How much Detail to add

A fellow blogger mentioned to me that she tends to put a lot of detail into a painting where it isn't needed.  That gave me this blog post, as I know exactly what she means and thought I would give you my spin on how I deal with this issue.

Firstly, and most important before getting into the details of a scene, is where you begin with a painting - having the FOCAL POINT.  The place that the eye goes to when you first look at a scene.   But, how do you know what that is.

Say for example you are looking at this beach scene, either in person or using a photo:

I'm reckoning that you looked at the First two beach hunts on the left,

then your eye travelled to the distance, across the water and back to the foreground.

Then comes the matter that my blogger friend mentioned saying she tends to Add too much detail.  We are all guilty of this, but try to KEEP IT SIMPLE.      SEND THE EYE AROUND THE SCENE (as with the above photo).  

Example 1

   A quick example of the photo reference,

but I'm sure you get my point.

This is a very Basic scene - you could add some people:

 Example 2

You see I have also added some birds plus two people.

 HOWEVER

If I added more.....

Example 3

 WAY TOO BUSY

The Boat is too distracting 

The large seagull too distracting

The person with the dog too distracting

SO

KEEP 

IT

SIMPLE

 ~ Happy Painting everyone ~