This latest installment of my Jonric's Journal column offers some of my thoughts on this fascinating personal topic. On one fundamental albeit somewhat simplified level, all art from museum-quality paintings by the great masters to game graphics to children's stick figures, is involves two critical elements, feelings and technique. In a seeming paradox, art is more about what you feel than what you see. Masters like Michaelangelo, Rembrandt, Renoir, Picasso and other artists whose names are known far beyond the art world achieved this level of prominence not simply because of their technical abilities, but because of their ability to apply those skills in a manner that consistently evoked emotional responses from viewers. Of note in this regard is that quite a bit of the world's most highly regarded works of art bring forth anger, pity, sadness, despair, misery and other negative or unpleasant feelings.
Technique is the other important factor.
The use of composition, color, contrast et al can greatly enhance or detract from the artist's ability to convey feeling. In the simplest sense, strong technique allows an artist to create the image that is in his or her mind, the image he or she actually wants to create. This is an area that is not as easy to understand. If you don't like an image, it is bad for you in the personal, emotional sense. However, it may still be good or even outstanding from a technical point of view, and someone else who experiences a different emotion when viewing the same image may well consider it superior.