The obvious answer to this would have to be ‘When the last brushstroke has been applied’. But the temptation to continue modifying and adding to a painting is a strong one, and deciding which brushstroke should be the last is not always an easy decision to make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a theory, one which I like very much, which explains why quite often the painting with the least amount of actual brushwork is the one that seems to have the greatest impact and the one that attracts the most attention in an exhibition. It’s this: when we look at a painting, our brain interacts with it, interprets it. When only a small amount of visual information has been provided by the artist, the viewer’s brain is stimulated by it and has to work that little bit harder to interpret it. It feeds upon it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, a painting that includes every tiny piece of detail that can be crammed into it, however competent, gives the brain less work to do (and the brain gets bored very quickly – or is that just mine?). The result is, therefore, less satisfying somehow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Look, I’m no psychologist, and the human brain, apart from looking like overcooked spaghetti, is a complete mystery to me – but this does seem to make some sort of sense! The idea that someone might be attracted to a painting because their brain has to fill in the gaps would explain many things. Many times I’ve pondered why it is that one painting over which I’ve spent hours to get precisely right should be overlooked in favour of a ‘quickie’ thrown together in a spare half-an-hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve always been struck by work that displays a certain economy in its brushwork. Over the years, it’s something that I’ve tried to develop and integrate into my own style of painting. Sometimes it happens easily, on other occasions it’s as elusive as a, a… really elusive thing. Generally speaking, I would say if you err on the side of understatement, you’re on the right track. If you’re starting to struggle with where to go next in a painting, then it might be a good idea to put it to one side and out of sight for a while and not look at it for a day or two. When you do return to it, you’ll be seeing it from a fresh perspective and if you sit and look at it long enough the chances are you’ll be able to convince yourself that it’s finished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The obvious answer to this would have to be ‘When the last brushstroke has been applied’. But the temptation to continue modifying and adding to a painting is a strong one, and deciding which brushstroke should be the last is not always an easy decision to make. There is a theory, one which I like very much, which explains why...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tips","category-watercolour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647","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=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":648,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions\/648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}