"On The Wayside"

($125.00.......6" x 6"......Water Soluble Oils on Gessobord.....Presented in a Custom Frame)

"Beauty is often found on the wayside." The wayside refers to the land immediately adjacent to a road, highway, path, etc. The reference for this painting came from the wayside near Santa Fe. This type of brush with the pretty yellow flowers is everywhere and the color of it is quite lovely. Don't always look in the obvious places for beauty, but check out the wayside.

There is nothing like painting trees and weeds to give you an experience with lines and their direction. Yesterday's posting was abstract, but the reference of marble with all of its lines was simply a different type of line work. There are actually several types of lines. There are long and short lines...thick and thin...solid and broken...straight and curved...uniform and irregular...vertical and horizontal.

When analyzing the type of line work you see in other artist's work or even in your own, it is good to accurately describe what you're seeing in your analysis. If you can describe it in any of these ways, you will more likely be able to incorporate it in your own work. Learning to analyze what you see is a skill that will help you learn design more than any other way besides doing it over and over again. The problem is that you need to know what you're doing because accidentally creating a well designed piece is not a very efficient strategy.

As you hone your own analytical skills, you will soon discover that many of those design things you observed will be cropping up in your own work. It is really quite fun to dissect a piece of artwork by taking each element of design (line, color, shape, value, direction, texture, size) and describe in detail how each is used in a particular work. 

Frankly, it is a shortcut to learning design because you are observing something that's already done rather than trying to incorporate things you don't understand in your own work. Why not "cut to the chase" and see it in someone else's piece first. For instance, if I tell you that one of the color contrasts that is the most effective is the use of a direct complementary scheme....will you understand it better by reading what it is or will you understand it better by seeing it in a particular work? And there you have it...just a few more things to think about. 

Please contact me personally to inquire about this piece.