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Ok, I admit, when Thoreau wrote these words while living in the woods at Walden Pond, he was referring to paring down one's material goods and extraneous connections, not giving technical advice to artists.  But they ring in my head so often, nonetheless.  

The admonishment to simplify--to get rid of clutter, the extraneous detail that we think we need but really just makes our paintings needlessly complex is perhaps the most important and most difficult of all to put into action.  

Last weekend I went to Charleston, where every turn of the head inspires a new painting.  City streets are incredibly complex, and I was teaching a “Loosen Up” workshop on keeping work fresh and suggestive rather than tight and overworked.   So how to stay loose and painterly when surrounded by a complex scene? 

Here’s how I approached this Charleston city street scene.

The key to any good composition is to recognize it first as an abstract pattern.  This means simplifying the scene into shapes rather than things.  The scene caught me with its interesting pattern of lights and darks:  I was attracted to the light swash across the bottom of the scene, connected to the bright verticals on the right, with a thin diagonal light along the curb drawing the eye to the tall shape in the back. 

My first step was to create a simplified thumbnail sketch, with white and black charcoal on toned paper. 

The sketch is key to my simplifying approach:  it turns the whole scene into three values: black, white, and the paper’s midtone.  It helps me see the trees as a large shape rather than trunks and individual leaves, and the buildings as large planes and simple values, ultimately creating a much stronger statement. Best of all, the potentially intimidating horse-drawn carriage full of tourists, when squinted at, becomes a squarish dark shape with a few protruding points and knobs, and a narrow arched band above it.  Abstracting things into shapes makes them infinitely easier to see, and draw. 

What you see below is one of my favorite exercises to help loosen up and freshen my marks. 

It’s a limited stroke exercise:  using a toned, sanded ground of about 6” x 8,” I complete a painting in 100 strokes or fewer.  The stroke “budget” makes me think and plan my strokes strategically.  I need to simplify things (like buildings, trees) into big shapes that require fewer strokes.  And I need to think carefully about my mark choices:  what color and value goes here? How should I hold the pastel stick, and which direction will give me the best mark? How much pressure?  This is a great exercise for your mind—and hand.  The tough part is leaving it alone when you are done.  I find it takes discipline to leave those marks alone, but if I can wait on it a few hours, I begin to gain the detachment to appreciate the freshness of those marks.

I would love to do a more fully developed painting from this piece—and this little study will help me to keep it fresh.