Loose Versus Tight!

Loose or tight? Neither is right! When artists talk about drawing or painting you often hear the expression loose or tight; expressive or realistic, basically. Loose drawing is free, expressive mark-making where capturing the essence or mood of your subject is the priority, style wise the Impressionists are a good example of loose drawing or painting. 

Tight drawing or painting (like the garlic bulb above) is to be found in Hyperrealism, Dutch Still lifes from the 17th C, botanical illustrations and medical tomes. Loose or tight? It depends on your artistic taste, or as an artist your personal style and where you are on your artistic journey because that is what being an artist is about, travelling but never arriving. As an artist you are never ''complete''. 

Soooo, who drew the garlic at the top of my post, well it was me! And the loose garlic bulbs here, yep they’re mine too. I just wanted to illustrate that because someone sketches loosely it doesn’t mean that they can’t do detailed ''tight'' drawings. 

Often people look at paintings by Picasso, shake their heads and say ''I could do that!'', what they often don’t realise that at the beginning of an artist’s  journey their work is completely different. Picasso is a great case in point, take a look at his ''First Communion'' or ''Science and Charity'', these are miles away from Guernica both in subject and in style; stations of an artistic journey. Monet, Rothko and Gerhard Richter are all great examples of artists travelling, evolving, reflecting and reinventing themselves, if not the artistic wheel. 

The detailed garlic, tight and closely observed felt like a step backwards for me, that is how I drew when I went to art school. There I was taught that loose, expressive mark-making was the way to go, capturing the essence of my subject and putting it down on paper with economy of line ...... and now! Similar principle except I love squiggly bits, so sometimes maybe not so economical of line. 

Just because I choose to work like this doesn’t mean I can’t draw tighter, it means that the art train has stopped at a different station and who knows where the next destination will be!