7 Ways to Build Tension in Your Paintings

Manhattan 1, 30 x 48, Acrylic on Canvas

It might be that in life we want to avoid tension as much as possible, but in successful art, tension is crucial.

Tension can be enhanced in every aspect of your work, whether it be line, shape, color, rhythm, value, or perspective - it can be visual, psychological, or both.

7 Effective Ways to Build Tension in Your Paintings

1. Push against Motion 

Where there is motion in your work, find an element of the design that can fight to hold it back. Roads, fields, dark values and shape variation hold the eyes back from rushing toward the horizon.

2. Withhold Color

Use neutralized colors as much as possible to control tension in anticipation of the pures at the focal points.
Employ the key highlight colors sparingly, and pay close attention to the relationship of all tones of the focal color so there is a clear modulation.

3. Compress Values

Good design is often associated with both grouping similar values into linked shapes and using the lightest lights and the darkest darks at focal points . Push and compress those values in certain areas of your painting until you can feel the weight of the darks needing to be released by the light.

4. Frame and Release

By uniting some elements within a value or shape plane they become held in, almost framed, what then lies outside of the frame creates a push and pull, a longing toward unification and a momentum toward freedom. Imagine a cityscape with groups of people walking, if placed well, the lone figure will seem released from the pack - the group dynamics will create tension, both among the connected people and between them and the lone figure.

5. Momentum and Sequencing

The spaces between your elements are integral to a successful design filled with potential energy. Each division is an interval in a sequence - like notes of music, they must vary in an appealing way that seems to systematically augment or diminish tension in your design. At times the intervals will be closer together and a feeling of rushing speed will take over, other times, maybe in wider and more open spaces, the distance between elements may be more spread out, thus slowing down the energy.

6. Opposing Forces

In one way or another, all elements can be opposed, down to the energy inherent in every brush stroke. One end often appears to be tense, a stop or a start, a distinct point in space and time, while the other end - the release - is more free. If you were to do a simple exercise with thick paint, starting each stroke in the same position, and releasing in the same direction, you would see all the energy released in that direction, the experience would be fleeting. But, when the brush strokes go against each other, either head-on, parallel, or crossed over, then tension is created. In this simple way, every aspect of your painting can have opposing forces available to use to your advantage.

7. Implied Direction

All marks on your canvas have the potential to affect light and describe - they also lead the eye in one way or another. Many artists want their strokes to follow form; I think with so little information really needed to give a sense of subject - with our eyes attuned as they are to seeing so much Impressionistic art over the years - brush strokes should be freed up more to add contrary direction and increase tension.

Reality, Realism, and Representation

I paint aspects of my paintings in so many layers because I want to experience and capture the passing of time. 

Reality is all of life, realism takes into account sequences in time, and in order to represent what exists in the visual world, we must bring into our canvases our memories and experience.

The layers become real, the objects become substance, and substance becomes symbol. 

A cursory look into accepted definitions of realism - and Reality for that matter - quickly leads us down a philisophical rabbit hole. Lucky for me, I am a painter - my goal is neither to adhere to nor refine definitions, my goal is always to capture my sense of existence on the canvas.

Hovering as we are, floating - suspended between daydreams and painting sessions, we follow our paths in life drifting through the levels of consciousness, realizing and forgetting, realizing and forgetting. At what moment is it real?

Going to Extremes and Taking Chances

Passage 1 12 x 12 Acrylic

In order to discover new ideas, push yourself to extremes when painting. I often completely paint over works many times to destroy and rediscover what I am after; this is in great contrast to the rare experiences I have of contemplating an idea for weeks, then executing a painting in one shot.

Push colors to their purest, and flirt with a sense of garishness, then slam them against muddy neutrals or harsh greys - letting the sides fight until only relevant tones remain.

What's Your Painting's Story?

Rainy City #2, 18 x 24, Acrylic

If you can keep in mind one primary feeling, one main intention, throughout your painting, and that intention stays clear, you will create a powerful image that not only represents a sense of time and place, but also has the potential to tell a story.

Developing A Painting Process Part 1 - Three Steps in The Initial Phases of Creating A Painting

Staying connected to the initial impulse from the first to the last mark in a multi-session painting can be challenge - here are some thoughts and strategies on the painting process, specifically on the phases of creation.

I strongly advise against drawing out your image at first - to me, painting is a manipulation of substance and form, and drawing too early creates unwanted hard borders and edges that lock in your image before the experience of painting freely can be realized.