Less is More

There is something to be said for simplicity. Compare Steemit to Facebook. I believe for many, as it was for me, when I first came to Steemit, the stark minimalism of Steemit made it look somewhat underdeveloped, a work in progress. But I quickly found I had  space to breath, as there were far fewer distractions.

Just as a side note, Andreas M. Antonopoulos gave an interview just on this topic and comparing the path of growth Facebook took to where Steemit is now.

I used to work in web development. I saw the evolution of usability experts who focused on the user experience, who have often a complicated task of attempting guide and co-ordinate many different experts in their own field towards producing a website or application that suited the end user first and foremost above all else. As the saying goes, the customer is king. If end users find your product too complicated, not matter how good the underlying features are, they will simply go elsewhere.

Creative productions, whether art, music and performance are no different. While superficially say a painting might look complicated, it is the underlying simplicity that will harmonise the work. One of the fundamentals of painting is points of interest.

The most common formula of points of interest is a triangulation of points of interest of descending importance. There is the eye catcher, the thing you first zero in on, then the second thing that catches your eye, leading you to the third, by which time you glance back at the first to make sense of it all. This creates the dynamic of the work, and causes it to live and breath with an energy.

This theory can also be applied to colour. In the film industry, this is the basis of colour grading. Have you ever noticed that certain films have dominating colour themes? This is what helps set the mood of the film. There is some discussion that it has gone too far these days, and has become just formula. But then again, you could say that overall about most Hollywood films these days.

Wit this idea in mind, of working in limited constraints, I chose to work in one colour only with the above painting. Aha! But there is also white you might cry. In painting circles, white and black are technically not referred to as colour. So working with Burnt Sienna (and white) I set out to create as much expression as possible. I do mean mood, but I also mean colour expression.

There are other artists who achieve a far better level than what I currently do with a palette this limited. There are three ways to create new colours. The first we think of is to mix the Burnt Sienna and white together in varying proportions. The next two are where the illusion of painting works its magic.

You can scumble or dry brush, the darker colour over the lighter, which means to roughly brush it. The brush only has a small amount of paint on it and you scrub it over the surface. For this you need a harder brush to endure the abuse.

The other is then to glaze the lighter colour over the darker by combining it with a transparent medium.

How exactly all of this works, is another full article on its own, and would go into the properties of light and how our eyes and brain perceive light. Once you start looking into it, you quickly come to realise that what we think we see, is often not what we really are seeing. 

Our own minds love playing tricks on us. This fact, great artists are also aware of, and will use mercilessly to have you see a world, a story in rock dust, mixed in dried plant extract and smeared on canvas. 

That is the magic of good painting, or any other creative endeavour, is to provide the audience with just enough, that their own imagination steps in and fills the blanks and gaps.

More of my artwork can be found on my website. LeoPlaw.com
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