How to Paint an Ugly Picture
- 1). Select media for your painting project, including the type of paint you will use and whether you will paint on canvas, wood or paper.
- 2). Forget all the rules for painting that you may have learned or combine them all so that your painting has an inconsistent style.
- 3). Form shapes and perfect the details of an image quickly -- the more distorted and imperfect, the better.
- 4). Paint the different elements of your painting out of scale so the painting appears out of balance. If you're painting a woman, for example, make one eye bigger than the other or paint her head much larger than needed to match her torso.
- 5). Use colors that don't match or mix different paints to create ugly colors. What's ugly to one person may be beautiful to another.
- 6). Embrace any mistakes you have made rather than trying to correct them. If you accidentally make a yellow brush stroke in a painting of the sky, you can leave it there or smudge it around to make it look even worse.
- 7). Paint the picture with a blindfold on or while focusing on another activity so you have little control over the result of the painting. If you can't see or concentrate on the image, it is unlikely that you'll end up with a beautiful image.
- 8). Paint ugly pictures or scenes, but paint them well because in some cases, "ugly" could refer to the subject rather than the artistry. For example, paint a picture of a landfill, a decaying carcass or a schoolyard bully.
