What is a non-motif?
That is what I phone a scene from our daily environment that is acquainted but not often interpreted by artists. I wrote an report about non-motifs in the February / March challenge (#149) of Worldwide Artist Magazine.
Contrary to a picturesque motif, a non-motif is unconventional, unforeseen, but also commonplace and recognizable. If you try out googling the time period “plein-air painting” you most likely will not locate a solitary automobile or quick-food stuff cafe or utility pole, despite the actuality that those issues are all close to us. Why not? Is it for the reason that they are intrinsically unappealing or simply because we haven’t but found the magnificence in them?
Paintings can provide to awaken us to the thriller of the globe we really inhabit, such as parking loads, grocery store interiors, gasoline stations or back alleys. They have a bizarre luminous energy above my creativity. When I start to paint them, I experience as nevertheless I have established foot on an unexplored continent.
Recommendations for Succeeding with Non-Motifs
1. Get started out with an strategy of the light, shade or compositional effects you want to accomplish, and plug the kinds into that idea. For instance, you may want to do a limited cropping on a colourful indicator or you might want a heat, backlit scene with edge lights.
2. Use a viewfinder, a mirror or a digicam to give you a clean eye on the scene. It’s usually really hard to recognize great topics, even when you are wanting straight at them.
3. Do a thumbnail sketch in pencil or paint to visualize what decisions you may well need to make.
4. Check out to key into an emotional response that you have about a area, one thing you like or despise about it, a juxtaposition that appears to be weird or somewhere that you appreciated hanging out as a little one.
5. Stay local. Paint the topic at diverse moments of day, and if you can, unique seasons of the 12 months.
6. If you’re traveling, paint an ordinary avenue, not the Instagram location.
