How to reverse-engineer a painting goal

When you feel inspired to paint a subject that feels beyond your current ability, don't let that put you off! It's a great opportunity to 'reverse-engineer' your painting goal.

If you're not familiar with reverse-engineering goals, the process involves:

a) Breaking down your desired outcome into smaller, manageable steps

b) Listing any key milestones

c) Working out what order to complete the steps in

d) Assessing what actions and resources are needed for each step

e) Planning when you aim to have completed each step

So what does it look like to reverse engineer a painting goal?

Let's take the below photograph as an example for our painting goal.

It's the Practice Pic ' Fruit Tart with Icing Sugar'.

It's got quite a lot going on! Suppose you haven't painted anything similar before. So our first step is to:

a) Break it down into smaller, manageable steps

Identify and list out the individual elements within the composition.

In this example, the elements would be the pastry case, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, icing sugar (aka powdered or confectioners' sugar), cream, kiwi and shadow.
Check to see which of those elements are directly covered by a tutorial in the Tutorial Library.

For example the Colour Blueberry, Strawberry and Blackberry tutorials will give you most of what you need for painting those elements. You can practice the visual texture and get some ideas for paint selection from these.
For any elements that don't directly match to a tutorial, think about whether it reminds you of anything similar in the library.

Identify the visual textures and filter the library by texture.

Here, the powdered sugar looks similar to the snow in the Snow Effects tutorial. The texture of the cream is smooth and shiny, not so different from the china bowl in the Peonies and Chinese Bowl tutorial. The pastry is smooth, but not shiny, and is patterned. The Colour Blueberry, although different in tone and hue, shares this quality.
Work out which paints you'll use for each of the elements and make swatches and notes in your sketchbook.

For clues, see if any of the elements are a similar colour to any tutorial subjects. For any colours you can't find a match for in the library, find the closest thing, mix a similar colour and adjust as needed.

In our example, the kiwi is a similar colour to the Pea Pod tutorial. The pastry case has some hues in common with the Shiny Shell.
List out any tutorials you need to take in preparation.

Remember that sometimes you don't need to complete the whole tutorial. You can choose a section and then use the timestamps to focus on the part you need.

Here you might say that you'll complete the Snow Effects, Colour Blueberry, Strawberry and Blackberry tutorials in full, and dip into the others mentioned above to practice sections and research colour mixes.

b) List the key milestones between now and completing your painting:

Working backwards from your painting being finished, list out every main milestone on that journey.

These might look like:

Final adjustments made and you feel happy the painting is complete
Tones across the different areas of the painting have been adjusted
Kiwi (mid midtone) has been painted
Strawberries (dark midtones) are done
Blueberries (next darkest tones) have been painted
Blackberries (darkest tones) are added in
Pastry (next lightest tone) has been painted
Cream and icing sugar areas are done
Lightest tones in each colour area have been mapped out
Rough plan for order to paint in has been written
Size has been decided and drawing has been made
Colour mixes for each area have been planned and you have all the paints you need
Visual textures for all areas have been identified and practiced if needed

c) Working out what order to complete the steps in

Now you know what all the steps are, and what milestones are involves, arrange them into the order you'll work on them. This is going to become your plan of action. Reframe milestones into actions.

If you need a reminder of the stages to paint in, check out this video. Even if you've got a good idea of what order to work in, having your plan written down can help you out if you feel stuck at any point, and it makes it easier to come back to your work each new session.

In our example:

Identify the visual textures for all elements and check if there are tutorials for any that need practice
Take those tutorials.
Colour mixes for each area have been planned and cross-checked with similar hue subjects in the library (if needed)
Decide what size the painting is going to be
Check you have the right paints and other supplies needed
Make the outline drawing (find help here)
Write a rough plan for order to paint in
Start the painting by mapping out the lightest tones in each colour area
Isolate highlights with a second layer
Paint the pale areas (cream and icing sugar)
Paint the next lightest tones (pastry)
Paint the shadow
Add in the darkest tones (blackberries)
Accept the painting is in the ugly ducking stage and promise yourself you'll keep going.
Paint the next darkest tones (blueberries)
Paint the strawberries (dark midtones)
Work on the mid midtones (kiwi)
Adjust tones across the different areas of the painting
Make final adjustments until it's looking tonally balanced
Add any final details until you feel happy the painting is complete

Your plan will help you achieve your goal and give you direction in any moments of doubt you may encounter.

It's also going to help you reflect on where you're up to and see how much progress you've made when you need a motivational boost to keep going.

d) Assess what actions and resources are needed for each step

Here you can break down each of those steps further, if there's more than one action involved.

For example:

"Identify the visual textures for all elements and check if there are tutorials for any that need practice" - you might note here which tutorials you'll take, and in which order
"Check you have the right paints and other supplies needed" - if there's a lot of a particular paint colour in the subject and you've been substituting it by mixing other paints, you might consider adding that paint to your palette. If you want to work big, do you need to buy some larger paper or illustration board?

e) Plan when you aim to have completed each step

The final step for setting yourself up for success is to revisit your list / plan of action and note down when you'd like to have completed each action step by.

Putting a timeframe on your project will do 2 important things:

Help you see that you don't need to get it all completed straight away
Give you some self-accountability so you can make steady progress. It can feel highly motivating to achieve a milestone by the date you wanted to.

It's OK to readjust your dates as often as you need to. Sometimes things take longer than we expect (or even take less time). Sometimes life has other ideas and we can't stick to our plan. At these times, with self-compassion, we can adjust our timeframe and make our best effort to stick to the new one.

Taking a little time to reverse-engineer a painting goal is like putting in groundwork at the start. Once you've made your plan, you'll know what steps you need to take, and feel confident and assured that your actions are taking you towards your goal.