More sophisticated paintings suggest detail without actually rendering it. This increases the viewer’s involvement and interest in the painting by making viewers exercise their own imagination, which is almost limitless. No longer are you just showing the viewer what you, the artist, is thinking about, but you are stimulating them to contribute their own thoughts and images to the work. In this way, the viewer becomes a participant in the experience. If you depict everything as does a camera, you leave nothing up to the imagination of the viewer, who becomes just a spectator of the work, rather than a participant in it.

Look closely at the bunch of grapes in the still life painting above. They were massed in using the general color of the grapes, then a few of the grapes at the edge and inside the large mass were picked out by modeling them with some reflected lights and highlights. This way the few rendered grapes suggest the whole bunch.

In this course unit

In this unit you will learn the various techniques for taking advantage of the principle of suggestion to make your work much more interesting. Suggestion is all about painting a little, but saying a lot. You will learn:

• why suggestion is much more powerful than detailed rendering
• how to paint highly complex areas such as roof tiles, bunches of grapes, or detailed foliage
• how to turn mistakes to your advantage and make use of old discarded paintings
• how to use transparent pigments to increase the power of suggestion
• the importance of the silhouette for suggesting form
• why accurate color spots are critical for suggesting form

Total number of assignments: 3

Total number of pages: 14