• In last week's Newsletter, I told you that beginning this month, I will be doing a series about how we can use composing principles as tools. I have discovered during these multiple decades of teaching that creativity flows and
flourishes when emerging artists are not restricted by rules, and I've also seen breakthrough after breakthrough when these same students relaxed into using composing principles as tools. Today's post is the first issue in this series. For the past ten years since I've been doing these Saturday newsletter Tips, almost weekly I get an email or YouTube comment asking whether a composing concept I've show with oils can be done in watercolor or acrylic or pastel. So, let's use this first episode of our series about tools of composing paintings to give clarity to that. I see it as a misunderstanding of both techniques and
principles. Oil, watercolor, gouache, pastels, acrylics, and even digital painting are mediums. They are materials that, because of how they are made, inherently contain methods of handling them that make them work for creating a painting. Methods of using any medium are called techniques. They require certain skills for handling the materials. They each call for necessary tools, such as brushes and palette knives, and even fingers. The techniques
themselves are the skills needed for guiding both tools and materials and are all unique to each kind of medium. HERE'S WHERE THE DIFFERENCE COMES IN Using composing principles calls for skills, too. Those skills are also techniques, but of a different kind than for mediums. This appears to be where confusion comes in for a lot of emerging artists. Composing tools--which we call principles--are used in every single painting medium. They do not differ from medium to medium. Dianne's painting above on the left is done with watercolor, the one on the right is done with oils, but they both are done with the same composing
techniques. What color does to color works the same in watercolor as in oils, in acrylics as in digital painting, and on and on. How value behaves does not change from one medium to another. The way we use texture and size and shape and direction all
work the same regardless of the materials used to create them. We use these elements with our composing tools. We show them with the materials and the techniques for
using them. Enjoy a clarifying weekend! During my Language of Painting series, I explained the role of our visual elements. If you'd like to review those roles to better understand the behavior of elements, here are the links to each of those
discussions: Color --Value -- Shape -- Texture -- Size -- Line and Direction
You can access the archive of all my newsletters (as well as the Quick Tips and other stuff) at any time by going HERE.
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