Saturday, July 11, 2009

Lesson 1: Art And The Impact It Has On The World Around Us

"All the books of theology ever written had less impact on the fate of mankind than the great religious paintings."

After thinking about this quote from a famous philosopher, I began to realize how important what we draw or paint is. When you draw or paint something, you are communicating in a very real sense a certain amount of emotion and vitality with how and what you paint or draw.

An artist can convey harmony, distraction, unorderliness, beauty, love, and many other emotional themes with the colors and tools that they use to paint and draw.

In fact, during the Renaissance our world may have had it's most dramatic changing period in history. The revival of learning and culture in that time frame though was mainly due from the major rejuvenation through the arts, (literature, music, and painting.) Some of our most brilliant artists were from that day and age. (Da Vinci, Michaelangelo.)

Although these painters were perfectionists and their paintings in a sense "refined" and brilliantly created, the themes that they used were sadly very non-Christian.

If you wish to study these painters I would encourage you to look more for the landscapes or studies that they did instead of their "most famous works." Their most famous works could be very well defined and expressed as profanity towards our Heavenly maker.

On the other hand, you can learn a lot from studying these painters and their techniques and I would encourage you to do so if you have the self-discipline enough to be able to throw out the bath water and leave the baby.

This past Spring I made it my goal to learn all of the several color themes that I could when it came to painting or drawing. I found that there are many ways that you can express yourself when you paint and draw. I encourage you to take out the time to learn your color wheel as what you want to communicate to the world around you can become that much easier when you study the basics.

From the 3 primary colors and the colors black and white you can literally create hundreds of brilliant and beautiful colors. This week try mixing the primaries together and see what cool combinations you can receive through practice.

I know that one of my favorite colors to use in my paintings is an amber orange. It's bright and happy and it shines the light of Christ in the midst of our very dark world.

Colors make people happy. What's your favorite color?

No comments:

Post a Comment