Within the frameworks of the art course conducted for us the main focus is put on the course book named “Living with art” by Mark Getlein. The book provides a thorough, fairly detailed but at the same time briefed representation of the key pillars, principles and points of art. Therefore, reading of the book generates an overall picture of artistic theory in the mind of the reader, so that even a person vaguely acquainted with the world of art and its theory is supposed to master those bases and apply them to their understanding and feeling of beauty.
This time we are supposed to get familiar with the principles of painting and drawing, represented by the author in the seventh and sixth chapters of “Living with art”.
Analogical to the rest of the topics, the author dwells upon the key principles and rules that drawing and painting are regulated by. In general, the chapter largely deals with the mechanic side of painting and drawing, concerned with proper preparation of a canvas, taking up the proper colours and so on.
However, an issue that struck me most was the importance of contrast in painting. In particular, this skill and being capable of applying it is considered of utmost importance even at the elementary stages of learning how to paint. My personal point on this score is that applying contrast with a view to produce dramatic impression of a picture is far saner, more effective and simultaneously difficult, rather than adding more bright lights upon a canvas.
First of all, it is to be mentioned that contrast is more applicable and congruent with drawing, because here it looks natural paying credit to the blackness of a pencil and whiteness of a canvas. As far as applying contrast while painting, it would look more contrived and less dainty. However, there exists a set of tricks enabling to make contrast utmost professional and original. One of the fundamental artistic instruments providing contrast is so-called “Coloured ground”. This easy but not widely known technique proves very tricky. I am talking about coloring a canvas before starting to paint with some “solid” color. This is supposed to both provide ingenuity of the work and alleviate further process of painting.
Talking of the application of contrast in drawing, I would like to set an example of the unfinished oil-painting by Degas (a French artist, who is regarded as one the founders of impressionism). The work is a transparent example of using the coloured ground, which enabled Degas to “add the darkest dark and lightest light to give the painting a tonal scale to work within” (Will Kemp Art School, 2011). There is a distinction to be made between the coloured and the white-and-black versions of the pictures: in the coloured pattern the focus is placed upon the tension of the neck and the head of the dancer, while in the white-and-black item you are assumed to pay most attention to the blackness of the dancer’s back. The last trick is not that obvious in the coloured version, because of the blindness our brains have as to the shadows.
Degas, Edgar. The Dancer. Oil canvas. Philadelphia: Impressionistic Art Museum, n.d.
Will Kemp Art School, (2011). The Importance of Contrast in Painting. [online] Available at: http://willkempartschool.com/the-importance-of-contrast-in-painting/ [Accessed 20 Feb. 2016].
