When to Render, When to Suggest

Years ago, in my first watercolor class, I chose a photo of an adobe building to paint for an assignment.  It was a stressful exercise because I felt like I needed to paint every adobe brick.  In fact, I got so caught up in the brick area that I lost track of my perspective and painted the bricks along the side of the building shape pointing in the wrong direction.  By the time I finally got to painting the foreground, I was out of semester and had to hurry and finish the project.  I merely suggested grass and trees and turned it in. 

The Old Lilywhite Store
12" x 14"
I painted each and every brick of that building..

My instructor gave me a bit of advice that everyone beginning to paint should hear and people like me should hear more than once.  She said, "Whenever possible, suggest, don't render."  By 'render,' she meant we aren't painting a brick or even a brick wall.  We are painting a picture and a picture is an illusion, a 2 dimensional illusion of 3 dimensional space.  

The roof of the background building is tiled, but I won't paint every tile, rather I'll suggest the texture they make and let my viewer's eyes connect the dots and decide it's tile.  

If every detail is perfectly spelled out, we don't leave any room for the brain to imagine within our work.  The eye will automatically join up lines that are only suggested, making our work more interesting and inviting to look at.  I believe that the process of adding details to a picture in our brains, details that the artist kindly left out for us, engages us in a painting, helping to make it our own while we view it.  

The fun part is deciding where the suggestions will be and where the careful details will be.  It's a puzzle that has to be put together as we paint.  And it's fun.  

Be happy, have joy!  Alice