14-Day Beginner Series - Picking Your Approach: Representational Vs Abstract

Hi, my name is Mackenzie Swenson, and welcome to day 3 of our 14 day beginner series for the Artist's Academy. So today we're gonna be talking about how to pick your approach and to kind of know what you're aiming for between working representationally, and working in more of an abstract expressionistic way. So what do I mean by that? First of all, I wanna say these both have, like, there's a an era in art that is called abstract expressionism, and I'm actually not referring to that, I just couldn't, there's maybe not really a better way of referring to this specific thing. So all I mean by that, is when you're working in this more abstract expressionistic way, what you're looking to do is to create visual elements that show what you're experiencing, what you're feeling, when you're feeling a lot of intense, maybe chaotic emotions, you're gonna bring that to your canvas. And it's not gonna be a literal scene of something that's like crazy and chaotic, maybe it is, but in this case, if you're working expressionistic in this more abstract way, you're just looking to show the emotions that you're going through in a way that is visual, that uses color, that uses line, that uses all of these sort of artistic tools. Then on the flip side, we have representational painting, and when you're working representationally, you're looking to represent a visual experience, and so you're looking to kind of invite the viewer into your way of seeing, and to, as faithfully as you can, translate that experience onto a paper or canvas. So I just think those are very useful ways of, it's a useful kind of binary to think about what you're looking to express in your work. And realistically, all art has both, you know, so it's not like you're gonna do a drawing that's purely expressionistic and then a drawing that's purely representational and they're not gonna have anything to do with each other, like really everything that's expressionistic is actually representing something that, you know, it's an accumulation of visual experiences you've had over your life coming together in this abstract way. And with, you know, representational paintings like, you can't help but have a little bit of your emotional quality get into the way that you represent that. But for the purpose of our discussion right now, it's very useful to be able to separate them. So I just wanna go through a couple of things that are relevant to, things that things that you wanna be looking at when you're working in this more abstract expressionistic way, so some qualities to think about when you're using this framework. So the first one would be line quality, and you can think about two different kind of parts of that, one is the expressiveness of your mark making. So, a really like quick kind of swirly scribble is going to probably represent something like maybe rage or chaos, it's probably not going to be read by the viewer as peaceful. Whereas if you just draw a couple of like long horizontal lines at the bottom of a piece of paper, those will probably indicate something far more serene. So another thing to keep in mind is signature mark making, and this actually can be fun if you're just like doodling in a sketchbook and just making designs and whatnot, what you'll probably find is that you have certain like little scribbles or like marks that are unique to you, things that you are drawn to over and over again almost like the signature print of your handwriting. And so those are fun to pay attention to as well, and they maybe have a little bit less to do with like a universal emotional quality, and more to do with like, oh, these are just like designs or marks or things that are a recurring theme in my personal kind of range of my visual language, right? So there's obviously a lot more, but those are a couple of things when you're working in this expressionistic way to keep in mind with line quality. So then when you're thinking about value, which is darks and lights, there's a couple things there, so the emotional quality of really high contrast. So when you bring really light lights and really dark darks close together and there's lots of variation, the emotion of that versus something where it's a lot of mid tone, grays, with like subtle undulating gradations, those are gonna have very different expressive qualities. So then another thing to keep in mind is the emotion of color, I don't even wanna get into that because it's such a broad topic, but I think, you know, if you have existed in the world for more than like two years, you probably can relate to the fact that color is in fact an emotional experience, and does, you know, relate, and it's different for different people. So like red for example, is the color of passion, whether that's rage or love, and that's kind of a common thing, but also, like you can hold that in one hand and then also like leave some open space for like, what's my association with red? You know? Like, what do I get out of, when I see a specific color, so it's fun to know what the universal is, but it's also fun to, you know, just like let yourself be open to what these colors really say to you, and to tap into that. And then one other thing to keep in mind when working in a more expressionistic way is