Discover the Art Of Omission

When artist Ron Stocke (Ep.78) is painting a scene, there is a lot he leaves out. Some he leaves out partially and some he leaves out altogether.

But how does he know what information goes into which category?

One way he decides is through thinking about what someone once told him, "Paint like you're driving by the scene you want to paint."

Put it to Practice:

Here’s what this means:

When you drive by a scene, your eye will only notice a few main things about what you're moving past. With that limited information, you'll still absolutely know what it was you saw. Maybe not the exact details but if someone asked you what you passed, you’d be able to tell them whether it was a building, a park or a circus.

When you drive by quickly, your eye will notice a few key (and often large) characteristics about size, shape, and value (through color.). That is enough for your brain to understand what you saw. That’s because your eye doesn’t need much to know what something is. Everything else is an unimportant detail.

You can carry this into painting. Only paint what you need to convey the scene and simplify or leave out the rest.

If, for example, you drive by a building, you're not going to notice every perfect line of every window. You may notice the darker contrast of the windows and that they are there in the first place, but that's it.

The "That's it" list is what you'll try and paint.

This will feel a little strange at first because after all YOU know all the details that make up a painting. But if you want to paint loosely, you’ll learn to ignore that instinct and just put in enough information so that your viewer knows it’s a building and that it has windows.

If you’re having trouble doing this, look at your reference for just a moment and then look away. Make a list of what you remember. What was important about the scene? What wasn’t important?

Use that list to help you decide what to leave out partially or all together.