{"id":12305,"date":"2012-09-05T12:43:52","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T18:43:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=12305"},"modified":"2025-12-28T15:23:59","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T22:23:59","slug":"critiquing-your-own-paintings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/critiquing-your-own-paintings\/","title":{"rendered":"Critiquing Your Own Paintings"},"content":{"rendered":"
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John Hughes<\/p><\/div>\n

Critiques are interesting animals; some are big and hairy while others can seem small and cuddly. Like judging in an art competition, they are all dependent on the artistic paradigm of the person doing the critique. Sometimes the best critiques are the simplest ones, like when my wife Teresa walks into my studio and says, \u201cI love it!\u201d as opposed to, \u201cIt\u2019s nice.\u201d I can usually tell right then and there the painting is going to be snapped up right away, rather than sitting on a gallery wall for a while.<\/p>\n

There are two basic categories of critiques. A simple expression of how eye-catching a piece is, like Teresa\u2019s critique above, is a good indication of a piece\u2019s salability. I call these critiques type B. Type A critiques are more complicated. They are the ones dealing with the aesthetic merits of a painting. For years I wondered what made one painting seem so \u201cright\u201d while other paintings just didn\u2019t have that same magic. Type B critiques, which looked at the whole, were not much help and I would often frustrate Teresa and myself by pressing the issue for more information on what went wrong. (By the way, Teresa is also good at type A critiques, but it was a skill that took years to develop, for both of us – nowadays she can pretty much tell me not only which paintings won\u2019t be hanging around too long, but also give me valuable insight when something is not working in a painting. How good is that!)<\/p>\n

My basic problem back in the early days of my work was to find a way to break down the painting process into its component parts and be able to assess a work artistically based on how all the areas come together. I used to devour \u201chow to books,\u201d attend demos and workshops, gallery hop, museum hop, attend critique groups, enter shows and hang around with seasoned artists in my area in an attempt to gain understanding. In my studies, I found that artists all had their pet systems, some quite elaborate, to explain the nuts and bolts of a good work of art. The job was to find a way to approach all this information and distill it down into a format that I could relate to. And one I could use on my own. What I found was that even though everyone had their own way of approaching this complex subject, there were basic fundamental principles that ran through each. The 5+1 system of self-critique is what I finally came up with.<\/p>\n

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John Huges analizes a small study in preparation for a larger painting<\/p><\/div>\n

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Without having a starting place, direction, and a logical concluding point, it is a daunting task to pinpoint what is and what is not working in a painting. Something like the 5+1 system gives you a structure to do just that. The information presented here is nothing new; I did not invent it by any means. The 5+1 system is only one artist\u2019s approach to understanding knowledge that has been around since the beginning. It comes down to five basic areas:<\/p>\n

1: Drawing
\n2: Color
\n3:Value
\n4: Edges
\n5: Brushwork, or Texture.<\/p>\n

The Plus 1 refers to Drama. More on that later.<\/p>\n

The logical place to begin is where a painting begins: Drawing. The category of Drawing encompasses line, placement, size, direction, composition and design. In other words it\u2019s a category for all of those things related to laying out the basic design of the painting. For some artists this may be quite extensive and for others the drawing might reside mostly in the mind. Either way, at this stage in the critique you are asking yourself, \u201cAre there any problems with the drawing?\u201d Questions like \u2013 Are the proportions right? Does the linear movement of the painting flow? Are there annoying parallel lines? Is there a certain amount of oppositional lines for balance? Is there variety in my spacing? Is there variety in size and shapes of objects? Is there a certain amount of continuity of shapes to hold the painting together? — are a good place to start.<\/p>\n

Color \u2013 Questions in this grouping might include: Is the color beautiful in the painting? Do I have a balance between neutrals and more saturated colors? Do my colors clash? Do they seem real? Do they portray the mood I am after? Do my colors transition into other colors effectively? Again, not all the questions that could be asked. There are many possibilities.<\/p>\n

Value \u2013 Is my painting too light or too dark? Do the values seem real? Are they effective? Have I fractured any of my masses by having too many value jumps? Is there a simple value structure to the painting? Are my values representative of the way light behaves? Etc. Etc.<\/p>\n

Edges- Are the edges in my painting too hard, too soft? Are my edges juicy? Do they transition well? Do they depict the way light behaves? Are they interesting? On and on . . .<\/p>\n