{"id":145,"date":"2018-09-01T10:54:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-01T09:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/?p=145"},"modified":"2022-01-29T10:56:22","modified_gmt":"2022-01-29T10:56:22","slug":"maintaining-the-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/2018\/09\/01\/maintaining-the-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"Maintaining the Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I’ve always been fascinated by magicians and illusionists, masters at proving time and time again that the hand is quicker than the eye and that folks can be made to believe they are seeing something that almost certainly isn’t quite as it seems. In many ways, watercolour painting shares certain similarities; after all, are we not creating the illusion of space and depth on a two-dimensional surface, and conveying mood and emotions with nothing more than a few strokes of paint on a piece of paper? When you look at it like that, painting is a sort of magic all of its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the traps I often see new students fall into is that of trying to paint in everything they see. By that, I mean every tiny detail, no matter how far away an object is – if it’s there, it simply has to go in. Remember; as objects get further away from us, the amount of detail we will see is also reduced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there’s more to it than that…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we include every tiny detail, then we’re also taking away some of the mystery, and mystery is as valuable a commodity to the artist as it is to a conjurer. If we read a book, we don’t want to know who dunnit in the first paragraph, and our curiosity surrounding that mysterious stranger isn’t going to stick around long if we are treated to everything he or she is up to in the first chapter. Good books, movies and conjuring tricks contain sleights of hand, red herrings and moments of revelation – so should paintings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often, what we don’t put in is more important than what we do. Our first challenge is to capture the attention of our viewer, by employing some creative lighting, for example, laying out our highlights and planting a few dark, hidden corners. After that, we should aim to keep our observers attention by providing a ‘Path of Vision’; a route along which they can enjoy the visual journey we have laid out for them. There should, of course, be an ultimate goal, a focal point where the eye finally comes to rest. But if parts of a scene are shrouded in mist, or tantalisingly hidden from view, then the viewer’s interest may be aroused even further, prompting them to interpret the signs themselves and creating their own inner reveals… and so giving them a greater sense of satisfaction along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just like that…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve always been fascinated by magicians and illusionists, masters at proving time and time again that the hand is quicker than the eye and that folks can be made to believe they are seeing something that almost certainly isn’t quite as it seems. In many ways, watercolour painting shares certain similarities; after all, are we not creating the illusion of...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,12,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-composition","category-tips","category-watercolour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions\/147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}