Over the last eight or so years of drawing and painting I have learned a bunch of different things about creating art, mostly through trying this and that out, struggling and experimenting, I decided to blog this as I thought these might be useful to interested folks. These are all purely from my perspective. As I haven't studied art formally, these are just what I have discovered through my experience that have worked well for me.
1. Drawing is important. I have come across many people who are interested in painting, but not necessarily drawing. I am that way too. I get a greater kick out of splashing colors on canvas than with just sketching. However, I can't emphasize this enough- drawing is important, unless you necessarily want to concentrate only on very abstract work, playing with textures, glossing and colors. Once you start employing art as a means of expression, you will be quick to discover that there are at least some elements in a piece that have structure and specific character that you want to render. If you start out without any planning or outlines, it can get frustrating. For this reason, it is important to plan the composition of your work a little, and draw out the main concrete forms before you even touch your paints and brushes. If I were to take a class, too, I'd take Drawing 101 before Painting 101, for example.
2. Decide where the light source in the scene is. When you have concrete subject(s) in your work, deciding where the light source is would make it a lot easier to render a 3-d form on 2-d. This will help you decide where the shadows and the highlights are. Many a time, it is useful to draw outlines of these as well before you start to paint. For e.g., when you're painting a face, marking out, at a high level, the mainly distinguishable light and dark areas helps you render the contours and the general structure of the face more realistically. Likewise, when you're painting a cloth draped over a person's body, marking out the creases and folds with pencil will help a lot once you start putting paint on it.
3. Imagine the body underneath the garment. When you're not painting nude figures, you need to imagine the shape and outline of body parts underneath the garment. Or the rendering will look flat.
4. When creating art based on an image you have in front of you, forget about what it is you're drawing/painting. This applies to drawing/painting with an image in front of you that you're trying to replicate or use as a guide to your work. Very often we have preconceived notions of form, for e.g., the shape of the eye. But the shape could actually be very different from what you imagine depending on the angle of viewing, the lighting etc. One approach is to study forms methodically so you know the anatomy in and out. And this is highly desirable. It's something I need to do. But when you're painting from an image, it also helps to forget that for e.g., a face is a face, and just look at it as a matrix of pixels, if you will. Once you get the overall form right, it's all about deep attention to light and shade in the image you see. After you have the subject down at a certain (high) level, you can then use your perception of the subject to enhance the representation. For e.g., you draw and paint the face of a subject from a photograph. You paint the face almost forgetting about the fact that it's a face, just concentrating on the light and shade aspects. Once you have the face down to a reasonable extent, you can then think about how you would show more twinkle in the eye, or a smile line around the lips.
5. Take a photograph. Often photographs reveal things you don't notice when you view something directly. You will suddenly notice how wrong a certain stroke looks or too much highlight somewhere. I often iterate taking photographs and correcting rough/bad spots, photographing again, etc.
6. In painting, mostly, nothing is immutable. A painting can keep evolving and/or morphing into something dramatically different, as long as you allow it that freedom. And sometimes it's even a good thing. The more you keep painting over a painting, the more the layers and that could actually give it a lot more depth and texture. You have to be careful though, especially if using oil paint, to make sure the layer below dries before you add another thick coat on top. And also of course, that you don't want the layers and textures to get uneven across the work.
7. Good posture and exercising is important. Creating art is physically draining. This most people won't know, or at least not have an idea of the extent of it unless they live with someone who does art, but I can tell you that drawing and painting can be demanding on the shoulder, neck and upper back muscles. As with other kinds of jobs, taking regular breaks helps. But of course, art is something that completely sucks you in. For this reason, stretching, and doing yoga and strength training exercises can help tremendously with neck and shoulder tension. This, I am not following myself, but know that I should!
8. Observe your thoughts and emotions. Art is a wonderful way of communicating your thoughts and emotions. But for the expression to be effective, you need to almost get out of your body/mind and be able to observe your thought/emotion. Art is intertwined with philosophy. So, you need to understand your perspective on something to create meaningful art based on it. For e.g., if I want to convey torture. I might have experienced being the object of torture at some point. However, if I am currently a victim, trying to create art while I am still at the rock-bottom of the situation would not work, as opposed to trying to do it after I have crossed the bridge. In the latter situation, I can look at the emotion in a more detached manner.
I am an intense person and a lot of things I think and feel have a rather high threshold intensity. This means that when I am at the height of happiness or at the bottom of a depression, I cannot think clearly enough to convey what I am going through. But once that passes, I have a lot more clarity and control, and also the advantage of having understood a certain state of existence. This is a very fertile time to create art. I don't know if this would make sense to everyone, but that's my 2 cents.
