This is a drawing which took around half and hour. It was intended to be a study of form, seen in simplified bulk, with little attention to detail. I could have worked over it again in an attempt to refine the shapes and the lighting, but finished at this stage thinking that it kind of worked.
N.B., Click on images to zoom.
'Reclining Male'
Black Conté Crayon and White Chalk on Paper.
Knowing when to finish a painting is very tricky.
Personally I tend to finish when things look ok and I can't think of anything that would improve what is already done.
But there are many varied opinions on this, mostly more sophisticated than mine, and here are a few........,
I have to keep working, not to arrive at 'finish', which arouses the admiration of fools... I must seek completion only for the pleasure of being truer and more knowing.
Paul Cezanne
Giacometti
The extreme proposition on which Giacometti based all his mature work was that no reality... could ever be shared. This is why he believed it impossible for a work to be finished. This is why the content of any work is not the nature of the figure or head portrayed but the incomplete history of him staring at it.
John Berger
The minute you finish a piece, get rid of it! If it's bad, it'll drag you down, if it's great, you'll just sit there looking at it.
Author unknown
I paint very directly. I go from top to bottom. When I get to the floor, the painting is finished.
Neil Welliver
Schmid
The strength and clarity of the picture you envision at the start will tell you when you are done. You are finished when you have said what you wish to say, when nothing added can make it better.
Richard Schmid
Smith
In painting, the gravest immorality is to try to finish what isn't well begun. But a picture that is well begun may be left off at any point. Look at Cezanne's water colours!
Matthew Smith
Whistler
The work of a master reeks not of the sweat of the brow – suggests no effort – and is finished from its beginning.
James Abbot McNeill Whistler
Cezanne
One of Cezanne's unfinished paintings... appears to be a completed work even though only a few strokes of paint have been put down. My methods are similar... I expect each of my paintings to appear whole in every stage.
Christopher Willard
-AD 61-112, Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus...
Unfinished paintings are more admired than the finished because the artist's actual thoughts are left visible.
Pliny the Younger
-AD 61-112, Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus...
Too much polishing weakens rather than improves a work.
Pliny the Younger
One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.
Marie Curie
Gorky
When something is finished, that means it's dead, doesn't it? I believe in everlastingness. I never finish a painting - I just stop working on it for a while.
Ashile Gorky
Monet
While adding the finishing touches to a painting might appear insignificant, it is much harder to do than one might suppose...
Claude Monet
It's not your painting anymore. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it.
Jeff Melvoin
....and, leaving the last word to the greatest........,
Rembrandt
A painting is finished when the artist says it is finished.
Rembrandt
This is a drawing which took around half and hour. It was intended to be a study of form, seen in simplified bulk, with little attention to detail. I could have worked over it again in an attempt to refine the shapes and the lighting, but finished at this stage thinking that it kind of worked.
N.B., Click on images to zoom.
'Reclining Male'
Black Conté Crayon and White Chalk on Paper.
Knowing when to finish a painting is very tricky.
Personally I tend to finish when things look ok and I can't think of anything that would improve what is already done.
Personally I tend to finish when things look ok and I can't think of anything that would improve what is already done.
But there are many varied opinions on this, mostly more sophisticated than mine, and here are a few........,
I have to keep working, not to arrive at 'finish', which arouses the admiration of fools... I must seek completion only for the pleasure of being truer and more knowing.
Paul Cezanne
Ashile Gorky
Paul Cezanne
Giacometti
The extreme proposition on which Giacometti based all his mature work was that no reality... could ever be shared. This is why he believed it impossible for a work to be finished. This is why the content of any work is not the nature of the figure or head portrayed but the incomplete history of him staring at it.
John Berger
The minute you finish a piece, get rid of it! If it's bad, it'll drag you down, if it's great, you'll just sit there looking at it.
Author unknown
Author unknown
I paint very directly. I go from top to bottom. When I get to the floor, the painting is finished.
Neil Welliver
Neil Welliver
Schmid
The strength and clarity of the picture you envision at the start will tell you when you are done. You are finished when you have said what you wish to say, when nothing added can make it better.
Richard Schmid
Smith
In painting, the gravest immorality is to try to finish what isn't well begun. But a picture that is well begun may be left off at any point. Look at Cezanne's water colours!
Matthew Smith
Whistler
The work of a master reeks not of the sweat of the brow – suggests no effort – and is finished from its beginning.
James Abbot McNeill Whistler
Cezanne
One of Cezanne's unfinished paintings... appears to be a completed work even though only a few strokes of paint have been put down. My methods are similar... I expect each of my paintings to appear whole in every stage.
Christopher Willard
-AD 61-112, Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus...
Unfinished paintings are more admired than the finished because the artist's actual thoughts are left visible.
Pliny the Younger
Unfinished paintings are more admired than the finished because the artist's actual thoughts are left visible.
Pliny the Younger
-AD 61-112, Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus...
Too much polishing weakens rather than improves a work.
Pliny the Younger
Pliny the Younger
One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.
Marie Curie
Marie Curie
Gorky
When something is finished, that means it's dead, doesn't it? I believe in everlastingness. I never finish a painting - I just stop working on it for a while.Ashile Gorky
Monet
While adding the finishing touches to a painting might appear insignificant, it is much harder to do than one might suppose...
Claude Monet
It's not your painting anymore. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it.
Jeff Melvoin
Jeff Melvoin
....and, leaving the last word to the greatest........,
Rembrandt
A painting is finished when the artist says it is finished.
Rembrandt
quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz “details, details............” quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz
Who painted this little figure, and in which painting?
(The answer will be in the next posting.)
And here's the answer from the last posting -
by Egon Schiele, Norodni Galerie, Prague, 1917.
quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz “details, details............” quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz
"I dream my painting and I paint my dream."
Vincent Van Gogh
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. . . . and now, a Recommended Read . . .
Concepts of Modern Art
Nikos Stangos
'The main concepts and development of art from about 1900 to the present are analysed in authoritative essays by some of the most distinguished art historians and critics in Britain and the United States. With Edward Lucie-Smith on Pop Art, Suzi Gablik on Minimal Art, Norbert Lynton on Expressionism, and Sarah Whitfield on Fauvism, to name a few, these scholarly essays illuminate each particular artistic movement of the century, and together form an entire history of modern art. 123 illus.' Amazon Review
Published on Thames and Hudson
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