I was diagnosed with ADHD in my forties. That diagnosis explained a lot — including why I'd always rushed paintings, jumped to the next one too soon, and felt a chronic low-level dissatisfaction with work that was technically fine but emotionally rushed.
Mindful painting, for me, was never a New Age concept. It was a survival strategy. A way to be in the painting long enough for something real to happen.
What Mindful Painting Actually Means
It's not meditation with a brush. It doesn't require silence or incense or a special state of mind. Mindful painting means paying close, specific attention to what's in front of you — the subject, the colour, the water on the paper — rather than rushing toward a finished image.
Most people have the relationship backwards. They paint with their eyes on the destination (the finished painting) rather than the process. Every brushstroke is in service of an imagined end result. When the result doesn't match the imagined version, there's frustration.
Mindful painting inverts this. The question isn't "is this painting finished?" — it's "what does this shape actually look like? What colour is that shadow, right now, in this light?"
The Physical Practice
Before you start, look. Not briefly — properly. Spend three minutes just looking at your subject (or reference, if you're working from a photo). Notice where the light is coming from. Notice what the darkest area is. Notice what colour the shadows actually are — often purple or blue, rarely just grey.
Then mix before you mark. Don't touch the paper until you have a colour on your brush that looks right for the first thing you want to paint. This small act of preparation forces you to engage with the subject rather than reacting to it.
While you paint, work from light to dark and large shapes to small details. Watercolour demands this sequence — you can always add darks, but you can't take them away. Working from large to small means you stay with the overall feeling of the painting before getting lost in detail.
The Most Common Way Artists Rush
The urge to add detail too soon. A wash of sky goes down, it looks uncertain, and the hand immediately reaches for a brush to define something — a cloud, a horizon line, anything to feel more in control. But wet paint + impatient marks = muddy, overworked areas.
The practice of mindful painting is largely the practice of waiting. Waiting for washes to dry. Waiting to see how a colour settles before deciding what it needs. Waiting before judging.
I use a hairdryer occasionally but mostly I do other things while a wash dries — make a cup of tea, look at the reference, clean my palette. The enforced pause is not lost time. It's when your eyes adjust and you start to see the painting fresh.
Working in Silence (or Near-Silence)
This is personal, but I find that music with lyrics pulls me out of the visual. I'll be mixing a colour and the next thing I know I'm thinking about the song. Instrumental music or ambient sound keeps the auditory brain occupied without competing with the visual.
Some painters work best in complete silence. Some need background noise. The important thing is knowing which you are and choosing accordingly, rather than defaulting to whatever's on.
When You Feel Like Stopping
Somewhere in most paintings there's a difficult middle passage — where the initial excitement has worn off and the painting isn't resolved yet. This is the moment most people either rush to finish or abandon the work entirely.
I've learned to recognise this passage and to name it explicitly: "This is the difficult middle. It always feels like this. It usually resolves." That act of naming takes some of the charge out of the feeling.
Step back. Literally. Walk away from the easel and look at the painting from several metres away. Problems that feel overwhelming up close often look like natural parts of the composition from a distance. Details that look chaotic become texture. Areas that seem unfinished look deliberate.
The Connection to Mental Health
Painting slowly and attentively does something specific to anxious or ADHD minds: it provides a task that is demanding enough to hold attention, but open-ended enough not to produce performance anxiety. It's not pass-or-fail. The brush is not a test.
This is why painting has been used therapeutically for decades. Not because art is inherently calming — it can be frustrating — but because the sustained act of observing and making provides a form of presence that interrupts rumination.
For me, a good painting session doesn't always produce a good painting. Sometimes it produces three colour studies that go in the bin. But it almost always produces a shift in mental state — a reduction in the low-level noise that follows me through the day.
How to Start
If mindful painting is a new concept for you, start small. Not a full-scale landscape — a single object. A mug. A lemon. A handful of pebbles. Choose something you can keep looking at easily. Set a timer for thirty minutes. Allow yourself to not finish.
The goal is attention, not completion. The painting is evidence that you paid attention for thirty minutes. Whether it's beautiful is a separate question.
If you want to explore this in a supported, structured environment — with other painters, and without the pressure of producing something sellable — my workshops are run specifically with this philosophy in mind. Find upcoming dates here.
