Paint the Shapes!

When I first began to paint seriously, I believed, like most novices, that my job was to render the objects before me--apples, people, barns, teacups, whatever--as convincingly as possible. The more detail, the better. Verisimilitude was the goal, and success or failure in my mind were measured solely by the degree to which I achieved it.

This is a worthwhile exercise because it develops drawing skills, and the ability to accurately render both value and color, all of which are necessary if one is to make progress as a representational painter. Focusing exclusively on verisimilitude, however, even at the earliest stages can, in my experience, retard rather than advance a student's progress.

An example from my own background. At least a decade before I took up fine-art painting, I had written and illustrated two field guides to plants and animals.

As part of that effort I created several hundred detailed illustrations, drawn in pencil or ink and colored using acrylics. In later editions, I did all the illustrations directly in Photoshop, like the mushrooms  shown at left. As a result, when I turned to fine art painting, I came equipped with extensive experience drawing and painting accurate representations of complex "objects." What I quickly learned, however, was that my experience as an illustrator of field guides did not prepare me for the much more complicated task of creating even a simple painting. Moreover, I had a difficult time understanding that my most important job as a representational painter was not simply to render objects convincingly but to arrange those objects in visually compelling designs. In this regard, representational painters and abstract painters share the same goal.

As a result of my experience, I expose my own students early-on to the idea of painting "shapes," not "objects." I encourage them to view their apples and boats and wine bottles not as isolated entities but as abstract shapes to be arranged in the picture plane. "Paint shapes, not objects," I cry, as the students, with eyes rolling, forge ahead.

Steve Whitney, Morning, Acrylic

Morning (above) seen as a mosaic of shapes The painting was actually
conceived  in this way, with the main objects on the table overlapping 
to create a large complex shape. The so-called negative spaces around 
the main shape consist of the table surface, tablecloth fall, back wall
and milk carton. The definition of shapes in a painting is always
to some degree arbitrary. What matters is not so much their particular
boundaries as the fact that you are conceiving your painting in this way.

I can tell by student response (and by remembering my own initial response) that some of them, at least, can't quite wrap their heads around the idea. It is, after all, a foreign concept. But until they do, their work will remain amateurish regardless of how skilled they become in rendering individual objects.

Beginning students cease to be beginners when they finally grasp that the real goal of all painting is to arrange abstract shapes in compelling designs, and then consistently attempt to do so in their own work.