How to Create Faster | 10 Tips

Today I wanted to talk about fast painting. About the process of creating art faster than usual. A lot of famous artists painting slowly. Sometimes it can be months and years of creating one art work. And I believe that is totally okay and it’s up to artist how long he need to finish art. Because it’s process of development and struggling. But sometimes we have some time limit where we need to finish art faster. It can be art assignment as you are art student or commission work which needs to be dome tomorrow. 

When I studied in university, we needed to create 2 to 3 art works per week. And I remember sitting at night painting and back then I was not so fast working and works was not that successful. No one teach us how to paint fast. Right now I teach my students to take time in making good work, but don’t go too slow as you can lose inspiration and make it rather technical art work than spiritual.

So I am suggesting these ideas to improve the time of creating process and learn how to paint faster but not to compromise the quality of your work.

1. Use a background (add color before start working)

There are many benefits to working on a ground. One of these is increased painting or drawing speed. A ground covers a painting or drawing surface from the outset. It can act as mid-tone, with only black and white used to apply dark and light areas (as in the examples below) or be left partially visible in the final work.

2. Incorporate mixed media /patterned surfaces / textural elements

As with using a ground, patterned, decorative or textural items can cover areas of an artwork quickly. Although this strategy should be used with care, selecting only materials which support or enhance your project (usually with reference to a relevant artist model) this can be a great way to speed up your project and introduce creative use of mixed media.

3. Work on several pieces at once

Working in series – completing several paintings or drawings at one time – though it might be difficult in the start. Especially for slow painters.

A single color can be used throughout a number of works, without needing to stop for remixing / washing brushes.

While one work is drying, another one can be worked on

Similar processes or techniques can be mastered quickly and repeated on subsequent works

In addition, when working on several pieces at once, ‘preciousness’ about the work tends to be lost, leading to more experimentation and greater work speed.

4. Use masking tape to create straight edges

Some artists are concerned that it might be necessary to ‘prove’ that a straight line can be painted by hand. This is not the case. Your control of a paint brush can be ascertained immediately by looking at the remainder of your painting. Masking tape creates straight edges in seconds. Once mastered, this trick can save you hours – and make your paintings sharper, cleaner and more professional in the process. If you haven’t used masking tape before, buy some now!

5. Leave artwork purposefully incomplete

Artist work is sometimes purposefully ‘unfinished’. You shouldn’t feel obliged to ‘complete’ every item. There are many occasions when a fully rendered drawing is not necessary. Drawings, especially those in sketchbooks, can be left with edges trailing away and tone only applied to some areas. Leaving work unfinished is particularly useful when conducting visual research, exploring ideas and experimenting with media. Depending on your artist influences, this may even be appropriate in final works – as a way to draw attention to focal points and direct attention within an artwork.

6. Focus on Line

There are many occasions where it may be appropriate for a high school student to draw using only line (it is often the application of tone that is time-consuming for students, so working exclusively with line can provide a welcome relief). Blind drawings, contour drawings, cross contour drawings and other hatched drawings can form an important part of your art.

7. Include photographs

While there is a certain quantity of painting and drawing that must take place within a Painting or Fine Art portfolio, photography can provide an excellent mechanism for moving a project forward at a faster pace.

Photography can be used as a tool to develop composition. Rather than ordinary snapshots of source material, the photographs here are complex digital manipulations, which help refine ideas and compositions.

In addition to helping with composition planning, photography can be collaged into artworks or used as painting ground. If the photograph remains visible in the final work, less paint needs to be applied, thus speeding up the art-making process.

8. Use a bigger brush

There is something surprisingly liberating about painting with a bigger brush – especially if you have previously worked at a microscopic scale, picking out detail the size of a pin prick. You will soon discover that it is just as easy to achieve clean edges with a larger brush and that an unexpected level of detail can be achieved. Most enjoy picking up a larger brush – even if this just becomes a way for creating grounds and applying background layers.

9. Trace or photocopy your own drawings

For example, a compositional plan could be quickly enlarged on a photocopier and traced/modified as required, instead of being redrawn at a larger scale; an existing drawing could be traced or photocopied in order to trial application of a different medium or technique (this should be kept to a minimum, however, to ensure that your work doesn’t become too repetitive); repeat patterns could be traced; or different drawings could be overlaid and arranged together, tracing the composite work.

10. Use digital manipulation

Scanning existing artworks and editing and combining these with other artworks hold exciting promise for modern artists. Once an artist has practiced using image manipulation software (such as Adobe Fireworks or Photoshop) creating images and then printing them can be a very fast way to create amazing artworks.

Some information are taken from here