Instant Improvement: Critique and Correction Workshop

A group I belong to, Oregon Botanical Artists, was fortunate to have the skilled artist and gracious teacher, Heeyoung Kim, for a 3-day workshop.  If you are not familiar with her work, she paints gorgeously delicate depictions of plants native to the increasingly rare prairies of Illinois, where she lives.  She teaches at the Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods in Illinois and at the ASBA annual conferences.  The topic for the first day’s session on Friday was Instant Improvement: Critique and Correction.

Heeyoung Kim in our Critique and Correction Session

For this session, each participant was asked to bring a finished or nearly finished painting and an open mind for critique, then after the critique we would have time in class to work on our paintings. She gave the option of a private critique session with those that preferred it.  We were all a bit nervous about the critique part, but Heeyoung put us at our ease right away with her gentle, encouraging teaching style.  We all decided to share our work and critique openly with the class so we could learn together.

We all gathered around to learn

The work I brought in for critique was a mixed study I painted in the autumn of 2012 while a student in the SBA diploma course.  It happens to be the one that I use as a background for my website!  Although I think the painting works with the structure of my site as a background, as a stand alone piece of art there was something missing and I wasn’t quite sure what it was.  During the course we had tight deadlines, and even though I had to send this one in as is, I had never felt it was quite finished.   I had some ideas about how to improve it, but was eager to hear Heeyoung’s suggestions.

I noted most of her comments on the image below so you can ‘look over my shoulder’ and listen in as if you were part of the class:

My student painting of Tricyrtis ‘Purple Beauty’, Anemone ‘September Charm’, Chasmanthium ‘River Mist’ and Ceratostigma plumbaginoides and notes on its critique.

Everything she had to say resonated with me, and it opened my eyes to elements of good composition to keep in mind for my future paintings.  I haven’t decided if I will go back and ‘finish’ this painting or not because I have so many new works that I am excited about painting, but the exercise was very beneficial.

Heeyoung was very encouraging to each artist as she went around the room.  She first discussed the strong points of a painting, then moved on to where we could improve.  I was surprised that most of the suggestions related to composition, rather than painting technique.  Similar themes came up often, like recognizing or creating a focal point, then thinking about how to lighten, darken or adding to surrounding areas to emphasize it.  She used the golden triangle and proportions, and the Fibonacci spiral to explain elements of strong composition.

A Fibonacci spiral, which is based on the sequence of numbers that form the basis of many forms in nature. The rectangular shapes correspond to golden proportions.

I have long been fascinated with the golden proportions and have used them in my landscape design projects as well as in my painting compositions but the discussions opened up new possibilities of applying the principles for me.  She recommends using them to solve specific compositional dilemma’s rather than slavishly basing every painting on them from the start.  Here is an interesting video that explains the golden or divine proportions, although it just scratches the surface of its presence in nature, history, architecture and art.

As a garden designer, I belonged to a small critique group of talented and trusted colleagues, and found their input invaluable for growth in my field.  Once again, critique has spurred on my growth as an artist.  As Heeyoung pointed out, critique is risky and should be done very carefully and sensitively in the right setting, but if received with an open mind, it can bring instant improvement!

My next post will be about the two-day workshop that followed this critique and improve session.