Narrow the focus and find what's important
Sent: 7/9/2019 11:26:42 AM

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Narrow the focus and find what's important

It is remarkably easy to get lured into the idea that painting is just some drawing, color mixing, and learning to put all that value and color stuff into some kind of order. How else to explain the endless stream of books and videos on drawing, color mixing, and the like: How to Paint Metal, How to Draw Trees, How to Paint Water, etc., etc. Of course, if we give this a little more thought, we realize the complexity of the actual act of painting is dwarfed by the complexity of what we see. Composition is just a means of simplifying information into a cohesive whole. Color? Golly, it changes. Value? The same. Want to find the pattern? What pattern? And then we're supposed to take some version of reality and recreate what? The actual simplified version of what we are seeing? Or maybe the sensory perception of what we are seeing. What about the idealized version? How about all of the above?

Mother and Child mixed media on paper

No matter how one looks at it, we have to narrow the focus, find what's important, and with whatever skill we have, try to express our personal vision with dabs of paint and turn that into shapes and values with some kind of intent. We have to start by simplifying and organizing the information. Light and shadow determines our three-dimensional reality so it's generally a good place to start. Shapes? Well, those Euclidean things are handy - rectangles, squares and the like, but my overall favorite and the most dynamic are triangles. Do not, however, get lulled into thinking that this simplified version of reality will always suffice. What about variety? Can one imply complexity and still maintain simplicity? The possibilities can be endless.

Narrow the focus, find what's important, and by all means, avoid trite and predictable information.