This is a topic I wish I knew about when I was a beginner artist. Taking the time to study this and practicing observing this detail can make all the difference between an artwork that jumps off the canvas and one that feels a little bit flat.
I’m speaking today mostly to those of you who wish to develop your ability to capture likeness and achieve a level of realism in your work. Edges are where we perceive the start and stop of an object and the start of another.
I’m going to talk about the importance of edges in our art and why we should avoid or severely limit the outlining we do in our art.
This is a common mistake we make that flattens our faces in portraits we create. I’m curious, where has focusing on the edges in your art helped or hurt you?
Now its your turn: share your ahas and comments below.
And if you feel feedback like this from my program Self-Taught to Self-Confident could help you check out the program here.
Sometimes I learn something that I find difficult to apply in practice because perhaps I have not heard how to actually make it work. I think you just cleared up this idea of no line beneath the the eye for me. I shall see if I can use a value change in that area to improve my portraits. Thanks for for the insight.
Yay Karen! Happy dance 🙂 I hope you get the results you are looking for in your work!
Thanks, Carrie. I was in a class recently and Ian ( I can’t remember last name) suggested a great exercise to see value. Take different colors and try to make swatches of the same value in each color, then take a picture and see how close you can get the swatches in gray scale to match by value. It is helping me see value and ignore color which is soooo hard. Thought it might be something you would like to teach.
You are always welcome Cathy! And thank you for sharing a great tip.