How to Stop Overworking Your Paintings: Try the 100-Stroke Challenge

Want to loosen up your landscapes and stop overworking them? Try this.

Recently I shared an exercise in an online workshop called Landscape Week, and it had a major impact on the artists who tried it.

It's called the 100-Stroke Challenge.

So many artists were genuinely surprised by how much they could say with so few marks. When every stroke counts, there's no room to fuss. Each mark gets placed with intention, and the painting gains a clear voice. 

This exercise teaches economy of strokes as you suggest the scene with limited colors and marks. Here's how it goes. Pick a landscape photo reference. Then choose a limited palette of just 10 to 12 pastels: with a few lights, a few middle values, and a few darks. On a small sheet of pastel paper, capture the scene in just 100 strokes. Count each stroke as you make it, and when you reach 100, you're done!

This isn't about making a finished painting. It's about learning to say more with less.

Here is my 7x7” 100-Stroke exercise from Landscape Week. About a dozen sticks and 100 strokes are more than enough to create energy and impact. You can do this too! 

Remember, this is about playfulness over perfection. Your study will likely be loose, a little messy and unfinished, and that's how it should be. Don't let your inner critic sneak back in to clean it up!

Give it a try this week. You might be surprised at how much 100 strokes can say.

Keep painting, 
Alain  

If this exercise stirs something in you and you'd like to go further with your marks, my mini-course Expressive Mark-Making is a four-lesson study built around one simple subject, the pear, so all your attention can go into the marks themselves. You can learn more here.

A symphony of edges

Look closely at these radishes for a moment.

Radishes, 12x9” Pastel on LaCarte

Notice how some edges are crisp and sharp, like the bright snap of light on the cut radish. Others melt softly into shadow. Up in the greens, the marks break apart and let the air pass through. And at the bottom, the darkest radishes dissolve into the background until you can't quite tell where one ends and another begins.

Hard, sharp, soft, broken, lost. Together, that variety creates a symphony in the painting. It's what makes the ensemble breathe with life rather than feel stifled.

If that symphony had a name, it would be called Edges. Truth is, I've been a bit obsessed with edges for years.

What pulls me in is the way edges create an airy atmosphere, imbue a painting with mystery and mood, and bring a sense of focus, dimension, and depth, even within the compressed space of a small still life.

Hearing the sound of the surface puts me in good company. James McNeill Whistler titled his paintings like music, his Nocturnes, Arrangements, and Symphonies, because he understood that a painting is built from relationships of color, value, and edge. That same language runs through every subject I paint.

Spring Daffodils, 9x12” Pastel on UART 400

Take the daffodils, glowing yellow against deep blue. They tell the very same story, broken color, crisp accents, edges lost and found. 

Two totally different paintings, one thread weaving through them all.

If your eye is drawn to loose, expressive, atmospheric work, that pull you feel is the painter in you. And this thread, the rich variety of edges, is how you begin painting that way yourself. It's the heart of a looser, more painterly style. Best of all, it isn't a gift some artists are simply born with. It's a language, and it can be learned.

Which is why I'm so glad to share something new with you. 

I've taken everything I've learned from years of chasing after edges and poured it into a new mini course. My little symphony for pastel artists is called Edges.

In it, you'll learn to see, understand, and create the full range of edges in your own work, using simple still life subjects like the very radishes and daffodils above. By the end, you'll look at your subject with new eyes and start painting work that truly breathes.

Here's what's inside:

• 4 lessons across 10 videos, including 3 painting demonstrations

• A growth exercise with every lesson

• The downloadable Edges Guide PDF and supply list

• A bonus challenge, plus lifetime access to revisit anytime 

Self-paced, with lifetime access.

Come explore edges with me, 

Alain