August 22, 2015
  

I stole the title of this tip from Tami Simon who has a weekly podcast called Insights at the Edge.  Even though Tami's topics are related to the mystical and spiritual, it's not farfetched to cross over what she is doing to creating visual art.  

Just as edges in our lives are sometimes distinct and at other times transitional, so are the edges we create in our art work.  Piet Mondrian, a painter of the De Stijl art movement, reduced his later paintings to sharp edges and color.  That's just short of as minimist as you can get.  

Piet Mondrian Composition II, Red, Blue and Yellow

In contrast, edges played am important in Impressionist Claude Monet's later works.  He applied more organic edges, using them to merge with the flow of the subject rather than to isolate it. Notice in the background of his painting, Agapanthus, how the edges are hardly distinguisable whereas in the foreground they are sharp and active, creating flow of visual movement.

Claude Monet               Agapanthus


In Mondrian's later work, the brush became unimportant whereas in Monet's paintings, the brush was a primary participant in edge making.  Folk art painters usually have sharp edges around all their images, creating what could be called a coloring book effect.  More expressive painters will often lose as many edges as possible so that the viewer's eye flows throughout the painting.  The artist's brush, then, becomes an important participant in how a painting is composed because the brush IS the edge maker.

TIP:  Taking time to explore how the brush can be an edge maker can create an inner awareness that will guide us while we are shaping our images.  When we focus our attention an a single part of our composing process and hone in on how it works, we build within our habitual memory an ability to craft our work without having to think about it.
 
Happy painting,
Dianne

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___In this week's video tutorial, I focus our attention on how the brush can be used to express edges.  

___ Do you get frustrated when trying to communicate tall grasses in landscape painting.  In this week's Quick Tip, I show you a technique that will work every time.
   
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