Start ugly!

Almost every artist knows this: you start your painting carefully, perhaps with a precise preliminary drawing, at first you are quite enthusiastic about the result, but the more colour you apply, the ‘worse’ it gets! Right up to the stage where you are convinced that you have completely ruined the painting and it is best to destroy it or put it in the corner. This is where many unfinished pictures that have one thing in common often gather: They are in their puberty, as I like to call it, their ‘ugly stage’. Awkward, gangly, shrill, disharmonious, pimples, bad-tempered, out of proportion, and arms and legs that are too long.

Normally, every picture goes through an ugly phase like this. Many people give up right then - but you have to ‘close your eyes and go for it’! Now you are where it can only get better! Just like in real life, problems have piled up on your canvas that need to be solved. You can ask yourself ‘are the colours right, what doesn't harmonise and why, is the composition ok? What might I need to change about the perspective, the proportions?’Now you've reached the stage where you have to take a step back and get a better overview. At the beginning, you are often so absorbed in the creative process that you become blind, i.e. you can no longer see even the most obvious mistakes.

When I realised this, I decided one day that it would be best to already start with an ugly painting. I simply left out the thorough preliminary drawing, only created the rough areas of the motif and worked my way from ugly to beautiful. But above all from simple to complex.

In doing so, I realised that I could capture the proportions much better than with a precise preliminary drawing. And I actually enjoy painting this way more. This may be because I create the inevitable problems straight away and can start solving them straight away. But that's my own personal ‘why’. Why do I paint? Everyone has a different answer. For some unknown reason, I have realised that I find it fascinating to solve problems and make things better and better. Turning old into new. I would also rather renovate an old house than build a brand new one. In fact, I would be totally overwhelmed. Too many options, too many decisions. But creating something new from something that already exists is fun for me. You already have a framework within which you have to operate. The more dilapidated the house, the more satisfying it is to make something beautiful out of it. I also love the story of the ugly duckling, in which the initially ugly duckling later turns out to be a georgeous swan. That may have something to do with it.

I now know when a picture is finished for me: when there are no more problems to solve!


Because theoretically, you can always change something in a picture, but it doesn't always necessarily get better or worse - usually just ‘different’. So you have to decide when it's the right time to stop.

And you also have to have the courage to leave some ‘mistakes’ as they are. They are part of the life of the work of art. Because it was created by human hands. It has grown up like this, it tells the story of its creation. I have already discovered so many mistakes in old masterpieces! Because nothing and nobody is flawless, at least nothing naturally created. Aren't people with small blemishes much more interesting than flawless beauties that you quickly get tired of?

So I have defined a new goal for myself: I paint (and solve ‘’problems) until I can accept the picture as it is. Like accepting your child as it is. With all its quirks and shortcomings. And you no longer care what other people might think.