It's About Art

Just finished a three-day Leading Edge workshop with BC artist, Brent Lynch.  I would recommend these workshops to anybody.  He is a brilliant painter and long-time illustrator and I picked up many pointers.  I've reach the point in my own painting career where it's more about the decisions you make as a painter rather than the actual painting process.  So, what did I learn?  Hmm.

#1.  Use a bigger brush, like huge, like over 2 inches at least and spend 80% of your time on the underpainting.

#2.  Break the picture down into abstract shapes and focus on tones, the light, medium, and dark of a picture.

#3.  Only one element should dominate if you want a strong and unified composition - be it line, texture, shape, form or colour.

#4.  Same goes for center-of-interest.  What is it that drew you to the subject in the first place?  Whatever that was, that's the focus.  Make everything else subordinate to that, or, perhaps more succinctly stated, make everything else in the picture support that area of interest.

#5.  Painting is visual harmony, just like music.  You are creating tonal chords and balanced symphonies of color and light.

#6.  Instead of the rule of thirds, try more dynamic compositions like an 80/20 asymmetrical balance where a large more neutral area is balanced by a sharp bright ribbon of colour intensity and contrast.

#7.  Colour mixing - for blacks try alizarin crimson and cobalt blue.  Titanium white is an opague white.  You can use a zinc white, which is more translucent for darker areas you are trying to lighten while still keeping in the dark zone.

#8.  Getting back to unity - use horizontal elements for horizontal formats and use vertical shapes for vertical compositions.  To use both negates them and weakens your composition.

#9.  Think the 80/20 rule for neutral colours that support the 20% of highly saturated colours.

#10.  More the horizon line up or down.  Paint from a worm's eye view and a bird's eye view to further create dynamism in your work.