100 ways to paint (or write) the same thing

By Jill U. Adams

“I could paint this 100 different ways.”

Artist Sarah Yeoman blithely delivered this claim at a watercolor workshop I attended. She was demonstrating small painting studies focused on value and color. Students were crowded around her easel on the back deck of a gift shop and art emporium in the Adirondack town of Indian Lake, New York.

I have been painting with earnest intent for a few years now, but I still manage to get stuck, often, during the process of rendering a scene. I suddenly lose my way, paralyzed with indecision. As I apply paint and water to my paper, the questions knocking around in my brain are many: What should I do next? What does the painting need? What am I trying to accomplish here?

The writer in me recognizes these kinds of questions because I bump up against them in any article, column or essay that I write.

As a professional writer, I could also relate to Sarah’s bold assertion. I have bragged to my partner (who is not a writer) that I could express an idea — a single sentence — in dozens of ways. Indeed, I have contemplated an exercise for students in my writing workshops to take a sentence they have written and rewrite it five different ways.

One aspect of this parallel between writing and painting seems obvious. Of course more experience leads to more ways to tackle something, more tools in the toolbox. By extension, having lots of tools enables you to customize a sentence — or an image — to make a particular impact.

I take workshops from experts to learn new-to-me approaches that I can add to my toolbox. With her 100-ways comment, Sarah was telling me that any of a vast number of next steps could be made to work. That’s interesting, isn’t it? That kind of expansive thinking can be freeing in a way that appeals to me.

Artists Magazine ran a piece on how aspiring artists can get the most out of a workshop. Watercolor painter Mark McDermott gave this advice: “Note that everything you learn is one way to paint, not the way to paint. Seek to understand why the choices are made.”

I love that. When I’m the expert leading a writing workshop, I want students to set aside their worries about spelling, grammar and formulaic structures (paint-by-numbers, anyone?) that they learned in school. More than anything else, I want them to think about what they’re trying to accomplish with their writing.

As for my sentence exercise, I worry it will backfire. Maybe my students, who are seeking PhDs in the sciences, don’t have the experience or flexibility of thinking to write a sentence five different ways. Rather than expanding their toolkit, the activity may end up deflating their confidence. They may want to avoid looking stupid and choose safety over growth. I can relate.

Keep the bigger story goal in mind

It’s a funny thing, this loosening of constraints. It seems like it should be freeing, and yet all those choices and possibilities can also cause less-experienced creators to tighten up. (It may well cause less-experienced writers to turn to AI tools such as ChatGPT.)

I think it’s more about not letting tiny details and trivial rules undermine overarching goals. What are you trying to say with your painting or magazine story or essay? How can you get your viewer or your reader to see something from a new point of view? Of all the ways you might paint this thing or write that thing, what works and what doesn’t?

Those overarching goals can seem awfully vague when you’re starting out. You need tools and techniques, sure, but also lots of practical experience. Both writing and painting are exercises in problem-solving. My learning curve in art, with as many downward dips as upward climbs, reminds me of how tenuous my hold is on this thing I say I want to get better at.

I don’t know how far I’ll get, but I love knowing that others are there. Sarah has been painting for 40 years, and she can paint that scene 100 different ways. I am inspired.

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Jill U. Adams (jilluadams.com) is a freelance science journalist who writes about health, biomedical research, and nature. She’s been spending more time painting in recent years and posts her work on Instagram (@juadams1).