The Bates College Musuem of Art presents
THE THOUSAND WORDS PROJECT
| Tools of the Trade: Words and Brushstrokes Everyone has heard the old adage that “a painting is worth a thousand words.” What does this really mean, and how can it be useful to those interested in learning more about art? To answer this question, we must examine other questions. First, what is the job of a painting? Many would include the task of communication in their answer. How do we communicate in most situations? We all agree that most of the time, people communicate with words—whether spoken or written. Why then, is a picture worth a thousand words? Words are in some ways symbolic--just like pictures can be. The word for a thing is not the thing itself. For instance “paintbrush” communicates the idea of a paintbrush, but is not the paintbrush itself. Similarly, a picture of a paintbrush might just be smears of paint creating an illusion of a paintbrush. But it is not a real tool that one can pick up and use. So pictures and words are very similar, in that they communicate ideas about the world around us. How do artists use their brushes? They apply blobs or smears of paint that are brushstrokes. Paintings are typically made with thousands of brushstrokes. You can clearly see individual brushstrokes in this painting of the Maine woods by Neil Welliver: When we look at this painting, we see the finished product that the artist has given us. But in the Thousand Words Project, we are interested just as much in how the pictures were made. To investigate this, here is an exercise: Write down things you can see in the picture, like this: I see: If you read this list aloud, you don’t really get a sense of the painting. If you read this list aloud, you don’t really get a sense of the painting. But that isn’t surprising. If we make the comparison that each word is like a brushstroke, we have only a few strokes of paint compared to the thousands in Welliver’s painting. So if we looked at just one brushstroke in his painting, it would look like this : What’s that a picture of? Who knows!? There is
not enough information to give us a complete picture—just like
one word is not enough to convey a complete idea about the painting.
So, like the artist did, let’s add brushstrokes—or in
our case words to our list. Add one describing word to each word on
the list. Read through it again. Does it give you a sense of the painting
yet? Probably not. Keep adding words so that each original word becomes
part of an individual sentence.
or, if you’ve added lots of words (which, remember, are like brushstrokes) you might have an even more complete image of the stream:
After you have created sentences out of every word from your initial list you will probably notice that you jump around frequently, with some sentences that are about the same thing appearing in different places on your page. Painters can’t really do that. All of the paint about the pool of water at the lower left has to be located where the pool is, because the pool is the main idea behind all of those brushstrokes. How does a writer organize sentences into main ideas? Take a moment to group your sentences so that all of the sentences about each thing are together. You will probably have several different groups—or main ideas. These will become paragraphs. Paragraphs almost always need more than one sentence to do their job thoroughly, just like most subjects in a painting can’t be made with just a couple of brushstrokes. If necessary, add a few sentences to your main ideas to make a more complete paragraph. There are probably a few details that have been missed.
Did you write down the shape of the painting? Is it a vertical composition,
or a horizontal one? (Neither! It is square.) Not all artists sign
and date their pictures on the front, but many do. Can you see a signature?
Where is it? |
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