Enjoy this recycled and reworked post from four years ago.
What better time than the beginning of a New Year, especially this one, to put our attention on focus.
Looking at the photo below, take note of all the things that are red, then go to the next paragraph below the picture.
Now without looking at the picture, list all the things that are blue. (Shameless disclosure: I lifted this idea from someone else, but I don't remember who.) If
our vision is narrowed to one thing we are looking for, we're likely to miss other things. We see what we expect to see and little else.
A new painting idea can cause the same thing to happen. Suppose we decided to do a painting of that red umbrella to the far right in the photo.
If we just dove in to paint a red umbrella, something like this could happen.
If it did, it would be because our focus is on red umbrella. We might have missed those basic shapes we see because we didn't focus on the shapes.
And, focusing on the idea of "red", we might have missed those variations in color where not a whole lot of the umbrella is actually red-- rather, several
variations of red in light and dark values, and lower intensities. Look at the differences among A, B, C, D, E, and F.
WE WILL SEE WHAT WE ALLOW OUR ATTENTION TO GO
We're better off not to focus on red umbrella at all, not even to have any expectations around "red umbrella." Once we find a subject, we're more
likely to have success if we forget all about what it is and focus our attention on its characteristics--things like how the edges are tilting and how long are those edges, what hues are they fully saturated or somewhat neutralized or in light or in shade, what kinds of textures are there...and so on.
We WILL paint what we see, it's just a matter of where and how we focus our attention.
Celebrate with gusto this first weekend of the New Year!
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