Reflecting & Finding Focus

3 beginner-friendly painting ideas to find focus in abstract landscape painting

This month I’ve been working on creating video tutorials for the launch of my new Patreon tiers. The process of planning these tutorials has really got me thinking about my practice, how I teach, and what has helped me to find my creative voice along the way. I’m looking to use Patreon as a platform to create a space for people that are looking to explore their creativity, with a focus on themes of landscape, nature and the outdoors. It’s also going to be a space for me to teach online, and share educational-focused content. 

All this thinking has got me looking in to the foundations of my practice, and the elements I’ve found to help me focus along the way. I’ve written this post to share three reflections I’ve had on my own practice: concentrating on ways I find focus within abstract landscape paintings. If you’re interested in approaching abstract landscape, but are not sure how to find a way in - If you’re wondering where to start, what to think about, how to pick a theme or direction, then this may help to spark some ideas to get you going. 

These reflections are based on things that have worked for me on my personal painting journey, from beginner to becoming a full time artist. Really they can be suited to any stage and ability, especially if you’re warming back into painting, and looking for some focus points in your studio session. As always, take what you are drawn to and find interesting, and leave what you don’t. 

To kick start these three reflections, the first - and potentially most important thing for longevity, has been:

1. Looking at the wider story:

This one is a bit of a mindset thing, and is something which I really think is at the heart of painting freely and bravely. Speaking from first hand experience, It’s really easy to get frustrated when learning new skills, and think you’re not good - whatever that word means for you - when you’re starting out. I’m always trying to work on my own beginner mindset, and find it’s something that is harder to push against as I get older. When approaching my studio session, I remind myself that each painting is part of a wider body of work. I also never approach a painting with the aim of it being a painting - I approach each work as an experimentation.

Finding ways to view each work you approach as a much larger series, or as part of the life long learning process, can take the expectation away. I think the need to get things right, or to be good, is the fastest way to get stressed, tense, throw away your brushes and abandon the work. Each painting is a practice, a lesson, and part of something much larger than itself. Therefor, like many mistakes or daily anxieties in life, if it doesn’t go to plan, you’re most likely not to remember. Or, you’re most likely to learn the most from it. Pressures we put on our work can be because of very valid things: finances, ego, peer comparison, time, and so much more. Have a think about the elements that might hold you back from this wider story mindset. Ways to take the pressure off might be to work with cheaper materials when you’re learning, to paint in private, to initially only show your work with people you trust, or to book a weekly or monthly painting session in to your calendar, and try your best to keep that commitment. What works for me in holding this wider story mentality is to work on many paintings at once. I also set mini goals, or focuses in my practice - I don’t need to paint a masterpiece, I just need to firstly, have painted it, and secondly, for it to have met that one focus: which leads us on smoothly for a more in-depth reflection in point two: 

2. To find a visual focus in my inspiration:

This one might sound a bit obvious, but making a decision at the beginning of a studio session or painting is often overlooked. This decision is key to analysing your work as it develops; and it can act as a cornerstone to keeping you on the right track. This is not only helpful for getting going, but is also very helpful when you’re in that messy middle stage of a painting! It also helps me keep that wider story mindset I mentioned in reflection one. Limitations are your friends, and will be the guiding force to avoiding overwhelm and forming direction in your work. The first thing is to consider what it is you want your painting to say and explore. If you are looking to take inspiration from visual elements of landscape in your abstract paintings, what is it you’re drawn to about this landscape? We want to select one location or type of landscape to get started. It might be one specific location or walk locally to you, or one type of landscape: marshlands, Forrests, or beaches for instance. Once we’ve picked an environment, narrow in and think of one element within this place that you’d like to represent within your work. This might be sunlight, reflections, paths or rock formations. Knowing what you are aiming to specifically capture can help you focus and find an aim for your painting. Once you’ve picked that focus, it’s always worth taking a moment to consider why you’re drawn to that location or element of landscape, and pull that reasoning to the forefront for your painting. 

