The Challenges of a Foreground
featuring Andy Evansen
This topic does come up quite a bit in Andy’s watercolor course, “Watercolors for All Seasons.” With foreground, it can be tough to figure out what and how much information we need to include. Andy likes to remind his students that there is no generic right or wrong answer for this. Sometimes, the foreground is the reason for the painting. If you have a high horizon line and the foreground is interesting, you will need to put some more effort into it. If we are talking generally, we do have to be more careful with how much information we put in the foreground area. We do not want it to become a visual barrier to the rest of the painting.
“Practice painting good, convincing shapes that aren’t too eye-catching. When they become too eye-catching, they may block the nearest path to the painting.”
Andy has his students do value studies where his students are working on the contrast and detail in the areas they are trying to lead the eye to, and not just painting something because it is a closer object. It is a tricky balance to find, since you also don’t want to leave it too empty. Andy also sees, in black-and-white value studies, how often the information is just right across the middle of the painting. This is how you can tell that there is too much in the foreground, the black and white will be staring at you in the face! Andy reminds his students that the more they do studies like this, the more they will start to become better at composing their paintings. Even just making some things up or adding some aspects to the landscape like a fence line, path, or shadow (for example), rather than painting what is in front of us, can help.
You can experiment with this and just paint some simple shapes in a black-and-white value study. Practice painting good, convincing shapes that aren’t too eye-catching. When they become too eye-catching, they may block the nearest path to the painting. Andy likes to put some of the information in wet into wet so it does fuzz a little bit and is not too defined. Then, he can always come in after things have dried and sharpen up edges if needed. If the shapes are a little out of focus, they are being painted the way our eyes see and not the way a camera sees them. It’s the whole idea of peripheral vision. When you are looking out beyond the foreground, you have to find that balance of how much information to put in. Some of those shapes are dripped wet into wet so they are vaguer on purpose.
Want to learn and practice value studies directly from Andy? Join his 365 Day Mentoring Course, “Watercolors for All Seasons:”
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Listen to Andy and Gabor on the Paint & Clay podcast here.