A painting is an image (artwork) created using pigments (color) on a surface (ground) such as paper or canvas. The pigment may be in a wet form, such as paint, or a dry form, such as pastels. Painting can also be a verb, the action of creating such an artwork.
Elements of Painting
Definition:
The elements of painting are the basic components or building blocks of a painting (and art generally). In Western art they are generally considered to be:
Color
Tone (or value)
Line (a narrow mark made by a brush, or a line created where two things meet)
Shape (2D, can be positive or negative) and Form (3D)
Space (or volume)
Texture (or pattern)
1.Color
Color is the most basic element of a painting. Every color has three aspects to it: hue or name, value or tone, and chroma or saturation. If you're trying to mix a color on your palette to accurately match a color in a subject, you need to consider all of these to get the "color right".
2.Tone (or value)
Tone is one of the basic elements of a painting and art. It refers to the lightness or darkness of a color, rather than what the actual color or hue is (e.g. cadmium red or Prussian blue).
What tone means in a painting context is simple. It's how light or dark a color is, rather than what the actual color or hue is. Yet implementing tone in a painting is often bothersome to artists because we get distracted by the strong appeal of color.
Every color can produce a variety of tones; how light or dark these are depends on the color. It's important to realize that tones are relative, that how dark or light they seem depends on what's going on around them. A tone that's obviously light in one context may seem darker in another if it's surrounded by even lighter tones.
Why is tone important? Here's what that master of color Henri Matisse had to say (in his A Painter's Notes, 1908): "When I have found the relationship of all the tones the result must be a living harmony of all the tones, a harmony not unlike that of a musical composition."
3.Line
Line encompasses everything from basic outlines and contours, to edges of tone and colour. Linework fixes the relationship between adjacent or remote elements and areas of the painting surface, and their relative activity or passivity.
Lines define and enclosed space. In drawing and painting a line represents many things such as and actual line, a person or a building. A line can be thick or thin; wavy, curved, or angular: continuous or broken; dotted dashed, or a combination of any of these.
4.Shape
A shape is created when a line is enclosed. Shape is one of the seven elements of art and it has a variety of uses in the creation of art.
A form is the three dimensional feel and look of an object. A shape looks flat and two dimensional. All objects have shape or form. Shapes and forms are both geometric.
Geometric shapes such as triangles, squares, circles have no volume and are two dimensional. Geometric forms have volume a word that describes the weight density and thickness of an object.
6.Space (or volume)
Space is the void between solid objects and shapes. It is everywhere and all around us. Everything takes up space in one form or another whether it’s two dimensional like drawing and painting, three dimensional like Sculpture and architecture.
7.Texture
Texture is a general characteristic for a substance or a material. Texture exist all around us. It can be natural, invented, or manufactured. It can also be simulated or made to look and or feel rough, smooth, hard, or soft natural or artificial. Simulated textures such as a rough stone wall or a fluffy cloud are made to look and feel like real textures.
Sometimes these elements are also added to the list:
Composition
Direction (vertical, horizontal, angled)
Size
Time and movement (how the viewer perceives and looks at the painting)
Composition
Definition:
Composition is the term used for the arrangements of the elements in or the subject matter of a painting. Done successfully, it draws in the viewer and pulls their eye across the whole painting so that everything is taken in and finally settles on the main subject of the painting.
In his Notes of a Painter, Henri Matisse defined it this way: "Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the diverse elements at the painter's command to express his feelings."
Direction
(vertical, horizontal, angled)
Size
Definition:
Size is added to paper during manufacturing to make it more or less absorbent. The less size there is in a sheet of paper, the more it will absorb the paint.
Size is also the term used for a glue (sometimes made from rabbit skin) put on a canvas before priming to protect it from the oil in oil paint. It's also used to seal wood panels before painting and on plaster, if you don't want the paint to seep into the plaster.
Lastly, size can also mean the physical dimensions of a sheet of paper
Mistakes Beginners Make
For best results in assessing your work, choose a few pieces that you completed some time ago - you can more easily be critical of a work that you haven't only just finished. Look for each of the mistakes listed, and choose one or two things to concentrate on next time you draw. Don't try to fix everything at once, and remember that it's more important to enjoy the drawing process!
1. Using A Hard Grade of Pencil
If you have no very dark shadows and the whole picture is rather pale, check your pencil. Are you using a Number2 (HB) pencil? These are too hard to draw with (though they are handy for light shading). Get a B, 2B and 4B for darker values. Read more about pencil grades.
2. Using Flash in Portrait Photography
This is the major cause of beginner drawing problems. Using flash photography flattens the features, giving you nothing to work with. When the person is facing you, it is very hard to see the modeling of the face, as the perspective vanishes behind their head, and add a cheesy snapshot grin and you make life very hard! Have the person turning slightly to one side so you can model their face, with natural lighting to give good skintones, and a natural expression to show their real personality.
