Stop Making Making Art Hard
Making art is hard. In fact, it may be the hardest thing you ever try to do in life. Aperture, shading, chord progressions; these are just some of the hundreds of rules and concepts you have to memorize before you can make art. Even if you follow countless tutorials or courses you still might not understand what you need to do to create what’s in your head.
With all of this being the case, it’s no wonder that people say making art is hard. But it doesn’t have to be this difficult.
Simple But Effective
It’s a well-known fact that, over the years, many artworks has been appreciated for their immense detail and fine craftsmanship. Churches painstakingly decorated with paint make for popular tourist destinations. Even symphonies composed hundreds of years ago continue to be played and studied to this day. Despite this fascination with complexity, however, there are a number of artists and artworks throughout history that are famous either because of or despite their simplicity.
If you’re a fan of paintings, or especially if you’re not, then there’s a good chance you’ve seen Edvard Munch’s The Scream, a painting so famous its been featured in countless films and shows.
At first glance, it may seem odd for a painting like this to be so famous. The surreal linework and composition seem so out of place, and within that out-of-place-ness is a screaming man who seems even more surreal than his surroundings. It’s because of the strangeness and discomfort within the simplicity that people are so drawn to it in the first place.
The first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata is a great example of this. Even if you aren’t a fan of classical music, you’ve no doubt heard the original melody or some modernized version of it. Despite its perception as being easy to play, the fact that this piece has stood the test of time is proof that technical complexity or excessive detail in art is not always a necessity.
Fun fact, the third movement of the same sonata is another famous piece that could be considered more complicated. It’s interesting to see the contrast between simplicity and complexity in musical composition within the same piece.
Making Your Own Simple Art
So how can we embrace simplicity in our own creative processes? Depending on what kind of medium you’re using, the specific options you have are going to be different but the fundamental idea is the same: use as few of the bare essentials as you can. Not just in terms of physical materials like paint and brushes, but also foundational concepts like rules for composition, camera settings, or chords. The less tools you have to work with the more creatively you’re forced to think.
I can’t draw and I only know half the scales on the piano, so I’m going to use photography for my example.
To start, we’re going to need three things: something to photograph, some kind of light source, and a camera. I’ll be using a fork, a small flashlight, and my Canon camera. A phone camera is more than enough but I spent $2000 on my camera and I need to justify the purchase…
Composing the shot is something I struggle with the most so to make it easy I decided to just place the fork right in the centre of the frame. I like symmetry so I moved the flashlight up and down around the fork to find some kind of symmetrical effect I liked. After a bit of editing and cleaning, this is what I ended up with.
I repeated the same process for a few more shots and ended up with these.
The More You Grow
The best part about starting simple is that you can grow your toolset overtime and the path to growth is really straightforward. In my case, I decided to add a few more forks and a couple spoons but kept everything else the same: one flashlight and the same background.
I tried different arrangements and different combinations of spoons and forks, sometimes even using just the handles, and took a photo when I landed on something I liked. And that’s the important part to remember; find something you like. Obviously not everything I took ended up looking as good as I hoped in the end but art’s not a competition…unless you’re getting paid.
That does it for this post. I hope you’re at least a little more motivated to make your own art, or finish the projects you said you would get back to 10 years ago. Thanks for reading and happy new year! The year just started so make 2024 count.