Keep It Simple (And Here’s How) with Andy Evansen
Artist Andy Evansen (Ep.12) knows that one of the biggest challenges to his landscape students is that the world is beautiful and complex. The desire to paint EVERYTHING is very powerful. But that pull can get a painter in trouble before they even begin.
Complexity often translates to details. And when you try to get all the details in, you often get tight as a result. And then your painting can end up a bunch of tiny pieces with nothing holding it together.
This is why Evansen encourages his students to simplify. And the way to do that is through cropping.
Put it to Practice:
Let’s say you’re looking through a traditional camera. With a camera, there is a frame around what you’re looking at. That frame is the crop.
Evansen suggests even when you’re not looking through a camera, you put edges to what you’re trying to capture.
This takes practice ESPECIALLY if you're workin from life.
But he says don’t stop there. You, as the artist, can crop however you want.
That means you can crop in to capture the light on a single bale of hay. Or you can crop out so that the details don’t matter and you’re just capturing the sweep of the rolling fields.
And when you crop, Evansen suggests you focus down on a few stronger and simpler shapes. By cropping this way, you’re beginning the next steps in your process fighting fewer details.