Thoughts on Art

Why is it that people create art? The simple need to express themselves? The need to communicate their ideas and emotions? Pleasure?

Art is an amazing tool and can be used by the youngest child to the oldest man or woman. It is not restricted to paint on canvas. It is not restricted to the elite. You don't need to be rich and famous to do it. all you need is your hands and a material with which to mould. A sand castle... a chalk drawing on the side walk. If it has meaning to you, even if you and only you can find meaning in it, you have created art.

I started out with coloured pencil on printing paper. The only difference between me and those who feel they cannot draw is that I was nourished by my grandmother. She is an artist herself, and Christmas and birthdays were filled with new paper or paints. A particular birthday present that I remember was a book. It taught me how to see the object in front of me, not draw what I believed it should look like. A good example is drawing a foreshortened finger. You have to trust yourself to draw what you see, not what a finger 'should' look like ie a skinny sausage. You must trust your ability to draw what is realy there. As you can see the book has improved my drawing ability exponentially. Here is one of my earlier drawings.




I hope you can see this picture, it is very bad quality. Obviously I had difficulty foreshortening the nose. It is almost impossible to tell, but this was drawn from almost directly below the subject.

Along with my ability to transfer what I see correctly to the page, I also have improved my media control. From coloured pencil to paint or pastel. I think that being competent with a variety of media's is a great way to improve your art ability and is great fun to do. However in my opinion, apart from tutorials, the only way to improve is practice, practice, practice!

So I hope you have enjoyed my first little chat. I will defiantly go over some of the main points in this article in more detail in the future. If you are particularly interested in any thing I have said, feel free to comment and I will defiantly write in more detail on those subjects.

Thanks for reading -
 Megan Styles