Friday, September 14, 2007

Paint the good, bad, and ESPECIALLY THE UGLY


If you can go out there in the big world and find something "ugly" to paint and make it into something beautiful, well...I think you are going to become a better painter. Instead of relying on beautiful pastures, mountains, ocean beaches etc., etc., to draw in the viewer, you start to think more about composition, brush and color work, dramatic values etc. I know... you think about these things anyway , but guess what?... you think about them even more when painting the "ugly". For me, at least, the so-called ugly or prosaic is really not at all ugly or prosaic! We all grow up to dismiss a lot of what we see as not worthy to look at for more than a second or two. I suppose this is OK, because we have to get on with our lives. But when one takes the time out to paint something, its fun to look these types of things for maybe an hour or 2 or 3 or more! And like I said, you need to dig deeper down into your bag of artistic tricks to end up with a compelling painting. This I am learning as a plein air wannabee.

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