Wise Words From Andrew Loomis!
February 10, 2009
In his book “The Eye of the Painter” published by Viking Press ca, 1950, the famous artist and illustrator Andrew Loomins offers these wise words:
“It is foolish for the artist to try to compete with the camera in achieving fidelity to detail. Better that he use his creative and imaginative powers and direct his efforts toward design. Even if he uses a camera for working material, the artist can still concentrate upon the things that a camera cannot do; he can subordinate and eliminate, design and rearrange, simplify and take other liberties to project his idea more forcefully.”
In my own teaching experience I find the biggest downfall of student work is in the attempt to record every nuance of detail. Most developing, and even some experienced artists fail to understand how the human eye works. I think it is an outgrowth of photography and a “snapshot” mentality. The electronic eye of the camera tends to record detail evenly across the frame. Having seen tons of photos we easily fall into the trap of thinking we should paint that way, too. In reality the human eye doesn’t see that way. The human eye sees detail in the narrow frame of things it is focused on while details are “sketchy” in the things we see out of our peripheral vision. Basically, you can’t focus on the dirt on your windshield and the car 25 yards ahead of you at the same time. You can only focus on one or the other. (Try it if you don’t believe me but please, do so while parked at a museum, not while driving and using the cell phone!) What happens to painters is that we forget this truth and paint our subordinate elements with same amount of detail as we do our center of interest. This is extremely prevalent amongst students in my still life classes. It happens when they shift there attention from the center of interest. The don’t realize that they shifted their focus, too. We can avoid this mistake by remembering to paint subordinate elements the way they look to our peripheral vision while we focus on our center of interest. Keep your sharpest edges, most intense color and highest contrast on your center of interest and generally in the light rather than shadows. Don’t spread them all over the canvas.
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