Design & Composition

Unit One Emotional

TYPES OF CONCEPT
A painting will have more impact on the viewer if it has a focused concept behind it. In other words, the painting should be about something, and not just a pretty picture or a pretty scene. Try to identify why you want to paint this painting. Is it because:
the scene or subject in front of you

A concept may be a particular emotion or feeling you have when observing a place or subject. For example: calm and serenity, energy and excitement, grace, friendship, isolation, grandeur, etc.
Aesthetic

makes you feel a certain emotion?

something beautiful and aesthetic

caught your eye?

there is something interesting about

Your concept may derive from your aesthetic sensibility - the beauty you find in a subject that others may not have noticed, such as this painting of a washing line.

the scene that you want to describe to your viewer?

Descriptive

The concept may be purely descriptive in nature that highlights some characteristic of an object or subject that is not purely emotional or aesthetic, as in this painting of the mist.

Narrative Types of concept

A narrative concept is a story.

There are many types of concept, and different types have been used in art throughout the centuries:
emotional aesthetic descriptive narrative complex idea message
Tip

Complex idea

There are more complex ideas that the conceptual art movement attempts to express.

If you can describe what your painting is about in three words, you have a focused concept. If you need more than three words to describe your painting, this means you probably have more than one concept in mind. Refocus your painting on just one of the ideas.
Edition 2.0

Message

The concept of your painting may be to communicate a social, political, or religious message.

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2008 Barry John Raybould

Design & Composition

Unit One Cautions It is best to do this thinking before you start to paint. Once

TYPES OF CONCEPT (CONTINUED)

Subject matter

What subjects should an artist paint? A good guideline is that it should be a subject that the artist feels some emotion about. If the artist has no feeling about the subject then you can be sure the painting will also have no feeling. I believe the man who will go down to posterity is the man who paints his own time and the scenes of every-day life around him. Childe Hassam, 1892
My choice

you start painting you should be painting more intuitively without thinking too much. If you do not do the thinking in advance and have no plan, you are likely to head off in the wrong direction and get nowhere.
Do not get carried away by the focus at the expense of the

aesthetic properties of your painting. Art should be independent of claptrap should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye and ear, without confounding this with conditions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like. All these can no concern with art... Beware of becoming a painter who only has one concept and repeats the same painting over and over again - usually the painting that people seem to like to buy. Emile Gruppe once said he knew a painter who was the rage of New York City. Everyone wanted one of his landscapes and so he turned out ten at a time. He made a lot of money, but today his pictures are worth one tenth of what his collectors paid for them. Just because everyone wants it does not necessarily mean it is art!

All of these concepts are valid. My preference is to choose emotional, aesthetic, and to some extent descriptive concepts. This is because I think these concepts are more suited to painting and because my personal philosophy is to use my art to open peoples minds to the beauty around them,. Messages, narrative, and complex ideas I prefer to leave up to other artists and art forms that I believe are more suited to their expression.

Edition 2.0

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2008 Barry John Raybould