Four Ways to Paint Looser

As I approach each painting, I try to focus on mainly four ways to make my work looser. Below are some examples with explanations.  I hope this gives you some more insight into my process and how it can help you paint more expressively.  

1. Don’t paint every detail, let the viewer interpret the details on their own. In both of these paintings, most of the background was left out and reinterpreted.  This makes for a better composition and more appealing to the viewer.  The daylily painting is a bit more realistic in all the detail work on the flowers but the background is more abstracted with the suggested depth of the leaves.  The hibiscus flower is more looser in that the colors are more bolder and the strokes more expressive.  
2. Leave paint strokes alone, try to prevent over blending. In the daffodil bouquet, you can see where I left the paint strokes showing in the background, the flower petals and ribbon.  The stems are not painted one by one but only in short strokes of mixed values of greens.  One stem may have three or more variations of greens.  You can also see a hint of the underpainting showing through.  In the hollyhock painting, the leaves and flowers are not blended at all.  You can see the layered strokes of color.  Blended colors can make your art appear flat and uninteresting visually.  
3. Be experimental with colors. I added the reference photo to show you how I used more bold and unrealistic colors into the painting.  This way the painting is more vibrant and more interesting visually. The center of the poppy flower has pink and teal mixed in for fun.  The highlighted stem and leaves of the sunflower are blended with teal for a punch of color.  The white of the magnolias are mixed with blues, pinks and golden yellows for interest as well.  
4. Paint in layers, starting with the transparent colors and adding opaque colors last.  Try to leave some of the transparent colors showing.  In the Bluebird painting, I tried to create a sense of depth with the forsythia flowers by adding small amounts of opaque with each layer and leaving the gold transparent color alone. This way it seemed out of focus and the flower petals in front were more opaque and detailed. In the swan painting, I tried leaving the transparent red iron oxide wash showing through to connect all the objects together to create harmony.  You can see the underpainting peeking through the white of the swan, the ripples of the water and also through the light painted layers of the green lily pad.