3. Problems With Head Proportion
Because of the way we focus on a person's features, we usually draw them too big and squash the rest of the head. Does your drawing look like the forehead is too small, or the back of the head is flat? Learn about the correct head proportions
4. Facial Features Not Aligned
Because we are used to looking at a person straight-on, we naturally try to make their features look level when we draw them. If their head is on an angle, this results in strange distortions in the picture. Sketch guidelines first to ensure that the features are on the same angle as the rest of the face. Learn more about placement of the eyes.
5. Drawing Pets From Human Eye Level
When you take a photograph standing up, you are looking down at your pet. They have to look up, and you end up with their head seeming much bigger than their body, and a rather odd expression on their face. Have someone distract them so they aren't staring down the lens, and squat down so the camera is at their head level, and you'll get a much better reference photo. Read more about pet photography for drawing.
6. Being Afraid to Draw Black
Often when shading, the shadows don't go past dark gray. If your value range is restricted to in some cases half what it ought to be, you are limiting the modelling and depth in your drawing. Put a piece of black paper at the corner of your drawing, and don't be afraid to go dark. Really dark. Try practicing graded and continuous shading.
7. Outline in Value Drawings
When value drawing, you are creating an illusion with areas of tonal value. When you use a hard drawn line to define an edge, you disrupt this illusion. Let edges be defined by two different areas of tonal value meeting. Read more about Value Drawing.
8. Using the Wrong Paper
If your drawing is pale, it might be the paper. Some cheap papers have a sheen on the surface that is too smooth to grab the particles off the pencil. A thick notepad has too much 'give' under the pencil to allow you to apply enough pressure. Try a basic photocopy/office paper, or check the art store for cheap sketch paper. Place a piece of card under a couple of sheets to give a firmer surface. If you are trying to do even shading, some sketch papers can be too coarse, giving an uneven texture. Try a hot-pressed Bristol board or similar smooth drawing paper. Find out more about which paper to use for graphite pencil.
9. Scribbled Foliage
Don't use circular scribbles to draw foliage. Use more convex shaped scumbling - like crescent shapes and scribbly calligraphic marks - to draw the shadows in and around clusters of foliage, and your trees will look much more realistic.
10. Using Pencil Lines For Hair and Grass
If you try to draw every hair or blade of grass as a single pencil line, you'll end up with an unnatural-looking mess of tangled wire. Instead, try to make feathery pencil-strokes to draw the shadows and darker foliage behind areas of grass or hair.
11. Not using enough paint.
A painting is made with paint. You scoop paint off your palette and place it on the canvas. That little sentence is a principle that escapes most people. Go back and re-read that a couple of times to really understand it’s importance.
You have to constantly go back to your palette and get more paint to put on your canvas. Many students are scared to use a lot of paint.
Have you ever looked at a Van Gogh up close? Or A Rembrandt? Especially his later paintings? The paint stands up off the canvas and is applied incredibly thick. Also, time has a way of leveling off a painting. So Rembrandt’s 350-400 year old paintings were even thicker when he completed them.
Now, you don’t have to paint as thickly as they did, but it helps to look at their paintings to change your mindset about using more paint.
12.Having No Procedure
Paintings used to be created according to a procedure. All painters learned the procedure and then made their own adjustments to suit their own styles. Too many times nowadays, the students has no goal, no plan in mind when they begin a new painting.
They set a canvas up on the easel and “hope for the best”
Think about this. The great painters of the past who were fulfilling commissions for royalty and churches were businessmen who had a product to deliver. Commissions kept coming in and they needed a procedure so their assistants could help them in the production of a painting.
13. Using the wrong materials
A simple example is canvas. There are many students who have never prepared their own canvas. They just buy a pre-stretched canvas, rip open the packaging and start painting. Then they wonder why their work doesn’t look like the paintings of the painters in the museums whom they admire so much.
14.Using repetitive brush strokes
These put the viewer to sleep. Use a variety of brush strokes.
15. Not taking the time to study your subject
If you don’t know your subject, how can you paint it?
16. Using too many colors
Use three or four with white and see how many variations you can arrive at.
17. Listening to admirers
Paint alone as much as possible and avoid seeking others opinions until you find your own
18. Using too much white
this makes paintings chalky and cold.
19.Fixing every ‘mistake’
Good paintings are full of wonderful accidents that the artist refused to ‘fix’
20.Trying to paint like somebody else or another painting you saw
Be yourself and be honest. You can’t hide anything in a painting.
21. Worrying about the results
Trust your instinct and trust yourself.
22.Changing to small brushes
Stay with the larger brushes as long as possible.
23.Stealing small pockets of time
Allow yourself ample time to work, otherwise you may lose your initial inspiration.
