What Are Your Artistic Strong Points?

It’s a good thing to step back to think about your strong points. Sometimes we get lost in the process of creating art or we get wrapped up in experimenting with new techniques. But maybe we should take some time to examine what we have already done well and expand on that.

We probably spend too much time thinking about what we can’t seem to master. Those moments of frustration when your painting is not turning out like it was in your imagination.

We are all pretty aware that we are not where we want to be yet in our art journey. We notice the parts of our paintings that are not as good as we want them to be.

But how long has it been since you thought about your artistic strong points? Maybe too long. So let’s treat ourselves to looking at our artwork from a positive point of view.

Start by listing the things you know you are good at:

[1] Are you clear about what type of art you want to produce?… Realism? Abstract? Impressionism? Landscapes? Animal portraits?

Get out your art notebook and start this exercise by writing down what type of art you’d like be really good at.

[2] Now, what about color? … Are you good at recognizing what colors go good together? Do you have a collection of colors you prefer to paint with? Do you prefer warm colors or cool? Dark colors or light?

Take a look at your finished artwork and notice which colors and shades you gravitate toward. What color combinations make you feel good? Make a note of that in your art notebook.

[3] What about the size of your canvases?… Do you like creating large artwork or small? Miniatures or murals? Which do you like best? Which do you think art buyers like best?

Don’t brush over this point. In your notebook, draw the dimensions of the paint surface sizes you prefer to work on.

[4] Now take a look at a painting you did that you like. What exactly do you like about it?

Is it the brush strokes? The color combination? The size of the piece? The contrast? The shading or illumination? The subject matter?

List those things in your notebook. Feel good about them. Think about expanding on what you really like about a particular painting.

Now take another painting you’ve done. Do the same thing. What is the best part of that painting? Make a note of it.

I hope by now you see the value in this type of introspection of your artwork. Sometimes it’s painful to have another person critique our artwork. It’s like they are critiquing us.

But it’s much more enjoyable when we step back and reexamine our own work – especially when we are looking at what is good and what we like about certain paintings.

What we don’t like about our paintings seem to jump out at us and take up our entire field of vision. So maybe it’s more productive (and enjoyable!) to focus on what we like about each painting and purposely incorporate these aspects into our future artwork.

Leave a comment below, letting us know how this exercise worked for you.

What did you learn about your artwork?
What parts do you like the most?
Did you notice a positive aspect of a painting that you didn’t focus on before?
Did this thought process make you think differently about what you will paint in the future?

Let us know.