To paint a surreal painting we'd best define what a surreal painting is and lay out some very basic ideas about surrealism. Surrealism and Surrealist works feature the elements that surprise and cause an unexpected juxtaposition. The images are often dreamlike and can be seen as an almost visual joke. So how could we come up with surrealist ideas?
- 1. Take two or three random everyday things and try and bring them together in an image.
- 2. We could try and remember a dream and attempt to paint that.
- 3. We could look for connections in things that at first glance have no connections, and combine them in an image.
- 4 We can do something unexpected, and strange.
Most Surrealism, tends toward a realistic painting style, but this isn't essentual. We could use any style and make it surreal. So any painting or even photographic skill you have can be turned to surrealism. The key would be to make the image a visual surprise, something unexpected.
René Magritte painted a man in a bowler hat facing us, but infront of his face is an apple. This is unexpected, as traditionally a painting of a person will not include an apple in front of the face. The painting is called "son of man" and the apple we therefore understand to represent the apple of Adam. Therefore two seeming obscure ideas are combined unexpectedly to create an image with a further meaning. To paint your own surrealist piece you will need to look for unexpected connections, think in unusual ways and explore the strange world of your dreams. To help you think in a surrealist manner, it may be useful to read, or re-read Alice in wonderland, and Alice though the looking glass by Lewis Carroll . These books contain many surreal ideas, and in some way go to teach you to think in a surreal dream like way. oh and no writing about surrealism would be complete with out mentioning Salvador Dali, so I won't