. I think about whether I can convey it as an abstract and if so, what elements I might want to introduce. I have missed doing that. It’s very visual and stimulating. I plan to set up my easel this year. I bought it right before I got pregnant with my third, and the smell of the turpentine turned my stomach. I’ve never used it. A year after she was born, I had back surgery. That’s when I started blogging, when I was stuck, immobile. Otherwise, I think I would be a painter again by now.

    Reply

    1. What a story, Brenda! The nice thing about painting is that it is never too late. It’s great you haven’t lost interest, and most likely returning to art will be easy for you. I cannot do oils unfortunately, I am so abnormally sensitive to anything. I got the watersoluble oils because I assumed I could tolerate those, but I couldn’t. Therefore, I can do watercolor, acrylic and pastels. Pastels are slightly irritating, too, for me because the sound when dry pastel touches surface makes me very uncomfortable. You certainly have a choice, too. Paints are very expensive recently, especially oils, so at some point, I’m ok with acrylics.

    2. I love oils, and I miss painting. I thought I’d try acrylics first. My oils are ancient and probably dried out. And messy. But I find the door in my head is opening again. I love open doors. 🙂

    6. It would be fun. I may have to break the ice with a playful abstract. 🙂 As soon as some space opens up in the garage. We just need a few warm days. Maybe later this month.

  6. Your sketches are wonderful examples Inese.. And I could not paint or use pastel unless I sketch first.. 🙂 🙂 lovely to catch up with your works again my friend.. Happy Painting xxx

    Reply

    1. Thanks Sue! It is great many people admit this is one of the most important steps. Beginners actually don’t, so I’ll refer everyone to this post! Happy painting and inspiration to you, as well!

  7. `The problem with not well developing painting is not the technique of putting on paint. The problem most often is in our eyes: we do not perceive values, shapes, proportions and potential composition; therefore, we cannot come up with a neat plan to make painting elements work´…

    I think this is a great excerpt as it highlights the importance of our perceptions and even preconceived notion when it comes to artistic creation… Sketching really seems to be a basic point in order to create…
    I think your analogies between writing and painting are truly accurate as well…
    A very enjoyable and pleasant reading, dear Inese…
    Sending you all my best wishes!. Aquileana 😀

    Reply

    1. Thank you so much! My biggest pleasure is when somebody pays attention to writing and reads also what’s between lines.
      I am seeing this at practically every class or painting event. I thought at the beginning, too, we can skip this step, but only these ones with well trained eye actually can do both at the same time: sketch in the main guiding lines and paint right away. Nowadays, time rushes everybody, and there are so few people who want to take their time and do things properly.
      Best wishes to you, too!

    1. Thanks Christie! Did you get a chance to see the other blog, I’m trying really hard to get somebody to visit it, it’s very unfortunate that WP has these primary and secondary blogs of one account, but it’s impossible to have two separate blogs: https://inesepogalifeschool.com/
      Thanks so much for stopping by! I saw your poems on Aquileanas blog, and I liked them a lot!

    1. Thanks! We tried to do this effortlessly, I mean, that was class work, everybody got it done beautifully. My was the largest in size, so easier to do. My students are very talented, too, so, it’s pleasure to give classes.

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