Working Process-Oriented –
But What Do I Orient Myself By?

The first time someone hears they can work in a process-oriented way, they nod along quickly. It sounds open, creative, free.

Until the moment they actually have to begin.

Then the uncertainty starts.

The question they ask themselves: if I don't have a finished image in mind, what do I orient myself by? How do I know if I'm on the right track?

Result-oriented work — painting or drawing a specific image you already hold as a template, on paper or in your head — answers these questions fairly easily. The goal is fixed. Every step brings the artist closer to it.

Process-oriented work doesn't function that way. There is no goal in view.

The goal only emerges while you work.

And that's exactly what unsettles many people.

Not because they reject the process, but because they lack the tools to keep the painting process moving.

Process is not chance

Process-oriented work is often experienced as arbitrariness.

Following the motto: "I'll just start and see what happens."

That can work, but it also repeatedly leads into a certain disorientation.

But a good process does have a direction. It just doesn't know its outcome yet.

That's a decisive difference.

Water flowing downhill doesn't know its exact path in advance. It follows no plan — only the slope of the terrain, stone by stone, hollow by hollow. And yet it never loses its way. It always finds a way down, even though no one could have said beforehand exactly which one.

Process-oriented work, too, needs points of orientation, or methods that create meaning.

It isn't the prospect of the finished image that guides me, but what becomes visible while I work — the same stance I described in Drawing as Encounter.

The process needs tools

The longer I draw, the clearer this becomes to me: working process-oriented doesn't mean doing without tools.

It means using different ones.

I don't ask myself, for instance: "Do I like the image yet?" "What's still missing?"

Instead:

• Where is tension building right now?
• Which shape is looking for a relationship?
• Which line wants to keep going?

The emerging image constantly gives me cues about how it wants to continue — not unlike how the material itself responds, once you stop trying to master it and start questioning it instead.

I have to learn to notice these cues.

From result to conversation

Maybe this is where the real difference lies.

Result-oriented work often resembles working through a plan.

Process-oriented work resembles a conversation.

I listen. I respond. The image responds back.

With every step, the situation changes. And from that change, the next step emerges.

Not by chance. By consequence.