How To Know When A Painting’s Finished
Knowing When To Stop
Knowing when to stop painting is a skill that can only be developed through direct personal experience. Unfortunately, it’s not something that can be taught other than by paying attention to your own sensibilities. Knowing when to stop is a personal process that’s intuitive by nature.
However, there are some compositional and emotional considerations I love to explore when I’m trying to work out if a painting is finished, and I’ve listed those below.
Part of knowing when to stop, is learnt from going too far. But never mind if you do, it can always be changed again and there’s a lot to be learnt each time we go too far.
I’ve put together a few questions you can ask yourself to help you know when a painting is finished.
Personally, I feel my paintings are finished when all the elements feel like they hang together. Like I don’t need to spring into action to change anything, and I spend more time looking at the painting and don’t feel the impulse to adjust it.
My Intention For You
My hope and intention for you is for you to be able to step back and evaluate your work so you can create paintings you find interesting and you feel proud of. To do that, sometimes we have to navigate through the uninspiring, wacky, ugly or uninteresting phases of our painting’s evolutions until we arrive at a place that satisfies us. Sometimes we have to drive through the industrial estate to reach the parkland.
If you ask yourself these questions and find you don’t feel the painting is finished, it doesn’t mean you’ve taken a wrong turn, or that you can’t paint, or that you won’t get to where you want to go. It means you’re here now and you have all the information available to you in this moment to take a new direction, and see where it leads.
You may choose to add something new, wipe an area off completely, paint over a section or even turn your painting upside down. These creative decisions allow you to keep navigating by trusting your intuition, relying on your personal aesthetic and being brave.
Formal Considerations of Your Painting
#1 Colours
Are you happy with the colours? Are they harmonious if you want them to be, or do they offer a jolt of surprise? Is that what you desire?
#2 Contrast
Not always, but very often a painting will ‘pop’ and appear to have more depth if there is a contrast between some dark areas and some light areas. Does your painting have good value contrast? Does it pop and have the depth you desire? If not, try adding an even darker dark or an even lighter shade.
#3 Gestures
Paintings are made up of a series of gestures and brush marks. Do you want your gestures and brush marks to be a feature? Or are you wanting a very flat, uniform composition?
#4 Variation
Is there a variety of marks, colours, tones and transparencies in your painting? You may not want a variation in all of these aspects, but if you’re wondering what’s missing, it could be one of these things.
#5 Composition
Is your composition balanced? (it doesn’t have to be balanced if you don’t want it to be). Does it feel interesting to you? Does your eye dance around the canvas or get stuck in one spot?
#6 Texture
Have you built up a variety of paint quality and textures?
#7 Scale & Size
Do the elements in your composition vary in size? Having a range of small shapes and large shapes can add interest to your painting.
Aesthetic Considerations of Your Painting
Is there anything that looks unfinished, or that jars your sensibilities?
Is there anything you want to adjust, add, wipe off or change?
Does it reflect your authentic style, taste and voice?
Are you happy with how it looks?
Emotional & Conceptual Considerations of Your Painting
Does your painting express what you wanted to express?
How did you feel while painting it?
Does it investigate an idea you wanted to explore?
Is that idea conveyed to a viewer?
Is it important to you that a viewer can see what you are interested in exploring?
Does it lead you to want to explore something further?
A Note on the ‘Never Ending Painting’
Sometimes the best way to grow a painting is to leave it behind and begin a fresh new one. Make sure you allow yourself to begin afresh when you feel called, and don’t fiddle with a painting that’s holding you back.
There’s plenty more where that came from!
About Nicola Newman
I'm a Creative Business Coach, Award-Winning Artist & Mentor for Creative Hearts who want to flourish, flow & prosper.
My passion is inspiring and supporting Creative Hearts to trust their inner wisdom and carve out a life that’s personally meaningful and fulfilling to them.
I share practical, evidence-based tools for Creative Hearts seeking to improve their lives or businesses. My work draws from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), mindfulness-based techniques, body-based practices, and neuroscience -- and my own creative living adventures -- among other approaches.
My mission is to support Creative Hearts to:
Dissolve creative blocks, develop a loving relationship with themselves, nurture their creativity and reframe the beliefs and patterns that keep them from following their heart and making the creative contribution they would love to make in the world.
My approach is to embrace gentleness, playfulness and self-care to navigate self-doubt and instead cultivate deep self-trust so you can truly enjoy the creative process, bring together your body of work, make money doing what you love and leave a creative legacy you’re proud of. Read more about my story, here.
