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    An Artist's Way Of Seeing
    An Artist's Way Of Seeing
    An Artist's Way Of Seeing
    Ebook95 pages1 hour

    An Artist's Way Of Seeing

    By Mary Whyte

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    About this ebook

    Artist Mary Whyte has learned many lessons over the years--lessons about art and, perhaps more important to her, lessons about life.

    In this book, she uses specific illustrations from her training, her teaching, her travels and her mentors to show the reader how to see and how to appreciate the artist's experience. Referring to numerous color and black and white examples, she explains what her intentions and feelings were during the composition and completion of many of her favorite works. The techniques of watercolor painting can be learned. Skill, according to Mary, is never enough. One must learn to feel as well as to see in order to become a complete artist and a complete person. Her paintings are beautiful; so is her soul.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGibbs Smith
    Release dateSep 16, 2005
    ISBN9781423622116
    An Artist's Way Of Seeing
    Author

    Mary Whyte

    Mary Whyte is a graduate of The Tyler School of Art and is a nationally known watercolor artist, author, and teacher. She is a resident of Johns Island, South Carolina, where she finds many of her subjects among the Gullah people--descendants of the slave culture of the barrier islands of coastal Carolina. Her works have been exhibited at and collected by many art galleries and museums. She is the author of Alfreda's World and the illustrator of a number of children's books.

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    • 5/5
      Facinating. Very poetic. A style of writing I haven't experienced in quite some time.

    Book preview

    An Artist's Way Of Seeing - Mary Whyte

    An Artist’s Way of Seeing

    Mary Whyte

    An Artist’s Way of Seeing

    Digital Edition v1.0

    All contents © 2005 Mary Whyte

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except brief portions quoted for purpose of review.

    Gibbs Smith, Publisher

    PO Box 667

    Layton, UT 84041

    Orders: 1.800.835.4993

    www.gibbs-smith.com

    ISBN: 978-1-4236-2211-6

    For Cynthia

    Acknowledgments

    This book would not have come together without the enthusiasm and effective collaboration of my editors at Wyrick & Company, the writing expertise of Jane O’Boyle, and the artistic eye of Sally Heineman.

    Special thanks to Becca Ansert and Croft Lane for their dedication and patient assistance, and to friends Connie McGeorge, Sarah Myles and Carol Barnes for their encouragement and comments.

    My deepest love and gratitude go to my husband, Smith Coleman, who will forever be one of God’s greatest blessings in my life.

    Finally, I wish to thank the many students I have had the good fortune to have known over the years. You have taught me some of my most valuable lessons about painting and life.

    An Artist’s Way of Seeing

    Table of Contents

    Introduction Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet List of Works

    Introduction

    There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness.

    — Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

    I don’t believe any artist has ever truly been able to explain why we paint. Many have tried. I think artists paint simply because it feels good, like sun on the back of the neck. Making art fills us with a surprising and unexpected happiness, the same as when we hear tree frogs singing on the first warm night of spring. For artists, our work nourishes us and fills our senses. Every aspect of creating a painting is pleasurable: the feel of the brush in your hand, the smell of paint, the sound of a pencil moving across paper. Mixing color on the palette is like watching butterflies come to life.

    I once heard someone say that artists spend their entire lives painting what really amounts to nothing more than a series of self portraits. I think, in some respects, this may be true. Although we may be able to control and improve the quality of our work, the substance of what we ultimately express was embedded in our genes long ago. The sooner we come to realize and embrace this notion, the more original and engaging our creations will be.

    SUMMER SOLSTICE

    Whether we are artists or not, we all seek a life that is filled with more—more creative pauses, more colorful relationships, more meaning. Everyone wants the secret to success and happiness. In my classes, I show students that they have to identify what they are feeling in order to paint, that the quality of their production is not primarily about technique or copying. As artists, we paint from our hearts as well as our heads.

    Still, students keep asking me for tips, as if they were recipes. They want to know the exact mixture of blue and white in order to duplicate the summer sky or the veil of a shadow on a white lace cuff. When I tell them what I used in a particular place they take copious notes. A little bit of cerulean blue here, a dab of ultramarine, a tempering of burnt sienna there. I tell them that they are writing down the wrong things. Painting is not just about matching a tube of paint to the object. They should be recording what the summer sky feels like, how it arches over us like a magnificent Chinese porcelain bowl, the figures of flying birds painted against its curved sides. Or with a cuff of lace, what really matters is how it momentarily gathers and falls around the sitter’s delicate pale wrist, its lithe stillness matching hers. And that, in a moment, the sitter and her lace cuff will rise from the chair and, like a fleeting cloud, disappear.

    Truly learning to paint then becomes, in large part, a matter of learning how to see. This means we must become masters at observing and feeling the world around us before we

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