At the workshop I taught last weekend, I talked about this idea of the “picturesque,” a term introduced by William Gilpin in the eighteenth century to describe “a peculiar kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture.”
He was talking about travel, specifically the idea of traveling to a place to see a scene that resembles the kind of pretty scene you’d see in a painting. (Not unlike people who travel today to see what they’ve already seen on Instagram!)
But it applies to art-making, too. What we tend to do—in fact, what we learn to do in art workshops—is to look around for the scene that ticks all the boxes in terms of color, composition, light, shadow, focal point—and we stand still and look right at it and draw it. I know this is true, because it happens in art workshops! We all gather around the same couple of spots to paint that perfect scene.
But maybe there’s a way of moving around a scene, and moving around the page, to capture all the things you’re interested in? Let your eye roam, let your mind roam, come up with a page or two that is uniquely yours, not just the prettiest spot that everyone tends to draw or photograph.
There’s no one formula for how to do this, but here’s what I came up with:
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.