using interesting materials and layers and textures. And so like, there are certain materials that, let's say when you're painting, if you have some sort of like a very slick varnish or a more like glossy substance that you put over the top of something, right? That's gonna have a very different feel to it than something that's got like a really gritty, grimy, like staccato texture to it. And those both have emotional qualities, very tactile qualities. And so, just paying attention to like, what do I wanna put into my art piece? So that's kind of just some of the basic things to keep in mind when you're working expressionisticly, And then on the flip side, we've got representational. So the things to be looking for and keeping in mind when you are working and you're trying to make a thing look like a thing. And so when we're looking at that, some of the elements that that's composed of would be with lines, proportion, so making sure that like my hands is not the same exact length as my arm here, you know? Like if these were the same distance in my drawing, that might not be ideal, you know, making sure the eyes are the right size relative to the head, all of those things would be in the realm of proportion. Another thing to pay attention to is overlaps, and how you have those lines connect with each other. So, you know, we can get into that more later, but just knowing that those indicate a sense of space and a sense of volume, and then also perspective. So those are just a few of the things that get into, you know, when you're working representationally. Another thing would be with value, so light and shadow, you know, really describing a light effect with the way that you separate your darks and your lights in your drawing or painting. And then those gradations, or you know, the subtleties of value, so how quickly or slowly a very dark value kind of merges into a light value. Is it a slow, broad gradated transition across the sky? Or is it a quick light and dark coming together very abruptly? So just paying attention to that, and if you're working representationally, you want to have an awareness of, are these accurate relationships? So then again with color, tons of stuff that goes into color theory, and we can get into that more later, but really it comes down to accuracy with color when you're working representationally. So, you know, it's almost like if you're working on Photoshop or something and you zoom in really, really close to just the pixelated layer, and then you use that like dropper thing to identify, oh, which color is this? Which color is this? Being able to look at a scene and use just the naked eye to assess, oh, what color is that? What color is that? It's very challenging, but it's a fun thing to practice. And then in terms of like textures and different ways of using your materials, and even what materials you use for what project, you can really do a lot with that in mimicking certain visual or sensory experiences. So a common example of that in painting would be in the lights of an area, building up what's called an impasto, so a thickly layered on amount of paint, and that really helps to make something feel illuminated. And then in the shadows, keeping that paint very thin, very transparent, allowing it to feel like it's kind of receding back in space. And so, those are just a few of the kind of constituent elements of both working in this more abstract expressionistic way, and then this more representational way. And today, for the first time in this 14 day series, I'm gonna give you guys a little bit of a prompt, to just explore this difference in your own practice. And so what I want you to do is pick any emotion, so I am, you know, just naturally melancholy person, so I love sadness for whatever reason, it's great. And so I would take sadness as an emotion, and the first thing I would do is to say, "Okay, I want to draw something sad," and that would be my representational approach to sadness. So I'm actually going to look for something that sparks that emotion in me, so looking for a photo reference, something I see in my house, a painting, I could copy a little section of it, and you could just do a little pencil sketch, doesn't even have to be good, just draw something that you're trying to represent, and have it be something sad, you know, something that that is sad to you. And then to explore this more expressionistic way of working, I want you to just draw sadness, and that I know that's very kind of esoteric and like a little weird, but if sadness had to be a line, if sadness had to be a little like two by two square on your on your sketchbook paper, what would it be? And just explore, you can use colors if you want, you can use colored pencils, some paint, some, you know, whatever, or it could just be a little square you draw, or a circle or whatever, or a whole page in your sketchbook, and it could be a ballpoint pen, you know but like just draw sadness on that page. Or if you wanna do happiness, you can do happiness, if you wanna do curiosity, you could do that, that'd be interesting. So that's my prompt for you today. I hope that you learned something today, and this is helpful for you, and just kind of understanding how to approach your own drawing practice and the options you have within. Thanks for joining me today.