Weekly Theme: Exaggeration

 

"Nothing wrong with a little exaggeration" Sketch by Pat Gaignat

Suggested by Marianne Milzoff, this week's theme is EXAGGERATION!

Cubism, surrealism, hyperrealism, impressionism, expressionism, virtually all movements in art are rooted in distinct forms of exaggeration.  All art forms are a type of exaggeration. Exaggeration is the representation of something as more extreme or dramatic than it really is.  It is the opposite of minimization.

Here is your opportunity to be bold.  Select your subject and play with size, scale, proportion, color, line.  Create extra long lines, shapes that are distorted or larger than reality, color enhanced, darks really dark!  One eye much larger than the other or hair falling to the ankle.  Try your hand at caricatures.  It's your choice.   Pour your emotion and imagination into this theme, have fun and remember to label posts to social media as NUS (not an urban sketch) if applicable.

Example from Veronica Lawlor's book One Watercolor a Day

Sketches by Eileen MacAvery Kane

For further information and more inspiration:

Exaggeration & Distortion: What Writers Can Learn From Visual Artists
The purpose of art is not to depict reality—it is to transform reality into something more interesting and meaningful. And the only way to do this is to distort, exaggerate, or in some way embellish what is there.

"The painter Alice Neel is known for her use of exaggerated line. She employs it very specifically to draw your eye and make you feel. Picasso chose to exaggerate by flattening perspective and quite literally cubing the human form. Cubism, surrealism, hyperrealism, impressionism, expressionism, virtually all movements in art are rooted in distinct forms of exaggeration. All art forms are a type of exaggeration."
https://blog.pshares.org/exaggeration-distortion-what-writers-can-learn-from-visual-artists/

Exaggeration Is A Form of Simplification by David Dunlop
V.S. Ramachandran observed that the arts use feature exaggerations to attract attention. Our attention is finely tuned to nuanced exaggerations of a particular feature. https://www.paintingclass.net/exaggeration-form-simplification/

Exaggerating colour within painting / Richard Wade's art blog
Within this blog entry I am interested in the fashion in which artists have exaggerated colour as a painterly device and have considered the impact this makes on their paintings. http://richiewade81.blogspot.com/2014/06/exaggerating-colour-within-painting.html

Exaggeration Postcards (aka Tall Tale Post Cards) 
Years before Photoshop existed, innovative photographers/artists exaggerated the truth a bit - Exaggeration Postcards (aka Tall Tale postcards). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh8EXp3m_Co

Sketch by Jin Kim