Another choice which an artist has, when setting to work, is the use of more or less detail. I have chosen portraits to illustrate the extremes.
This (portion of a) portrait by Edouard Manet employs little detail; the eye on the left is a mere marking. But the simply and boldly painted figure strikes the viewer from a distance and conveys energy and resoluteness as well as the likeness of an important statesman.
This self portrait by Hans Holbein is equally effective even though the whole surface is carefully worked over and rendered in sharp focus. The finely detailed information provided draws the viewer in for a closer look.
Here we have a cosmopolitan man-about-town painted by Amadeo Modigliani in a spare style, with only the essentials included. We immediately feel that we've got this guy's number.
This (portion of a) portrait by Edouard Manet employs little detail; the eye on the left is a mere marking. But the simply and boldly painted figure strikes the viewer from a distance and conveys energy and resoluteness as well as the likeness of an important statesman.
This self portrait by Hans Holbein is equally effective even though the whole surface is carefully worked over and rendered in sharp focus. The finely detailed information provided draws the viewer in for a closer look.
What a contrast is this character painted by James Wyeth. Little is left out, including scores of individual whiskers. But we've got this guy's number, too, right away.
The last pair represent even greater extremes. The woman painted by Milton Avery is almost reduced to an abstract pattern, and the lovely, harmonious colors are relied upon to tell us about her.
We get almost more than we want to know about this laboriously rendered man by Ivan Albright.
The conclusion is not that anything goes, as far as detail and the lack of it, but that anything CAN go.
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