{"id":9,"date":"2012-05-31T10:50:19","date_gmt":"2012-05-31T10:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.keesvanaalst.nl\/wordpress\/?p=9"},"modified":"2013-02-21T08:52:59","modified_gmt":"2013-02-21T08:52:59","slug":"a-good-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.keesvanaalst.nl\/wordpress\/a-good-start\/","title":{"rendered":"A Good Start"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most paintings, whether watercolors or other media, fail even before the first brushstroke is applied. How come? \u00a0 Beginners, but often even advanced painters as well, tend to want to imitate reality. \u00a0 I think this is not the purpose of painting. A painting \"\"<\/span><\/a>demands something else: transformation through selection and reduction. Ask yourself: \u201cwhat do I leave out, what do I add, what do I change in order to make a good painting\u201d. \u00a0 The result will always be more \u201cbeautiful\u201d than reality, and show a decorative and monumental quality. \u00a0 Generally this simplifying of reality comes down to LARGER SHAPES AND LIMITED TONAL VALUE AND COLOR. \u00a0 So the first lesson is: Limit yourself to the main shapes and leave out many details. \u00a0 Don’t use too many nuances of value: a light, a middle, and a dark value are enough. \u00a0 Limit yourself to a harmonious color palette of three to at most five colors. \u00a0 As you can see, you have to tweak reality a little for better results. \u00a0 To this end, I always make small preliminary sketches using a soft pencil. I often use a carpenter’s pencil to avoid getting fussy with too many details. \u00a0 In my experience, painting based on such a preliminary sketch gives a better result than painting directly from reality, \u00a0which gives way too much visual information. \u00a0 You will have guessed that I prefer a suggestive rendering to a detailed one. \u00a0 By the way, fewer brushstrokes means fewer chances of making mistakes. \u00a0 In short, elimination of all unnecessary elements results in an \u201ceconomical beauty\u201d, \u00a0which makes the subject more beautiful than it is in reality.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Kees<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most paintings, whether watercolors or other media, fail even before the first brushstroke is applied. How come? \u00a0 Beginners, but often even advanced painters as well, tend to want to imitate reality. \u00a0 I think… More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1,7],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7LrvK-9","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keesvanaalst.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keesvanaalst.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keesvanaalst.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keesvanaalst.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keesvanaalst.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.keesvanaalst.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190,"href":"https:\/\/www.keesvanaalst.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keesvanaalst.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keesvanaalst.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keesvanaalst.nl\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}