Traditional folk-singers who stick their fingers in their ears when singing might seem a bit of a clich\u00e9, but they’re usually doing it for a very good reason. Assuming they’re not using it as a crafty ploy to clean their ears out when onlookers will least suspect, the chances are that they are increasing their ability to hear their own voice amongst those singing around them by channelling the sound along the flat of their hand from mouth to ear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whilst a folk-singer doing a very good impression of someone with ear-ache might seem to have very little to do with watercolour painting, the reason I mention it is because I see similarities to artists who hold pencils and thumbs up to buildings in a deep, meaningful way. It’s become a bit of a clich\u00e9, but the action has value nevertheless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fact is; the thumb is a very good measuring device (hence ‘rule-of-thumb’). By holding it up to an object, at arm’s length, we can more easily determine its correct proportions (the object that is, not the thumb) – two thumbnails to one whole-thumb, for instance, might be the proportions of a building, as we see it. When transferring the same building to paper, all we need to do is utilise our hitch-hiking digit in the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A pencil, held horizontally, up to the roof or corners of a complex group of buildings allows us to compare the relationship between structures: is that corner the same height as its opposite across the road? that kind of thing. If you don’t make these comparisons, the risk of an unbalanced or skewed composition is high. Observe at all times how objects relate to each other. On paper, these relationships become crucial. A painting is nothing more than a bunch of shapes, lines and colours arranged on a piece of white paper. How we arrange those items is known as composition. If all those same items fail to relate to each other in a visually interesting way, then the painting will be weaker for it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally, if you struggle with your drawing, don’t forget the ‘grid’. Transferring a photograph to paper can be made less stressful if you draw yourself a grid onto the picture first. Then all you need to do is deal with each segment in turn. A similar device can purchased from many art-material retail outlets (look for ‘Scale Finder’ – available from the SAA at www.saa.co.uk<\/a> for only \u00a31.99 this link: http:\/\/www.saa.co.uk\/shop\/detail.asp?prodID=SF2<\/a> should take you straight there), or can easily be constructed yourself with a piece of mounting card and a sheet of stiff plastic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Traditional folk-singers who stick their fingers in their ears when singing might seem a bit of a clich\u00e9, but they’re usually doing it for a very good reason. Assuming they’re not using it as a crafty ploy to clean their ears out when onlookers will least suspect, the chances are that they are increasing their ability to hear their own...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,12,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-composition","category-tips","category-watercolour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651","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=651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}