Why Strong Paintings Often Have Simple Underlying Structures

Making the foundation of a painting is not all that different from making the foundation of a house. Everything is built on top of it, and it needs to be simple and strong if the whole structure is going to work and stand the test of time.

A house built on shaky loose ground, for example, won’t survive very long—sometimes not even beyond the initial building phase. A solid foundation isn’t created by adding trim, baseboards, or paint. Those elements come much later. The first step is far more basic: pouring a firm cement base that can support everything that follows.

Painting Is Built the Same Way

Painting works in much the same way.

You don’t begin a strong painting by carefully rendering small details. Before any of that can matter, you need a solid underlying structure to work from. This is truly essential and can’t be emphasized enough. It’s often more fun to chase after the eye-catching details right away, but without a strong base, those details won’t have much impact.

Establishing the Big Light and Dark Relationships

To build that foundation, you must first establish the large light and dark areas. These big value relationships do the heavy lifting in a painting. They create clarity, structure, and a convincing sense of light.

If you’re learning how to think and work this way, it can help to approach the early stages of a painting as working in statements. Instead of describing everything, you’re making clear, simple declarations of color and value.

In this YouTube tutorial you can see how I develop this painting of a pear by breaking down color and values into simplified areas. This kind of simplification creates an exceptionally strong base and trains you to see the painting as a collection of clear, organized shapes rather than scattered details.

This isn’t a way of painting that you would use continuously. Instead, it’s a way of training your eye to see the world as simplified, broken-down areas of color. Once you begin to understand and internalize this way of seeing, you can return to painting in a more natural, intuitive manner—only now with much greater clarity and control.

Why Simplification Creates Stronger Paintings

When you work this way, something important happens: your painting gains clarity. The light becomes more readable, the forms feel more unified, and you give yourself room to take the painting much further.

Sometimes painters worry that working in such a simplified way at the beginning is “too simple” for their level.

Let me be very clear about this: it is never too simple—no matter how advanced you are.

The greatest painters throughout history were great precisely because they could simplify. Simplification is not a beginner skill; it’s a lifelong one. It’s a cornerstone of creating work that is both complex and compelling. Without it, progress slows dramatically, and paintings tend to become overworked and unclear.

Build the Structure First

If you want your paintings to feel strong, coherent, and enduring, focus first on the foundation. Make it simple. Make it clear.

Everything else depends on it.

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