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| 12"x12" "White Face Calf on Blue" Hereford |
For me learning to paint realism isn't done by learning to paint a certain subject, it's done by learning to see. Of course you can see, but the challenge is seeing what's really there, the shapes and values, and once you learn to do that, you can paint anything, be it a cow, a portrait or a still life.
Cows are just my artistic focus, my signature subject, not the only thing I can paint, just what I have chosen to explore and expand on the many fabulous differences I find from one to the next, just like painting people, no two are alike, and each has it's own personality.
If you are learning to paint, the best advice I can give is don't worry about the subject, get good reference with a full range of value, learn to make interesting compositions, and practice the art of 'seeing' with emphasis on correct values and shapes.
One of my first teachers used to say something like this "If you can see, you can paint anything on the side of a barn with a bucket of manure and a broom."
She really made her point with that one!
1 comment:
The best art teacher I ever had started his students painting a tiny section of a still life...just to get them to see how objects really looked as they intersected, rather than painting what they thought they looked like. In one lesson my ability to paint improved more than it had in my entire previous life....didn't hurt with photography either.
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