Learn to SEE as an Artist!

"To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees"Paul Valery

Becoming a successful painter involves not only acquiring skills in painting but also you need to learn how to "SEE" as an artist. A picture that is painted is in essence an "illusion". The "illusion" is in learning the required skills of portraying a 3 dimensional scene on a 2 dimensional canvas. What this entails is learning how to see the way an artist would see. If you really think about it; a painting is only patches of different colour arranged in a specific way so that you can recognize what the picture is whether is it a landscape, animal, portrait and whatever kind of painting it is. Or it could be an abstract painting.

Our world is made up of FORMS which are solid and 3 dimensions. They have height, weight and thickness. As a painter you need to learn how to paint these FORMS. Painting these FORMS is creating an illusion of that solid form on your flat, 2 dimensional surface. In order to paint this illusion you will need to learn some techniques on how to paint distances, forms and so forth.

As a painter being able to SEE in a specific way will enable you to paint pictures successfully.

Our eyes see (and look for) three things;

What our eyes look for are SHAPES, VALUES, and EDGES.

The most important element in seeing and recognizing any object is its shape. Everything has a SHAPE. Everyone can recognize the simple shapes such as square, triangle, circle but there are other shapes too. Shapes of animals, shapes of people etc. An artist that paints is really just putting down shape after shape with the paint brush. A skilled artist differs from the beginner in his awareness of shapes and the subtle differences that exist between them.

When I discuss VALUES I am writing about the Lights and darks of a colour. Everything has a value. The differences in light or dark is mainly two things: first, the natural colour or "local colour" of the object. The lightness and darkness of an object comes from the pigment in the material of which they are made. An object could have dark colours and light colours together. The second element that influences the lightness or darkness of the shapes that we see is the light or shadow that falls on the object. One other thing effects the value of shapes and that is atmosphere or aerial perspective. Looking into the distance is an example of atmospheric changes in values because the further away you look the grayer the colour gets.

Using VALUES in painting your forms will give your forms the 3-dimensional look you are looking to achieve. To help you see the different VALUES better I have learned to squint my eyes to try and only see the lights and darks of a colour. Another technique some artist use to help them SEE their value changes is to use perspex to look through. This is just a tinted plastic sheet you can look through.

The element of EDGES is the third and final thing to recognize in the process of seeing. EDGES are simply the borders that we see between two shapes. They are also called blends, gradations, shading etc.

EDGES are either "hard" or "soft". The "hard" edges are usually around the centre of interest and that is where you want the viewer to look in your painting. It will often times have your lightest colour next to a dark colour therefore having a high contrasting area where people will naturally want to look at automatically. The hard edges are usually not blended together. Most artists will have a combination of both hard and soft edges. The "soft" edges are blended or blurred together or blended together giving a softened look.

This combination of hard and soft EDGES creates the illusion of reality and it is these various edges which we must recognize, compare and then transfer to our canvas along with the SHAPES and VALUES to make an accurate reproduction of what we see.