Hi everybody! I’d like to share kind of a trick today, that helps a lot building your own painting or drawing style. Instead of painting from photos as reference or from pure imagination, I paint from my own paintings / sketches.
That works perfectly when I am drawing in my sketchbook or painting an abstract piece. Using a painting (one of your own paintings of course) as reference helps to stay loose and focus on the making, not so much on what it should become.
I did this reguarly when it comes to drawing in the past. I’d reference landscapes I drew on location, or just some of my other sketches.
I never did it when it came to my abstract watercolor painting process… I don’t know why, but maybe I thought every painting has to be different – but it doesn’t have to. It can be very similar. There are artist out there that paint the same stuff over and over again. So why not paint from your own painting. A few weeks ago I tried it and I really like how this turned out.
Today I have two examples to share!
You can see my initial painting at the top. It’s quite a simple colourful watercolor landscape and I really loved the composition and the simplicity. I decided to use this as a reference and made the two following paintings. I picked a different colour palette for these two and started playing! Towards the end of the process I came up with some new ideas and tweaks. I added in some colour spots, splatters and after looking at the paintings for a while I saw some trees appearing. On the first one underneath I just painted in some stems…
On the second one I added two trees with watercolors. Finally I was super happy with the two new paintings and I’m pretty sure, that this will become a new habit! I get really excited when I think about how many painting I already have, that I can use as reference.
In case you want to know more about my process, you can join my monthly membership over on YouTube.
Thanks for stopping by today! xx Susanne
Susanne Rose 