• Special message- We are changing the title of our Saturday newsletters to you from Tips for Composing to Saturday Morning Art Thoughts. We hope
you enjoy the slightly upgraded approach to Dianne's Saturday messages. • Enjoy this refurbished post from five years ago. Artistic License is a term batted about for years, often misused. Too many times, it gets wielded as a clandestine excuse for lacking skill, but when understood can lead to masterful work. For the visual artist, to use Artistic License means intentionally changing or distorting the characterization of something for a reason. It is the artist's way of reinterpreting towards a purpose other than obvious
appearance. One excellent example of masterful distortion is the exaggerated size of the right hand of Michangelo's sculpture, David. Notice the comparison in size to the photo of a man's hand below. There has been lots of speculation about why he did that. Some say it was to emphasize David's strength. Others say it was because the sculpture was to be viewed from below. Perhaps both are right. Using Artist License can mean to take the obvious and interpret it with simplified shapes and limited colors like Jennifer McChristian does in LA Wash, Late Morning. Or it could mean finding exciting fractal like planes and translating the subject using that interpretation like Quang Ho does in this painting. Exaggerating the temperature or finding a new temperature altogether can yield an exhilarating expression of common still life images. Qiang Huang does this in his cool interpretation of a still life. Aside from being adroit with the skills, the only thing required to use Artistic License is to understand what your are looking at and to see in it a possibility beyond the obvious. IT'S ALL ABOUT YOUR UNIQUE INTERPRETATION OF WHAT YOU SEE! Learning how to see what the visual elements are doing in a scene, and which composing tools we can use to take artistic license make the possibilities endless. Enjoy an abundant weekend!
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Happy Painting,
Dianne
dianne@diannemize.com
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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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