A group I'm in shares art, education, and life with each other. One of my friends in that group mentioned the last time I shared a picture that I have a great eye for art, which made me start pondering what attracts my attention and makes me like a picture.

Today, I shared this picture, and wrote about my ponderings:

It's not about beauty. With this one, it was easy. I caught my breath as soon as I saw it and knew I had to share it.

Pondering this made me think of something I read yesterday. The creator of the Bruce Lee ping pong ad, Polly Chu, was being interviewed, and this comment jumped out at me:

"Effective viral relies on an idea that is ‘very’ – very amazing, very funny, very disgusting, or very rude etc. Only when people find it interesting enough, they will spend time with it and share it to others. That makes it ‘viral’."

Rude or disgusting doesn't really do it for me, but "Very" is a great word to describe art when it really affects you, I think. I'm not even sure it needs any other word to follow it, because sometimes you can't really identify anything beyond the fact that it is Very.

the je ne sais quoi, I feel like it's one of those things that's impossible to define, but you know it when you see it. makes sense!

Interesting. I found both of the images you shared here appealing, albeit in different ways. The painterly effects in both are very nice, as well.

I like the first one a lot. In all three I see movement, a sense of the subject and the background melding a bit so it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. The tones in the first one are amazing and warm. The second is beautiful texturally and also has the subject/background synchronicity, but it feels colder and more distant to me.

I just saw №. 3 and it doesn’t move me like the others.

The water is beautiful in the third one, and it makes me feel the boat is a bit lost in the water, but it doesn't have much in common (to my eye) with the first two.

I find this subject particularly interesting because I have, on my Tumblr feed, a ‘classic artworks’ blog (more or less) and lately they’ve been posting a lot of paintings that I find really beautiful. Most have been of female subjects, but I don’t think gender has anything to do with it beyond that men in the time periods represented

The third one reminds me of The Open Boat short story.

more or less all looked either like great puffy fuzzy blobs or posturing military nuts.

I suppose that in a way it just comes down to some pieces speaking to me, beyond limits of genre or medium.

I love the grey hairs in the first one. It turns it into a story instead of just another painting of a woman.

I read someplace recently, and if I see the quote again, I'll post it: artists of all kinds, poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, all have good taste, and are rarely satisfied with what they create, so they keep working and working until they begin to match the reality with the image in their heads.

I loved that. I'll have to seek it out.

Practice makes (nearly) perfect.

The first one caught my eye because it's dynamic, and the third was alright, but the second one held my attention and elicited the most visceral reaction. It's unsettling as I can't tell if the woman is emerging or being consumed. Then I noticed the dark smear on the right is a landscape and now I see a story here but can't tell what it is and I'm curious.

uschi : I've seen something like that recently as well, except it was more of an encouragement to those just starting out. It said not to be discouraged because skills need time to develop even if the concept is already there. I liked that

Yes, that's exactly it. There's a lot in it. I'll see if I can find it.

uschi : it’s the taste gap. I have shared it a bunch of times. I believe it is a talk/article by Ira Glass

The Taste Gap: Ira Glass on the Secret of Creative S...

THE GAP by Ira Glass

THAT'S IT!