Getting Started
What Students Want to Know
THE MYSTERIOUS LANGUAGE OF ART
If the secrets of great artists were contained in a book, would you open it? We hope your answer is YES! There is much to learn from artists who have created all their lives. The first great secret artists share with others is:
1. Learn to observe the world around you- to really see it.
“OK”, you say, “I’m looking and I see the same things I’ve always seen.” We won’t let you be stuck there. The second part of this secret is:
2. Learn what to look for.
We tend to look at subject matter and make vague and arbitrary decisions about what we see. Comments such as “grass is green,” “faces are hard to draw,” “I can draw a horse from the side, but not from the front,” all show that we are focusing on our ideas about the subject , and not on what we see. If you’ve ever made statements similar to these, you are simply focusing on the wrong type of information. As you look at the world in the ways artists do, your art will greatly improve. This book is designed to show you just what those ways are. Do artists really see differently? After all, we all have the same kind of eyes and unless impaired in some way, we do see the same as everyone else. So artists see the same as everyone else, but they have learned to focus on a particular aspect of what they see, and at the same time block out other types of information. The language of art includes code words called the elements of art. You may have heard about these elements, which include space, line, shape, texture, form, value, and color. The third part of that secret tells us how to see the world using the elements of art.
3. Learn to focus on one element of art at a time, while drawing, and block out the others.
With practice, your mind can focus on any element of art you choose. Your mind can switch with lightning speed to any other element and back again or onto another. This makes it a powerful focusing and blocking out tool.
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