Easel Talk 14: Learn Painting Through Insight!
Seven fundamentals for using insight to elevate your painting practice
This talk is about insight, and I’ll say it straight: insight is the number one best way to learn. Absolutely.
Maybe you disagree. Maybe you like learning by rote, maybe you think you can put a book under your pillow and information will seep up through it overnight.
There are three ways to improve at anything, we’re talking about painting here because we’re all into it:
Education
Hard work
Insight
This talk is about insight, my favorite way. I’ve said it so many times over the years, but it bears repeating: one good insight can totally change everything for you. That’s powerful.
What Is Insight?
The dictionary says:
“The capacity to gain an accurate and deep understanding of someone or something.”
But I’d broaden that. An insight is accessing a penetrating idea or aspect of something you want to know about. It’s specific, personal, aimed at what you need to understand.
The definition tells us what it is, but not how to get it. The way to attain insights? You must be actively engaged in thinking about or pursuing the activity you want insight into. You can’t get painting insights sitting on the couch watching Netflix. You get them by painting, by studying, by wrestling with the work.
How to Get Insights (The Short Answer)
Sometimes, as my assistant says, insight can be a slippery fish to acquire. The short answer? Insights are mostly arrived at through education and hard work.
You’ve got to be engaged and working constantly. Keep studying artists you love, not artists you don’t like, obviously. For my part, I don’t care much about art history. What I really care about is creating good paintings. That’s one of the reasons I wrote the new books.
If we could have had video of George Inness painting, wouldn’t that have been amazing? Oh my God. But we don’t. So we learn through reading, through working, through paying attention.
Fundamental #1: Insights Come Easier Early On
When you first start painting, you can advance massivly from one week to the next, constantly improving. The insights come fast and furious. There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit. If you’ve ever had a fruit tree in your yard, you know what I mean.
As you progress down the painting lane, you’ve got to work harder to get those greater insights. But they can really propel you to a new level when they hit.
I’ve drawn this diagram for student after student: imagine you’re moving along and you hit a wall. You move along, you hit another wall. As you progress in your journey, those walls get higher. But when you break through, it has extra meaning and significance because you’ve been working so hard.
I’m always improving. My whole thing lately has been trying to accomplish things with looser, less fussy brushwork. Sometimes I walk away thinking “maybe this is just too loose,” but nine times out of ten, when I look at the footage later I’ll say: okay, that’s fine, it’s good.
On that note about loose brushwork, it’s important for your paintings to really communicate that they ARE paintings, not some slick digital concoction or AI thing. We want to see you using paint to interpret reality. That’s what painting is.
As you advance, insight becomes more subtle and deeply unconscious. It’s no longer obvious stuff like discovering there’s a huge difference between titanium white with zinc versus without zinc. It’s subtler, harder won, but more transformative.
Fundamental #2: One Insight Can Change Everything
One good insight can completely change the direction of your work. You might be under a lot of misapprehensions before gaining that insight.
Just recently, and I mean, I’ve been painting for 15 years, I realized something about designing where the boughs and clumps of foliage overlap the skies, especially in forest scenes with trails or patches of sky peeking through.
I was doing it wrong by over designing in the underpainting stage. The best thing is to have it loosely indicated and then let the sky define things. That was an insight, hard-won after 15 years of painting. The improvement? Pretty major, on a highly difficult aspect of painting.
Fundamental #3: Learn From Specific Insights
Here are some insights that can transform your practice:
You don’t have to make the painting look like the reference. The reference is just the reference. You can change anything you want. When you do, you may feel like you don’t have any moorings, but it’s better than just copying photos onto your surface with paint.
Having an underpainting makes everything easier. I like to have one done, but not overworked. One great thing about underpaintings? You can overdo it and it hasn’t ruined your painting. If you tend to overwork things, express that tendency with your underpainting, then keep the color layer fresh.
Struggling with color? Limit your palette. Just use fewer colors, master those, learn them deeply.
Just because it’s in the reference doesn’t mean you should paint it. More the opposite. Focus on what’s interesting and play that up. Why did you want to paint it? What did you think was great about it? That emotional response is what you want to express. The better you get at expressing that, the more everyone’s going to like your paintings.
Pre-mix your colors. You can pre-mix three colors to fourteen. It’s a great way to look at the reference and break down the colors before you start. When you go in to paint, you start with those piles. You may have to modify them, but it simplifies the process.
