![]() The wrong colours are used and it looks like it’s out of a completely different painting.There’s a mistake in the background which draws the eye straight to it.It’s too busy and competes for attention with the foreground.It’s too strong in tone and dominates the rest of the picture. ![]() Typical faults (but by no means an exhaustive list!) are: Quite often of course, even for the experienced artist, the selected background doesn’t turn out to be as expected. Or for some other reason, it just doesn’t work. ![]() Now not having a totally clear idea of what the background should be, shouldn’t prevent you from starting a picture, if you know what the subject matter is beforehand.įor the most part, though, giving some consideration early in the planning process can save the heartache of adding an ill-conceived background which is always going to look like an afterthought - which of course, is exactly what it is. This only works though because Jane has clearly thought through what was needed beforehand. However, with a weaker or more benign sky, the impact of the entire painting would be significantly reduced, so sometimes a stronger background is right for the picture. In this acrylic mountain scene by Jane Lazenby, the cloudy background sky is, tonally, as strong as the mountains, contrasting with what we've just been discussing about not competing with the foreground. However with a watercolour, this will probably be your starting point, so you definitely have to be clear about your background before you pick up the brush! Now in an acrylic or pastel picture, you could roughly put in a semblance of the clouds, with the option to adjust things as you go along. The mood of a landscape is invariably created by the sky, so if you're creating a mountain scene on a stormy day, a heavy thundery sky may well provide the ideal backdrop to your painting. Sometimes, the background selects itself, of course. I’d always advise the less experienced painter to give at least some thought beforehand as to what background they might use. However, they will instinctively build in those factors that I mentioned above, in terms of being complementary, providing unity and whether it’s going to improve the picture.Īnd they’ll often roughly block in some of the background, so at least there’s something in place that can be adjusted as they progress. In fact, many experienced artists like to get a feel of how the painting is developing before they commit to a background and almost let the painting tell them when to include it and what form it should take. Quite often I’ve altered the background as a picture has developed because I’ve sensed something that would work better, or the colours I thought were going to work, simply haven’t had the desired effect. We’ve all done this at some time - I certainly have. You could go off and splash paint to create a wonderful portrait, and start thinking halfway through what sort of background you should give it - or what colour(s)/texture(s) should be included. Well often, this is where a little bit of pre-planning comes in handy! When Do I Consider What Background I Should Paint? In this lovely simple snow study by Geoff Kersey, I’ve digitally removed the distant trees from the right-hand shot.Įven though they’re only dabs of paint dropped wet in wet into damp paper and so completely without detail, look how much the quality of the scene is diminished by their omission. None added - this picture stands up well without a background: Hopefully, that will give you a bit of a head start when you come to view the lessons yourself, and when you make your own decisions about choosing backgrounds. These contain so many different types of background and what I’ll do is to interpret why they’ve selected what they have done, for that picture. Let’s have a look in this blog post at what options the artist needs to consider when thinking about backgrounds.Īs we progress, I thought I’d include some pictures produced as lessons by our fantastic panel of tutors, as well as some superb works produced by some of the Members. So the background is vitally important and not just an ‘add-on’ to finish off with. ![]() For most paintings, regardless of subject matter or media, it’s essential to consider the background as part of the composition.Įven if you decide to just leave empty space around your image, then you are still creating a background because the plain canvas or paper - whether white or tinted - will have a significant impact - good or bad - upon the final finished piece.ĭon’t forget, for all the positive shapes you create in your picture, the background will represent the negative shapes in between or around them. ![]()
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