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Unless you are a photorealistic painter or are doing meticulous detail work, it is a good idea to loosen up your painting style.

The beginning artist is overly concerned with every brush stroke being perfect, every line meaning something. That is just not the case.

A good painting is an overall expression of the artist’s vision or message to the onlooker. The viewer does not look at the individual daub of paint. The observer stands back and reads the message as a generality.

The unfortunate painter has his nose pressed a foot or two from the canvas and cannot help but see all those little strokes. Just stop doing that.

Stand Up

If you sit while you paint, push the stool away and stand up. By standing, you are able to put your whole body into your work. Now, if you paint miniatures, this may not be the best course of action, but even the miniaturist can benefit from standing to do some warm up exercises. Using scrap watercolor paper or old reject canvases, stand back and do some loose, sketchy painting. Refining is not the goal, but merely to give an impression of the subject.

Brush Strokes

Watch the way you apply paint to your support. Are you holding the brush close to the ferrule and move your wrist to make a brush stroke? Move your hand back towards the wooden tip of the brush and paint using your elbow and shoulder. Let the wrist just rest a while and let the other joints do the work.

Larger Brushes

Paint with a larger brush. Whatever size you are using, put it down and pick up one several sizes bigger. Use the edge or tip the large brush for fine edges and detail. It will not be as exact, but when you stand across the room to view your painting, you will see that fine detail is not necessary from ten feet away.

Set Up

Set up your composition, lay in an underpainting if that is how proceed, or draw the sketch as you normally would. Now that you have your shapes and proportions set for your composition, put your dominant hand behind your back and do the painting with your opposite hand. If you are brave, go ahead, compose and make your initial sketch with the wrong hand. That is probably too much to ask of an overly controlled painter, so doing your preliminary work with the dominant hand is a concession to the intensely obsessive.

Masking Fluids

If you are a watercolorist, learn to use masking fluid to save white areas. By doing this, you do not have to be concerned with preserving the white of the paper. However, do not let the masking fluid remain on the paper indefinitely since it can bond to the surface and become difficult to remove cleanly. Oil and acrylic painters do not have this to worry about as they can paint the white or light areas in after the fact.

Darkness

Work in diminished light to obscure your vision or wear dark sunglasses. Illuminate your subject properly, but paint in the dark. This will eliminate the ability to see detail on the canvas so you do not focus intently on the fine points.
Look for the essentials of your subject and eliminate everything else. By simplifying the subject matter, the artist can focus on the big picture. Details, if necessary, may be added later to enhance the painting.

Think Negative

Paint the negative space around an object to create the painting. This exercise helps to focus on the big picture. Once the negative space is complete, finalize the objects in the composition using the largest brushes possible.

Rough Shapes

Lay in only the roughest of shapes for your subjects. Break objects down into their geometrical forms and draw only squares, rectangles, cylinders, circles and ellipses in the general size of the subjects for compositional needs. Then paint the objects. In this way, you are not filling in outlines with color, but creating the subject within a plane on the surface of the canvas.

If paint drips or runs, do not be so anxious to wipe it away. Think of those as happy accidents. Try to incorporate them into the body of the work, if possible.

Blending Paints

Spend less time blending color on the palette. Unless there is a specific reason the color field must be uniform, partially blended paints will give a more painterly appearance to the area. Very few things in life are entirely without gradation, shadow or tonal changes. Light affects most surfaces, whether it is a highlight or a shadow. Reflected light from other objects throw traces of that color upon the subject as well, so there will be variation in the hue.

Upside Down

Paint your canvas upside down. This means turning the canvas upside down, not doing head stands. By changing your perspective, you will be able to focus on the general view and not be mired in detail.

Try doing some of these exercises regularly. You will find that the ability to paint in a loose fashion will give a much more painterly look to your work. As with all crafts, practice and repetition is important.

Not every painting is a masterpiece, and it takes time to learn a new skill set. Just as an athlete limbers up before exercising, an artist benefits from loosening up as well.