This is my fourth article on techniques in oil painting and will describe the very early conceptual stage vital to a successful painting. My reference is of course painting abstracts so my process requires more careful explanation. I hope you as a beginning painter will find this helpful. 
I do keep art books around and look at them. My purpose in perusing art books is not to get an idea but to stimulate myself visually and to understand more carefully what stimulates me personally. It might be something as simple as a certain hue that Picasso used in a background, or an interesting contrast of shapes that Kandinsky used in a painting. Watching television, excessive telephone use or Ipad connectivity is a distraction. I am attempting to ‘clear the slate’ to allow for something new and fresh and authentic for myself. We live in a world of distractions and it takes effort to distill what is important to us personally. I call this a gestation period.
When I am wanting to start a new painting I will often go to bed early and then in waking wait awhile to get up. I try to open myself up with the purpose of starting a painting. I don’t necessarily ‘picture’ the blank white canvas nor am I trying to conceive of a theme. This is a good time to practice control of distracting thoughts. Keep bringing your mind back to the purpose of locking in on a feeling or color or image that begins to resonate. I have come to call this Initial Subject Impression. Initial because it is the very first germ of the idea – the formulation. Subject because we need a physical form, an anchor to start with, even if it is just a rudimentary simple form. Impression because ultimately we are mentally and emotionally locking in on an impression – a form, a color, an emotion is making an imprint on our personal psyche.
This process might come about spontaneously but often I find it is a process of searching inwardly for a particular essence. It is not unlike a meditation. Of course you can by-pass this process but typically the result will lack power, force and vitality. Give yourself some time and learn to embrace this all important period of gestation. The Initial Subject Impression is for me like finding a valuable pearl in the barren field. Of course sometimes the impression has more force and vitality than at other times but especially with an abstract work, this is critical to the conception and eventual physical process of painting.
As I have said many times before in previous articles, fortunately the initial thrust of the painting does not require a total theme. Once begun a painting has a remarkable way of taking on its own life. It begins to form itself once the impetus has been provided. It is almost as if we are, as the painter a facilitator of a larger design and a more universal concept. We are expressing a small passage of a greater design and this can be tremendously exhilarating.
In summary remember to reduce the bombardment of distractions by getting off by yourself…turn off the T.V. and take some walks. Go to bed early and settle down, try to get in touch with your inner self, get control of your own thinking by focusing on what you are trying to accomplish. Visually stimulate your mind by looking at good art and ascertain what resonates particularly with your own psyche. Don’t worry about a grand theme, but be satisfied when you get a decent fix on an emotion or simple image that moves you or even a particular color that you want to express…Most abstract paintings begin with the smallest of concepts. One of my more successful paintings came to me in a remarkable way – for several weeks I had been formulating the third painting of a triptych series. It was to be a large piece and the canvas had already been set out in the studio. Mentally I kept mulling it over, making sketches, developing the concept – the gestation process as mentioned above. When I went to bed I knew I would be getting up the next day to start the painting – a Saturday. However when I woke up I was astonished to have in my mind a remarkably clear image of what I wanted to paint and it was nothing like what I had been formulating for the past several weeks. I went immediately out to the studio and painted…five hours later it was completed and I felt I had put it down fairly accurately to what I had envisioned. Now that was unusual but in retrospect, without those several weeks of gestation I would not have arrived at the ‘new image’ which came to me so suddenly and so clearly. It was an example of the Initial Subject Impression being unusually clear, strong and powerful. This however is not the typical process and I certainly would not condone waiting for this kind of initial starting impression. Better to implement the process I have described above as a means to creating consistent abstract work by beginning with a fix on a simple and reduced image. This will inevitably expand on its own once it has begun.