Anatomy of a Painting

Most paintings have a background, a foreground, and often, though not always, a middle ground. The middle ground helps us traverse through the painting, stitching the foreground and background together with a smooth transition.

When we begin to paint, we’re often so captivated by the foreground, the subject matter of our painting, that we neglect the background.

The foreground is where the focal point “lives.” That’s where we often spend the majority of our time sketching and painting.

Sometimes we’re so excited to start painting that we forget to include the background in our planning. While a background isn’t absolutely necessary, especially in illustrations, it does help complete a painting.

Here you see the drawing created first, with the under painting showing through.

The background supports the foreground. It’s the backdrop upon with the focal point appears. It can provide clues as to where the subject of the painting lives or, in the case of a subject with eyes and a face, how it feels, its emotional makeup.

We want our paintings to feel complete and whole unto themselves. Our options for reaching our goal are many. Each painting is different, so each painting could have dozens of different backgrounds. Choices must be made.

Notice the Background fade as the flower comes into focus. The colors beneath the flower mix with the red petals to create various shades of red.

“By Torch Light” began with a sketch of the flower. I then chose to create a very light wash as an underpainting on top of the sketch.

Once the wash dried, I focused all my attention on the flower itself until it was painted to my satisfaction.

Buds once drawn on the paper were erased by this point, the background is still quite light.

With the flower finished, the background called out for more attention. First I got the paper wet, being careful to not get the flower wet, and then added more intense colors to the background.

This was scary! I wasn’t sure how well it would work.

The background is being brought up to speed with the intensity of the foreground flower.

The Ginger pleased me and there was the possibility that I’d mess it up.

Unless I did something to bring the foreground together with the background, it was destined to be “just a piece of paper” with paint on it — not a finished painting.

With yet another wash of color to the background and more “love” on the stem, the Background and Foreground of “By Torch Light” are now of equal intensity.