“Not That - This!”

Learning about art can be confusing. And I say this as someone who has spent quite a few years studying complex subjects in my main professional life (from which I hope one day to retire and just do art).

You may have encountered this when watching expert painters expounding on technique, they seem often to be quite dogmatic about their use of different methods. Some examples: “Always paint with the biggest or widest brush you can”, or “Always start with the darks and work your way out to the lights”. How about “Start with a very rough outline and work your way to the detail“. “Start with the easy features so you can build momentum in your painting“. And then there’s even the fat-over-lean rule.

Here are some alternatives to these: “Use the finest brush you need to get the detail you want, because you’re striving for a high degree of realism”. “Start with a mid-tone and then take your pick on which direction to take“. “Mark the details in first so you know where they are and don’t need to worry about them later“. “Start with the complex features to get them done early“.

See the problem? It really depends on who you’re listening to, and - more specifically - the style of art they’re practising. So you might be following a committed alla prima practitioner, and of course they’re going to recommend the first set of techniques because they suit their style - large brush strokes, heavy with paint, they want to mold the form of the subject as they go by (literally) moving paint around on the canvas. But talk to a realism specialist and you’ll likely hear more of the second set.

I’m even skeptical of the fat-over-lean rule as an immovable foundational principle - here’s why. It’s more to do with the ability of the final painting to withstand bending and temperature-induced expansion and contraction that can crack or even dislodge paint. Also, the risk of the top layer drying over time and expanding (over decades or centuries), thus causing cracking. But the thing is, we now have really good substrates to paint on, some of which have minimal temperature susceptibility and which don’t bend - think copper sheets and aluminium composite material (ACM) panels. And then we varnish the painting when it’s dry enough to do so, which seals the top layer and prevents it drying out further. And another thing - so many painters don’t work in layers anyway, they just brush/paste/slop/throw the paint on in one round.

So the important thing is to understand where your advice is coming from, and maybe more importantly, the context in which it should be used. That means thinking beyond hand-me-down rules and questioning what you hear as you learn more and more.