In four weeks I will be holding my 5-Day “Kickstart Your Art: Oil Painting Bootcamp” here in Bozeman Montana and I will soon be launching an online version, so to lead up to both workshops I’m writing a 10-part blog series!
(See Post #1 if You Missed it Last Week)
These are ten of the things that have helped my own work the most, and that I see make the biggest improvements to my students’ work. The actual workshops will cover a lot more than these ten things of course, so join us in August or sign up for my workshop newsletter to learn more about my online class.
This Week: See the Abstract
We often get so focused on the subjects and objects in our painting that we forget to see the entire composition objectively. It can be very useful to learn to see our painting abstractly, as shapes or puddles of painting held together by similar colors, values, and saturation.
We See Abstractly:
Whether we realize it or not, we see the world abstractly and only “name” the objects and subjects that matter to us at the moment. When we’re walking through a park, do we notice every dandelion and clover, or do they blend into a general “grass mass”? Do we notice all of the upper leaves of the tree, or is everything above our eye level categorized as “sky”? If we noticed every object and detail, we wouldn’t be able to be anywhere more complicated than a white room without going crazy!
