Aside from actually painting, a solo visit to a gallery is probably one my favourite pastimes. I’m pretty sure I even have a special ‘museum walk’ (no idea why).
I’ve been lucky enough to go to a lot of the world’s best galleries. Closer to home I tend to visit the London galleries after work. Most run late nights one Friday a month, when they stay open until about 10pm. For me, these are the best times to visit as you’ll pretty much get the place to yourself once it gets to 8pm, and you can get up close and personal to the paintings (well, as far as the serious looking security guard sat in the corner will allow you to).
Everyone looks for different things in a painting; for some it’s whether they like it (a pretty valid reason in my opinion) through to the more technical aspects of the painting. Whilst I can’t profess to being an expert (there are a lot of people who are and have also written on this subject) I can tell you a bit about some of the things an artist or art lover might be looking at when they visit a gallery.
PS it’s pretty tricky getting permission to show famous masterpieces on my little site, so just google it alongside the blog and you’ll see what I’m talking about!
Topics I’ll cover in future posts include:
Composition
Technique
Messaging
Lighting
Context
If you’re interested in reading more, see my blog How to Look at a Painting - Composition.