Interestingly, Wix.com, the platform on which I created my website recommends that I write blogs as a means to increase traffic. Perhaps, I should have used the word "intriguingly" because, in this age and times where videos abound on any subject worth teaching or propagating, will writing about painting really achieve the purpose? Not the one to accept defeat easily, here I am bravely treading into unchartered territory!
Should you first sketch and then "fill colors" or paint straightaway?
The first thing I would like to say is that painting is not about filling colors in given spaces. The only reason such an impression gets created is that if you first sketch, painting follows as a subsequent activity, and you tend to think that you are coloring in the shapes created. So the question is, "what if you didn't sketch?". Yes, it is very much possible to paint without doing any sketching whatsoever and I have done that quite a number of times - especially if the painting is about a single subject. (By that I mean, a composition which does not have multiple images). So, the logical corollary to the question is "where or what do you fill in?". This suggests to us that there is much more to painting than filling colors in designated spaces.
Continuum of lights and shades
So painting is a portrayal of lights and shades and the gradual transition from one to another. Objects in space do not have definite contours, except insofar as the eyes can discriminate one from the other. Otherwise, objects in space are a continuum of lights and shades - some lighter, some darker. That's what you try to portray in the 2-dimensional space like a canvas or special paper.
Why "special" paper?
I paint only with water colors. As I said, I am a self-taught artist and so decided on water colors because it would be easiest to wash, if I soil my clothes during painting! Do you find it funny or outrageous? Trained artists have frowned upon my saying so; but that's how I have been able to breach some holy cows or paradigms. For instance, I started painting water color on canvas very early in my painting career, which is hitherto all of only two years. I remember showing my work to a curator of a museum and he asked me "how do you fix the colors on the canvas?". I just blinked because I didn't know what the question was about? He later told me that water color is not easy to stay on canvas because of the latter's absorptive properties. And, therefore professional artists use some medium to fix. Thank God I didn't know this limitation - because I just went ahead and did the painting as if I would paint on paper. And I still have those canvasses which have not faded. Of course, after finishing the painting I used a varnish, as advised by the curator.
But when painting on paper, the thickness of paper is important as else, the paper will curl and color would smudge and spread. So for water color we use 300 gsm paper. GSM is grams per square metre. And of course, there are brushes with which you paint. Does one type of brush fit all types of painting work? Shall we talk about that in the next blog?
P N Krishnan
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