It’s so easy to do.  You might even say a human instinct – the urge to control the outcome.  We are sooo uncomfortable with the unknown and uncertainty.  And of course in many lines of work making a mistake or leaving things to chance can cost lives, or your job at any rate.

So doesn’t that make you feel lucky that we can actually practice, and should, letting the unknown in, the serendipitous. Yes, being ok with the risk you might ruin it, and also maybe letting in the best thing you’ve ever made?

The truth is that when we make art, we have to actively allow in mistakes, experiments, and happy accidents – otherwise we’re probably not making art, just copying. I often talk about ‘the desired outcome’ being the best way to kill dead any expression in your art.

I totally agree that we need an impetus, an intention and yes, even a plan to get us started.  And we also need to feel into the moment when we can let go of the plan, in service of the image, the object, the picture that needs to be made. Finding that moment is the tricky bit.

You can, however, give encouragement to this serendipity.  Have a plan, but make it ‘baggy’.  Leave some space to go ‘off piste’.  

My baggy plans usually consist of rough composition ‘sketches’.  When I say rough, I mean they are roughly made.  However, when I get the right format, placement of horizon, sense of scale, and balance of parts and tones, I stick to it like glue.  This is the foundation of a great image.  From there we can work around it, with all the wonderful variants inherent in printmaking.

I also usually have some idea of the colours I’d like (though sometimes even this goes out the window, if I have a beautiful piece of collage I’ve been aching to use). When I say colours, I really I mean tones – because tonal values must work well if the image is to work well (in printmaking anyway).

I keep both the composition and tones very simple, to allow for the playful elements to come in whilst I print and afterwards.  In practice what that means is lots of space in a composition, and only about 3 tonal values – very light, very dark, and a mid-tone.

All this means I can mark-make to my heart’s content, either on the ‘empty’ bits of the surface or plate, or use already ‘marked’ collage papers either during or after printing.  I can also add drawing, printing or collage into the image after I’ve made a print.  I can cover bits up that haven’t worked, I can print over with a lighter or darker tone, I can add expression and gesture where there are none.  And all of that is ‘off plan’, made up, winging it.  But you have to allow space to do that and not be afraid of it.

If you’re looking for ways to play, flow and make finished art, may I gently suggest hand printmaking at home. It gives you a set of constraints and a set of exciting variables to play with, which taken together allows for beautiful art making, without complex processes or agonised decision making.

This summer I’m offering my ‘Flow + Refine’ summer course bundle – buy ‘Landscape Impressions’ instant access monoprint course and get mini mark-making kickstarter course ‘Make Your Mark’ free alongside it.  You can use ‘Make Your Mark’ to get unstuck, warmed up, and joyful, and then put those marks into intentional finished landscape art via ‘Landscape Impressions’. The perfect combination. The offer starts on Thursday 25th June and runs until July 10th.