What goes into the creation of a painting that is aesthetically pleasing?

When we look at paintings, we normally pass judgment on whether they are appealing or not. I am certainly guilty to this. Judging art is subjective, however, there exists some ground rules to increase the appeal of a painting.

There are a number of factors that can be applied to increase ones chances of creating aesthetic paintings. There are design principles and techniques.

Today, I want to walk you through some of the principles I used in this week's painting of poinsettias. See if you can recognize them.

• Diagonal: a painting should have one directional thrust. Oblique dominance expresses drama and excitement.
• Warm and cool colours and complementary colours: I used mostly warm reds and yellows for the flowers and cooler colours in the background. To increase the vibrancy of the colours , I put complementary colours adjacent to each other. The complementary colour to a warm red is a cool green and the complementary colour to warm yellow is a cool red violet.
• Weaving Geen Colour:  notice how the bright green travels rhythmically through the painting while leading the eye.
• Different types of edges: Paintings that appeal to me all seem to have the full variety of these edges. If you have a painting which only has sharp edges it can lack subtlety, if everything is made up of soft indistinct edges it can lack direction. Having a more edge variety will enrich the painting. You'll note a number of hard edges with the petals. You'll also notice some "lost" edges that help the eye flow from one area to another
• Focus area: the flower on the left is the focus of this painting. Its centre intersects the "rule of third". The guideline proposes that a painting should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines, and that the painting's focus should be placed along these lines or their intersections. Proponents of the technique claim that aligning the focus with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition than simply centering the subject would. In addition to its placement, the poinsettia on the left has more details (e.g.  veins) than the other.
• Glazing on the petals. This technique, which is the application of sheer layers of paint on the paper, imparts luminosity not achieved with other techniques.
• Size: To entertain the eye, I used flowers of different sizes as positive and negative areas.
• Mixing of colours: Careful planning went into the mixing the colours. For example, to achieve the purple and greens I needed to experiment with many of the primary colours.

Lastly and possibly the most important thing that will shine through in a painting is the artist's passion for his or her craft and topic.

 

Danielle