To give you an example from my own work: I always love painting seascapes because I feel connected to the water, and I particularly love the movement and energy that a storm brings in the sky and sea. Therefor, I knew that I wanted to focus on stormy seascapes when I got started painting. Within this, I knew that capturing movement and energy in my work would be a prime focus for me.  Additionally, I love all the textures and colours I can see; If I’m in Scotland, on the west coast, this typically looks like sharp lines from marram grasses contrasted against flat white sand, situated against bright turquoise and green water, with a frothy, stormy slate grey sky. Within that, I knew that texture and contrast of colours would be important to me, because these elements are what I love so much within the landscape itself. What we are doing here is analysing what is important to us in the inspiration, so we can translate that across to our own work. This gives us a holding point to reference and check in as we’re painting. From my own analysis, I would know I was headed in the right direction when my work showed contrasts in colour, lots of texture, movement and energy. For me, that would be enough to represent the landscape. So think about what place you’re looking to capture, and the elements within that location you are particularly drawn to. Picking one element, and practicing to do it well can remove the expectations we set ourselves to have a whole piece masterfully done. I’ve mentioned contrast of colour, lots of texture, movement and energy as focal points to capture in my abstract seascape painting - I think it’s good to select only one of these elements to focus on within your painting when you’re setting out - be easy on yourself, and try not to master everything at once. 

3. Exploring abstract concepts:

If you’re like me, I am drawn to abstract landscape painting for its capacity to hold larger questions, and instil evocative emotions. As well as being visually beautiful, it’s an area of art that always moves me. If you’re looking to start exploring something deeper or more personal in your work, a good starting place I’ve found is to consider the senses: Touch, taste, smell, sound, sight. Working with your own lived experiences of nature offers pretty limitless pools of inspiration, and is a great path to lead to authentic work. Are there other senses you associate with your relationship with landscape, and could you take ideas from this sensation? Exploring our senses can be a lovely way in, to exploring the idea of our experiences in nature in a more abstract way. It removes the focus on literal representation, and shifts the conversation towards how a place feels or is experienced. Starting from an abstract theme such as a sense can be an easier way in than relying on sight (which often leads back to literal traps and a ‘getting it right’ mindset, which can make us tense up). When I was initially learning to draw and paint, I started exploring how I could draw sounds from both music and landscape. I was also interested in how I could draw the texture of how something felt. For instance, what does the feeling of a smooth stone in the palm of my hand look like in a painting? Is it represented through a smooth mark or texture, or a specific colour? The beauty of this sensory experience is that there’s no right or wrong! It’s the beginning of a conversation that pushes you to explore how you can make marks, that look like or personally represent the feeling of the experience. 

Sometimes, landscape painting can just be about the subject of landscape, of that one location. However for me, I think often times, landscape is an emotive subject for holding much larger questions - how we relate to the world, how we process emotions, how we care (or don’t) for our environment. It can speak to the social history or community, and so much more, and these questions and topics are what makes it interesting for me. All of this can be a bit much to grasp when you’re starting out - those are some really big topics! So turning inwards to our senses and exploring how you might visualise those can be a great way to begin exploring more abstract experiences of landscape. This way in might lead you to those bigger questions down the line, if you’d like to explore them more. Otherwise, it’ll give you a whole new range of marks, textures and colours that add a little more personal experience to your painting.

Those are my three reflections, that I hope will spark some ideas for you if you’re interested in getting started with abstract painting. If you’ve got something from this post, I’d love to know what’s resonated - let me know, in the comments below!

This post has been created as a written translation of my latest youtube video. If you’d like to watch or listen, you’ll find it here.

This post has been written as a prelude to a series of landscape painting tutorials, which will be available over on my Patreon, also called The Outdoor Sketchbook Collective. Through Patreon I focus on offering educational tutorials and content around landscape, nature and abstraction. I’ve made one of these pre-recorded tutorials available for free to everyone, over on my Patreon. This is to give you a taster of what will be included in one of these new tiers.