Painter IX Creativity

9

Painting Fundamentals III: Refine and Focus

You may not always succeed, but attempt to produce the greatest effect in the viewer's mind by the least number of things onscreen. Why? Because you want to do only what is necessary to engage the imagination of the audience. Suggestion is always more effective than exposition. Past a certain point, the more effort you put into wealth of detail, the more you encourage the audience to become spectators rather than participants.

—Walter Murch

9.1 Introduction

Having created a dynamic ‘muck up’ underpainting, our next task is to refine our image and define our focus. After refining the tonal contrasts to sculpt the forms, we then selectively apply detail and contrasts to lead the viewer's eyes to our ...