Acheive Your Own Painting Style!
August 5, 2008
It has been said that the fine art of oil painting involves finding good answers to difficult questions. In fact, the famous abstract colorist, Josef Albers said, “Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.” Many artists, apparently seeking a shortcut to the market, copy other artists answers without ever understanding the questions. These artists may sell paintings but fail to achieve their own style. Artists who understand the questions and supply their own answers discover their own voice and achieve their own style. Of course, this begs the question, “What are those difficult questions?”.
The critical questions of painting flow from the artist’s original inspiration. We should never start a painting without a clear visual concept or idea.” What is it that inspires us? Is it a certain type of light? A pattern of light and shadow? A specific set of shapes? A set of color relationships? Perhaps the effects of aerial perspective? The answer to this question should be purely visual. Your subject matter should be little more than a prop for your visual concept. If you are painting a still life and the big idea is “The ink well, the quill and the paper” maybe you missed the point. A better idea would be how the light plays across the interesting shape of the ink well, and the contrasting textures of the quill and paper!
Once clear about our “big idea” the difficult questions become more evident and we can focus our attention on gathering critical information. The critical information is found in the context of the five types of light (form). Those are: Light, Shadow, Mid-tone, Accents and Reflected Light. As we paint our Shapes, Values, Colors and Edges in that context all we have to do is answer these questions:
- Where are my darkest darks and lightest lights (accents)?
- What shape, value and color are they?
- How do my shadow shapes relate to the dark accents in terms of value and color?
- How about my mid-tones?
- How do the lights relate to the accents, shadows and mid-tones, with regard to value and color?
- Where are my reflected lights? How do their values and colors relate to the others?
- What about my hierarchy of edges? Where is the sharpest? Softest?
The answers to all of these questions are found in relationships. Positive or Negative, bigger or smaller (shapes)? Lighter or darker (values)? Warmer of cooler, saturated or neutral (color)? Lost or found, sharper or softer (edges)? Focus on relationships rather than objects and your own style will emerge as you answer these critical questions.
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