December 2017
Intermediate to advanced
208 pages
3h 39m
English
The “area of competence” is the range of usefulness of a particular medium.
• Certain kinds of expression are more suited to one medium than another. For example, silverpoint is perfect for making delicate and precise drawings but is not suited to making powerful expressionist works.
• It follows that the selection of a medium is extremely important. The decision by Edgar Degas (1834–1917) to abandon oil painting and work in pastel enabled him to transfer the fine qualities of his drawing into a colored medium, obtaining results that would have been impossible in oil.
• Sometimes, interesting work emerges from forcing a medium out of its area of competence. When the super-real painters of the 1960s and 1970s used paint ...