• Special message Many of you have requested a course about how warm and cool colors and we have heard
you! Today we are introducing Working with Warm & Cool Colors, a self-pacing course that clarities how to use warm and cool colors in your painting. And the good news is we're offering it at an introductory price throughout the month of January. Note: This year, I will be brushing off and enhancing a number of topics I have addressed in previous newsletters. Today's one of those: Is there a difference between the art of painting and the craft of painting? WHAT DO THESE WORDS MEAN? We know craft to mean skill. We speak of craftsmanship as something skillfully done. But the word art has been kicked around and diluted, making it almost void of meaning. Google it and you will see what I mean. What if the art is where ideas and expression abide while craft is the mechanics through which those are expressed and made visible. Look at this Sorolla painting and check off how much of it is pure
craftsmanship. Within all this skill, can you locate the art? Ponder this for a while. Think of Michelangelo. During his era, there were plenty of sculptors who were equally as skilled as he in the craft of carving
stone. Was it the artist within him transmitting through the craft that made his sculptures more alive and mystifying than theirs? Could he have done these things without all the hours he spent honing his craft? Or did he have a power of creative expression within that superior craftsmanship lacking in others who also had spent multiple hours honing their craft? We know that the more attention and energy we give to mastering our craft, the more automatic it becomes for us. Could it be that when we no longer have to think about the HOW it's done, the art emerges more freely? And could it be that it's the love
of what we are doing that allows the art to soar? Enjoy a thoughtful weekend! During my Language of Painting series, I explained the role of our visual elements. If you'd like to review those roles to better understand the behavior of elements, here are the links to each of those
discussions: Color --Value -- Shape -- Texture -- Size -- Line and Direction
You can access the archive of all my newsletters (as well as the Quick Tips and other stuff) at any time by going HERE.
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