Learning to be a Better Painter – Lee Davis Gives TAG Tips for Artists

Artist Lee Davis offers excellent advice for artists, for all media, on what to keep in mind in undertaking a new artistic project.  He breaks the issues down into three categories in this very useful YouTube presentation.  The advice is clear and organized in a step-by-step fashion that really helps one get a project underway.  You can also find this video on Lee Davis’ own YouTube channel.

Lee first explains that there are few real rules in art, but a system of proceeding can be useful.  Lee shares the structure of his thinking via the S.I.T. method: Structure, Itinerary, and Technique.  Under Structure, he includes three issues: Dimension — What kind of space will this art occupy?  Is this a two-dimensional painting?  A mural?  An interactive exhibit? A second issue is Surface – choose it carefully.  The final issue in this category is Dynamic Symmetry – this launches a discussion about various ways of locating items through a scaffold or grid.  He offers many examples and discusses a quick fix, the “rule of thirds.”   Moving on to Itinerary, he considers the Setting, the Characters, and the Story – they are all related, and all need to be there, but may not have the same weight.  He gives examples from vastly different types of art, from highly abstract to representational.  The final group of issues is Technique.  Lee Davis begins with value, a familiar consideration for artists.  He suggests that an artist can create with line (e.g. cross hatching) or with value, which can create the illusion of a line.  Once value and line have been taken into account, it’s time to think about color.  Davis reminds us that color is kind of the window dressing.   As they say, value does all the work, but color gets all the credit.  This discussion is amusing, but also informative.  He suggests that an artist might use 60 percent of the painting for the primary color, with 30 percent for the secondary color, and 10 percent for the tertiary color.  The examples are wide ranging, from a 500-year-old painting to cartoon characters, advertisements, and more recent paintings.  This discussion is convincing – the 60/30/10 rule is everywhere!