FROM IDEA TO CANVAS: HOW I MAKE AN ORIGINAL OIL PAINTING

FROM IDEA TO CANVAS: HOW I MAKE AN ORIGINAL OIL PAINTING

By Marta Stolarska

I am, above everything else, a painter of light. The sea, the garden, the pumpkin, the marina - these are just the surfaces light falls on. That's what I'm really painting, the light and it's impressions.

There's a question I get asked often: how do you start a painting?

The honest answer is that I start with curiosity. With excitement. With the particular feeling of standing in front of a blank canvas and not quite knowing what's about to happen - and loving that.

I don't sketch first. I never have.

For me, the preparatory sketch would solve the problem before the painting begins - and the problem is the point. The not-knowing is where the painting lives. If I've already worked it out on paper, the canvas becomes a copy of something I've already made. And my brain simply isn't built for that. I can't paint the same thing twice. I don't want to.

So instead, I approach each canvas as a completely new experience. First time feeling. First time impression. Real excitement, every time.

The rhythm before the paint

With watercolour, I'll lightly draw what I want on the paper just before I begin - loose, by hand, by feel. No tight outlines. No tracing. Just enough to orient myself.

With oils, I sometimes map out what I call the rhythm of the painting. A few marks to make sure everything I want to include will actually fit - that nothing important gets awkwardly cut off at the edge. It takes minutes. And then I just go for it.

From that point, it's all instinct, experience, and discovery. Some examples for intuitive coastal scenes if you'd like to see → Coastal 

Every painting is an experiment

I love painting small - or smaller, at least. Not because it's easier, but because it gives me the freedom to try more things. More subjects. More discoveries. With a smaller canvas, I can test a new colour combination I'd never normally attempt, or paint an entire piece with just one brush, or work exclusively with a palette knife and see what happens.

Each painting gets something new. A question I haven't asked before. That's what keeps it alive for me.

Landscapes: memory over observation

When I paint landscapes, I occasionally go out with my paints and work on location - collecting colour notes, catching the light as it actually falls. But more often, I go to a place simply to be there. To breathe it in. To let it fill me up.

And then I come back to the studio and paint my impression of it - not the location itself, but what it felt like to stand there. The memory of the light. The mood of the air. The thing that stayed with me.

I find that more honest than copying what's in front of me. And more interesting to paint.

Still lifes: building small worlds

Still life painting begins, for me, long before the brush touches the canvas.

It begins with the arrangement.

I love building what I think of as small dioramas - gathering objects, placing them, moving them, until something clicks into a world that feels like it has a story. And then I light them. This is the part that fills me with the most excitement: the way light can make something ordinary feel significant. The way it bounces off a glass, diminishes behind a cloth, catches the edge of a petal.

The narrative is everything. The light tells it.

On light

Artists are like moths. All there is to us, is light.

Every painting I've ever made has been, in some way, about light. Coastal light on water. Evening light through a window. The particular gold of a June evening that I keep trying to catch and never quite do.

That's the thing about painting. You're always chasing something just slightly out of reach. And somehow, that's exactly why you keep going.

You can see the finished paintings here → Original Art

I'd love to know - is there something in your own life that you approach with this kind of curiosity? Something you'd rather discover than plan? Tell me in the comments - I read every single one. 🌿

Marta Stolarska is a British oil painter based in Suffolk, specialising in coastal scenes, landscapes, florals and still lifes. Her original paintings, fine art prints and greeting cards are collected worldwide and available in her online studio. She also runs the Coastal Mail Club - a monthly subscription delivering a fine art print, handwritten letter and poem by post.