Your technical painting skills are worthless in the world if you are unable to find New Painting Ideas. However, you should keep your mind open and allow yourself to carry out a few experiments to use the skills you learnt during a painting from a college/university. Be soft and gentle to yourself and let yourself go down to the toughest ends, make mistakes, and see what you could build. Here are a few ideas that you can use as a starting point, but not as an endpoint:
- Make a list of what you like and what you dislike
To get a painting idea, you need to make it clear what genre or style of painting you want to draw. So, you should prepare a list of the options that you want to consider in drawing a painting on the canvas. Here are a few steps that you can take to make your list:
- Decide and note down the styles/subjects you would like to do. The subjects could be figures, abstractions, or landscapes. For styles, you can have realistic, abstracted, or expressionist
- Determine whether you would love to use one colour dominate or a limited palette
- Narrow down your list to one to three at the beginning
- Use printable art journal pages
- Note down your painting ideas on paper
Keep in mind that each page is a perfect sketch. So, you do not need to get misled by seeing the reproduced pages from your sketchbooks. A sketchbook helps you keep the ideas as a record. Here are some useful steps for noting down your artwork ideas:
- Use your sketchbook as a creativity journal, which has pictures in words
- Keep a pocket sketchbook for carrying with you all time and a bigger one with a pen for the location of your artwork
- Use the pocket or big sketchbook to keep a record of your ideas as you come across
- Look around the world you live in
It will always be better for you to explore the place where you are right now instead of travelling to new locations. The kitchen or living room of your home can give props for still life. Your garden with plants and flowers that represent the change of seasons could be inspirational for you and encourage you to draw something. Further, you can:
- Encourage your family members to pose for you
- Get a scenic viewpoint from a landscape/cityscape that keeps changing during the day
- Draw a painting by having a look at the customers coming out of a coffee shop
- Draw a painting of your sleeping pets
- Use the taken photographs as a reference
- Use an idea several times
To get beautiful painting ideas, you need to use an idea more than once. The more you use an idea the more perfect you are in that one. It happens as you come to know your faults and try to resolve the same by making a lot of effort. For example, you can take out a painting you drew a few months/years ago. After taking it out, look at it from several different angles and think about what variations you can make of it. You can work on changing colour shades, lightings, and angles.
- Get in touch with others to know ideas
You know people around us are very resourceful and can help you in getting new ideas. They can’t come to your side and start drawing something on the canvas for you. However, they can let you know which one of your paintings is superior to others in their view. After knowing their view, you can create a few versions of that painting.
- Be acquainted with the history of paintings
Keep in your mind that the paintings of the past are a rich source of ideas. You should approach the past by going through the biographies of famous artists, art films, or TV documentaries if you find the art history of your course a boring thing for you. It is not the subject itself that is dull, but it is your approach or how it is written makes it interesting.
- Try different sources/ways to get new ideas
Sometimes, one approach to a topic or idea doesn’t work. You have to approach in another way. Similarly, for finding new painting ideas, you should change what you are applying to paint those ideas. You should select a new medium or ambulation of mediums to clear your brain from jaded or automatic painting styles. Keep your favorite painting brush aside or placing paints on paper in the same way. Try something new keeping your favorite colours, styles, and locations aside. For example, switch to oil painting ideas from water colour painting ideas. Your switch to new way/approach will help you a lot.
Summary
Getting new painting ideas is not so tough. You can find them by making a few changes in your approach or way that you use to make a painting. The steps/ideas mentioned above can help you a lot in this regard.