How to Draw Synthetism Art

What You'll Need

• •Heavy drawing paper or canvas, a pencil, and a waterproof black or dark-colored ink pen for planning and enclosing contours
• •Gouache, acrylic paint, or oil paint for opaque, flat color areas
• •Flat brushes in several widths, including a small brush for contour corrections and interior marks
• •Colored pencils, oil pastels, or chalk pastels for accents, texture, and symbolic color adjustments
• •A drawing tablet with pressure-sensitive stylus and digital painting software that supports layers, selection tools, and textured brushes
• •A reference folder containing rural objects, plants, figures, landscape shapes, and personal photographs or remembered scenes

Step by Step

1. 1

   Choose a memory, symbol, or simple subject

   Start with a subject that carries feeling rather than one chosen only for visual complexity: a field at dusk, a village path, a ritual object, a seated figure, or a remembered garden. Write down three emotional words and one symbolic idea before sketching, such as silence, longing, protection, or renewal. Limit the scene to a few major elements so the image can communicate through arrangement and color instead of detail.

2. 2

   Make small compositional thumbnails

   Create four to six thumbnail sketches using only dark and light masses. Test a high horizon, a low horizon, overlapping foreground shapes, and a large framing silhouette around the subject. Keep perspective shallow and avoid filling every area with information; a quiet shape of sky or ground can function as an important decorative field.

3. 3

   Simplify forms into expressive silhouettes

   Redraw the chosen thumbnail at a larger size, reducing each object to its most recognizable contour. Remove small anatomical, architectural, and botanical details, then exaggerate the curves, angles, posture, or scale that support the mood. Overlap figures, trees, hills, and objects clearly, but do not depend on realistic modeling to separate them.

4. 4

   Flatten and organize the pictorial space

   Treat the image as a sequence of connected shape fields rather than a window into deep space. Compress distant and nearby forms toward a similar visual plane, use overlapping bands instead of accurate vanishing points, and let selected objects appear unusually large or small for symbolic emphasis. Arrange repeated curves, diagonals, or verticals so the entire surface feels designed as one decorative pattern.

5. 5

   Design a symbolic color scheme

   Choose a restricted palette of roughly five to eight dominant colors before painting. Assign color according to emotion, memory, or symbolism rather than local appearance: a sky may be green, a face may be red, or a field may be violet if those choices strengthen the idea. Place warm and cool colors in deliberate groups, reserving the strongest contrast for the focal subject.

6. 6

   Block in opaque, mostly flat color

   Fill the largest shapes with even, opaque passages, keeping brushwork broad and intentional. Avoid gradual realistic shading; instead, divide a form into a few decisive color planes when you need volume or emphasis. Let neighboring color areas meet cleanly, while allowing a small amount of hand-painted variation so the surface remains alive.

7. 7

   Add strong enclosing contours

   Once the color structure is stable, reinforce the boundaries of major forms with a dark, confident line or a narrow band of contrasting paint. Vary the contour slightly: use heavier lines around the focal figure and important silhouettes, and lighter or broken marks in secondary areas. Make sure the contours enclose shapes rather than merely outlining every realistic detail, because their main job is to unify the flat color fields.

8. 8

   Use repeated marks and motifs for decorative unity

   Repeat selected shapes, colors, or marks across the image, such as leaf curves echoing a figure's posture or a border color appearing in the sky and clothing. Add only a few internal lines to suggest hair, folds, bark, water, or gestures; each mark should support the symbol and rhythm of the composition. Check the work from a distance and remove details that compete with the overall pattern.

9. 9

   Refine the emotional focus and finish

   Step back and ask whether the image communicates the intended feeling without an explanation. Strengthen one focal area through scale, contour weight, color contrast, or a concentrated cluster of marks, then quiet neighboring areas. Correct accidental gaps, muddy mixtures, and weak silhouettes, but preserve purposeful irregularities that make the surface feel personal and expressive.

Going Digital

In digital painting software, build the image with separate layers for the thumbnail sketch, large color shapes, contour lines, and final accents. Use a hard-edged opaque brush or selection-and-fill workflow for flat passages, then place the contour layer above the color and lock its transparency or pixels when making corrections. Turn off pressure-based opacity if it makes the color too weak, use clipping masks to recolor whole shapes quickly, and apply texture sparingly through a paper or dry-brush layer set to low opacity. Flip the canvas, zoom out frequently, and use a limited palette so digital polish does not replace the style's deliberate simplification.

Common Mistakes

FAQ