• Special message We still have four openings in our workshop coming up Wednesday, March 22 at 11 a.m.
Eastern. If you're curious about how to give your paintings more clarity, this workshop is for you. To get the full description... Enjoy this freshened up encore post from June, 2016.What causes us to want to do a painting or a drawing? Most likely our answers will vary, but let's take ourselves to the times when a subject catches our attention and pulls us towards it. Chances are there will be some junk there, not useful to the composing of the painting. Or the subject as is might need some rearranging to pull together a sound composition. EDIT IT BEFORE BEGINNING TO PAINT Several years ago, this caught my attention. For the first time since I planted them, every member of my bed of bearded irises sprang forth into full bloom. Early one morning, a particular section caught my eye and pulled me towards
it. The light was doing wonders, but without some selecting and placing as well as editing, the scene is a jumbled mess. That brought me to five pivotal questions: - What to use?
- What to ignore or leave out?
- What to emphasize?
- What to subdue?
- What to change?
Using the divisions in thirds option for Selecting and Placing, I found a beginning of what to use. Finding what to change, I spotted the flower on the upper right that I could move to the left a bit and another mid-left that I could scoot inward. And rather than use the withered blossom in front, I chose another to
use. Within this rough crop, I chose to ignore the azaleas and tool building in the background, to subdue some of the textural details, to emphasize the light pattern and the shadow area of the foliage.
This reinforced what caught my attention in the first place: the light. (The photo bleaches out the color of that light, but my eyes should see it clearly in plein air.) Here's the resulting oil painting, "Irises in
Light". Asking these questions-- - What to use?
- What to ignore or leave out?
- What to emphasize?
- What to subdue?
- What to change -- can
help us find possibilities and make more aesthetically sound decisions while composing our paintings.
Enjoy an enlightening 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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