Hard and Soft Lines

 This entry was originally posted on Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Cherry Blossoms, 7x10" 

When painting from a photograph it can be hard to remember to soften some of your lines.

A photograph tends to flatten everything into hard surfaces and loses its dimensionality.

 

Our vision is such that when we focus on an object, we see the item that is in focus much clearer, harder, and crisper. 

Those items in our peripheral vision are in softer focus or appear fuzzy unless we focus on them. 

This is very different from a photograph.

Keep this in mind when you paint. 

By putting harder, crisper lines around your focal point, you will be drawing attention to it.

Which is what you want.

Painting softer or fuzzy lines as they move away from your focal point creates dimension and it becomes a support for your focal point instead of competing with the one you have.

365 Seconds of Watercolor: Prickly Pear Blossoms

Here is my final video of Prickly Pear Blossoms. Instead of doing a compilation of the previous days, I show how I got the dark background and completed the painting. If you have been watching all along, then you will have seen how I created the blossoms in the previous days.

I must admit that I really enjoyed painting this one. Okay, I really enjoy painting almost everything I do. But I enjoyed the challenge of creating that dark background and those needles. I wanted to make the needles prickly but soft at the same time. The other challenge was getting those yellow blossoms to stand out and still look yellow. I like to think I did it.

Here is the completed painting:

Prickly Pear Blossoms

watercolor 

11x14"

The original painting can be viewed at the Full Moon Gallery in Twin Falls, Idaho