The instructor for my watercolor class teaches a process that begins with the question “Why?”
He says this is the most important step of the painting process. Several of his lectures focused on studying photos to determine the reason why you are creating a particular painting. The why could be the lonely feeling from a single boat anchored in a bay or the way yellow umbrellas pop out in a cafe street scene or fields of wildflowers leading up to an old farmhouse.
In this process, he calls the photos “inspirational photos”. You pick the parts of the photo that speak to your individual why and then create a composition. In creating the composition, you’ll remove things, resize them, change colors, add people and rearrange objects to create a painting that makes you feel a certain way.
Finding my way goes far beyond painting. It applies to everything I do. The older I get, the more I find myself asking “Why am I doing this?”
For me it started with being dissatisfied with my career. Getting laid off (and fired) several times had me question every career choice I’d made, my ambitions and my goals.
Then I began to question my finances. Which led to questioning my spending habits, consumerism and debt.
In time, I started asking why more:
- Why am I eating this?
- Why am doing these workouts?
- Why do we live in this city?
Today, I ask myself why about nearly every choice I make:
- Dating/Romance
- Socializing
- Diet
- Exercise
- Hobbies
- Entertainment
- Lifestyle
- Purchase
- Pets
- Family
- Purchases
When I dg into the reasons behind my choices, sometimes I learn that it is time to make a change.
Sometimes my why is because of old habits. Sometimes it’s due to some irrational response to an old feeling. Sometimes it’s because I never thought about it at all.
When I first learned to paint, I followed tutorials online. I started with Bob Ross because I remembered watching him on TV and because he made painting landscapes look easy. After a few months, I found other artists to follow on YouTube. In time, I started painting “from my head”.
Sometimes when I sat down to paint, I had no idea of what I wanted to create. I’d start painting and see what developed. Those paintings sucked.
My best paintings were the ones where I thought about a scene in my head for hours or days beforehand. I’d think about the perspective, the colors and the objects when I was swimming, walking the dogs and working out. Those paintings, when I began knowing my why, turned out much better.
Just like real life.