Take care of your brushes. I have a two-step process. Quick version: jar with soybean oil and a screen to get paint off initially, then sit with professional brush cleaner on them overnight, then wash with good soap. Your brushes will last and serve you better.
The more you paint, the better you get. How many times have you heard me say it? Paint every day.
This is the ultimate insight.
Fundamental #4: Put It Into Practice
You could collect insights like baseball cards, but they don’t do you any good unless they’re implemented.
When I say something and you think “oh, I’m going to try that,” try it. Put it to work in your practice and see how it works.
You might notice none of my insights is “educate yourself more.” Yeah, it’s nice, it’s fun. But it can turn into a time-wasting, stalling activity, and this is because painting’s hard.
The best thing for you to do is just paint your way through any problem. Do a painting every day. So much of the problems you have will sort themselves automatically.
For any insight to be valuable, it must be put into practice. Otherwise it’s just another bit of knowledge you’ve collected.
Fundamental #5: Combine Insights With Other Learning
Rote learning can be very powerful in the sense that when you paint every day, you cement your learning: “I’ve mixed this color before. I’ve done this before.”
It can be a double-edged sword if you’re doing something wrong over and over, but my feeling is: even if you’re doing something the wrong way repeatedly, if you’re gaining experience and working all the time, it’s all good. A time will come where you’ll see the light.
I’m particularly fond of insight as a method. I am a very insightful type person. I teach with insights. My favorite form of meditation is insight meditation, basically just going “wow, here I am, I’m alive in the world. Wow. Who am I? What is this?”
Fundamental #6: Test Insights For Yourself
You’ve found an insight in a book that seems especially pertinent to challenges you’re facing. You’ve got to implement it! If you don’t have time right then, I know some of you are busy with kids and family, make a little note. Put it in your pocket: “Try that insight.”
Every night, carve out at least a half hour or an hour for your painting practice and watch yourself grow and mature as an artist. It’s amazing.
Set up a system: “Where’s mom? Where’s dad? Oh, they’re painting. We left them alone for an hour so they can work on being a genius.”
Fundamental #7: Recognize Insight When It Arrives
Insights can go tipping by and you don’t even notice. Golden insights, so valuable, and you’re just like “oh, well, what? Huh?”
Every video I do, five or six valuable insights are imparted. Yes, a lot of times it’s the same insights: pre-mix your colors, clean your brushes, get to work. But have your eyes open for them, notice, pay attention, and then implement.
Insight is available to us if we’re looking for it. You’ve got to be looking forward, and when you see it, make a note. Don’t assume you’re going to remember, because life is constantly moving, constantly changing.
Study the masters. Struggle through your difficult paintings, finish them even if it’s hard. Then throw them away after if it didn’t work out. That’s fine. The bad ones don’t need to stick around.
The Master Principle: Everything Is Connected
Everything is connected to everything else. Every aspect of the landscape is connected to every other aspect. The composition is connected to the value structure. The value structure is related to the color structure.
Every part of painting is interrelated. It’s not infinite, it seems like it could be, but what’s great about painting is that it is complicated, it is difficult to pull off, but it is doable even if you’re not a genius.
The Seven Fundamentals (Summary)
Understand how insight evolves: From early easy wins to the hard slog. The struggle’s real and worth doing.
One insight can change everything: That’s why I’m collecting hundreds in the new book. You just need one or two here and there to change your life.
Learn from specific insights: Study examples that moved others forward.
Put it into practice: Knowledge without action is wasted.
Combine insights with other learning: Rote practice, hard work, education, they all add up to better.
Test insights for yourself: What works for me may not work for you, but the painting process is a system, and if you’re engaging with that system, I’ve got insights that will help you.
Recognize insight when it arrives: Don’t flood your brain with so much stuff you get blasé.
Closing Thought
If you just take my one insight of doing a painting every day, small, probably, because it’s one per day, but every day: 300 in a year. How good are you going to be? 300 times five years? That’s a lot of paintings, and you’re going to be pretty awesome if you do that.
Insight is a powerful tool, combined with hard work and education. On its own? Maybe not as much. Insight is only valuable when put into practice.
And here’s the final truth: Thinking about painting is not the same as actually painting. Go make a painting. Do that now. Turn off the internet and traipse on over to your dedicated working area and paint.
Take good care and stay out of trouble🙂
Mike
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Thank you so much Mike, your expertise is very much appreciated.