Artists and craftsmen

The terms "artist" and "craftsman" describe different types of people. In reality, however, there often is an overlap between the two. It's very rare that there is an artist who possesses zero craftsmanship and vice-versa. To put it in different words: A painting from the renaissance era does not only have artistic qualities, but it also displays the great skill and craftsmanship of the artist.

When you look at modern art or even expressionism, the craftsmanship of the artist sometimes is not as present as in those of the renaissance era. That does not take away from it being great art, but it's certainly different. Just picture The Scream and the Mona Lisa next to each other and this becomes evident.

I would argue that craftsmanship can be learned to a high degree, whereas artistic skill is much more talent driven - either you have it, or you don't.

Why does that matter in the context of miniature painting? If you view a painted mini with this distinction in mind, you can often tell if the painter has an artistic background or a craftsmanship background. As mentioned, there always is overlap, but it is distinguishable.

Here are a two examples to illustrate the concept:

This is the work of an artist (Instagram): There are a lot of colours that one would not associate naturally with the surface they are on. The shadows and lights on the tree stump are green, red and even white, for example. The artist knows how to arrange these colours to make it look good and to imply a light source without having to think much about it. Someone without artistic talent would not even think of using these colours to paint a tree stump, he would only be using variations of brown.
If you click on the image to enlarge it, you will see that the painted lines are sometimes not crisp, the the transitions not super smooth. Why? Because the the focus of this painter is on the artistic side and super crisp lines as well as super smooth transitions are something he does not value as much as someone having a craftsmanship background. This means that artistic pieces often look superb when viewed from a distance and lose a bit of their magic the closer one gets.

This, on the other hand, is a model painted by someone with a focus on the craftsmanship side (Instagram): All lines are incredibly crisp, the tartan being the perfect embodiment of this. The highlights are rather flat and straightforward when compared to the first example, but they are very smooth. Another perfect example are the horns at the side of the helmet: The crevices are all painted manually, one by one, in the same way. This might look artifical to some people, but for someone with the craftsmanship perspective it's the only way to go about this.
Remember I mentioned that artistic pieces look best when viewed from a bit of a distance? The opposite is true for models painted by a craftsman. The crispness of the paintjob will look best when viewed close up and at that distance, the rather flat highlights will look just right.

So, what's the point of this concept?

a) Ideally, a painter combines both approaches. And I tend to think that the very best works always combine both to a very high degree. However, ...

b) ... you can approach painting purely from a craftsmanship angle and achieve stunning results. You do not need artistic talent. That, in turn, means knowing the right tricks, anybody can learn miniature painting. To provide a repository of such tricks and techniques is a goal of this blog.