1. Drawing is important. I have come across many people who are interested in painting, but not necessarily drawing. I am that way too. I get a greater kick out of splashing colors on canvas than with just sketching. However, I can't emphasize this enough- drawing is important, unless you necessarily want to concentrate only on very abstract work, playing with textures, glossing and colors. Once you start employing art as a means of expression, you will be quick to discover that there are at least some elements in a piece that have structure and specific character that you want to render. If you start out without any planning or outlines, it can get frustrating. For this reason, it is important to plan the composition of your work a little, and draw out the main concrete forms before you even touch your paints and brushes. If I were to take a class, too, I'd take Drawing 101 before Painting 101, for example.
2. Decide where the light source in the scene is. When you have concrete subject(s) in your work, deciding where the light source is would make it a lot easier to render a 3-d form on 2-d. This will help you decide where the shadows and the highlights are. Many a time, it is useful to draw outlines of these as well before you start to paint. For e.g., when you're painting a face, marking out, at a high level, the mainly distinguishable light and dark areas helps you render the contours and the general structure of the face more realistically. Likewise, when you're painting a cloth draped over a person's body, marking out the creases and folds with pencil will help a lot once you start putting paint on it.
3. Imagine the body underneath the garment. When you're not painting nude figures, you need to imagine the shape and outline of body parts underneath the garment. Or the rendering will look flat.
4. When creating art based on an image you have in front of you, forget about what it is you're drawing/painting. This applies to drawing/painting with an image in front of you that you're trying to replicate or use as a guide to your work. Very often we have preconceived notions of form, for e.g., the shape of the eye. But the shape could actually be very different from what you imagine depending on the angle of viewing, the lighting etc. One approach is to study forms methodically so you know the anatomy in and out. And this is highly desirable. It's something I need to do. But when you're painting from an image, it also helps to forget that for e.g., a face is a face, and just look at it as a matrix of pixels, if you will. Once you get the overall form right, it's all about deep attention to light and shade in the image you see. After you have the subject down at a certain (high) level, you can then use your perception of the subject to enhance the representation. For e.g., you draw and paint the face of a subject from a photograph. You paint the face almost forgetting about the fact that it's a face, just concentrating on the light and shade aspects. Once you have the face down to a reasonable extent, you can then think about how you would show more twinkle in the eye, or a smile line around the lips.
5. Take a photograph. Often photographs reveal things you don't notice when you view something directly. You will suddenly notice how wrong a certain stroke looks or too much highlight somewhere. I often iterate taking photographs and correcting rough/bad spots, photographing again, etc.
6. In painting, mostly, nothing is immutable. A painting can keep evolving and/or morphing into something dramatically different, as long as you allow it that freedom. And sometimes it's even a good thing. The more you keep painting over a painting, the more the layers and that could actually give it a lot more depth and texture. You have to be careful though, especially if using oil paint, to make sure the layer below dries before you add another thick coat on top. And also of course, that you don't want the layers and textures to get uneven across the work.
7. Good posture and exercising is important. Creating art is physically draining. This most people won't know, or at least not have an idea of the extent of it unless they live with someone who does art, but I can tell you that drawing and painting can be demanding on the shoulder, neck and upper back muscles. As with other kinds of jobs, taking regular breaks helps. But of course, art is something that completely sucks you in. For this reason, stretching, and doing yoga and strength training exercises can help tremendously with neck and shoulder tension. This, I am not following myself, but know that I should!
8. Observe your thoughts and emotions. Art is a wonderful way of communicating your thoughts and emotions. But for the expression to be effective, you need to almost get out of your body/mind and be able to observe your thought/emotion. Art is intertwined with philosophy. So, you need to understand your perspective on something to create meaningful art based on it. For e.g., if I want to convey torture. I might have experienced being the object of torture at some point. However, if I am currently a victim, trying to create art while I am still at the rock-bottom of the situation would not work, as opposed to trying to do it after I have crossed the bridge. In the latter situation, I can look at the emotion in a more detached manner.
I am an intense person and a lot of things I think and feel have a rather high threshold intensity. This means that when I am at the height of happiness or at the bottom of a depression, I cannot think clearly enough to convey what I am going through. But once that passes, I have a lot more clarity and control, and also the advantage of having understood a certain state of existence. This is a very fertile time to create art. I don't know if this would make sense to everyone, but that's my 2 cents.
1 comment:
Loved reading this! Thanks for sharing. I especially understand the value of the first point!
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