What am I missing in my work?

What am I missing in my work? Every art student confronts this question. You are doing some paintings. People are praising your work. But you know you are missing some thing in your work. You don't know what it is. You don't know why you are not able to do it properly. Not only art students, even artists face this problem. That's why many artists' work does not look convincing. They also face the same question. ' What am I missing in my work?

Landscape  Artist: Magunta Dayakar

And they will get few more questions....Why some artists' work is beautiful? Why history is calling them ' Great Masters? ' What did they do to make them beautiful? Many Questions. No answers.
Again you will ask the same question.' What am I missing? '
To know what you are missing, to know what you are not understanding, to know what you have to learn to become an artist … the answer lies with ' Language of Art '

What is language of art?
Usually students learn painting in the following approach. They choose a medium like oil, acrylics, water color or some other. Then they choose the subjects to work with in that medium. In that process they struggle with medium to control it. That's why we hear about water color specialists, acrylic specialists and oil color specialists. With years of practice they may become good at using the said medium but at the same time they would be limited to doing certain subjects which they feel comfortable to work with in their specialised medium. This is the biggest obstacle for their growth.

But there is an another approach. That is the time tested approach since renaissance period. In this approach, medium is not important. The important thing is structuring a painting. The medium and subject of the painting can be anything. Water color, Oil color, Acrylic or any other medium and in the same way ... landscape, figurative, portrait, still life or any other subject whichever it may be, it doesn't matter in this approach. In this approach, student struggles to understand the basic underlying principles of painting structure. Once he understand those principles, his painting will achieve beauty whatever the subject matter or medium. He will be comfortable working with any medium or subject. For the student to transform into a good artist, he needs to be trained in the principles of painting structure.

The Key principles of painting structure are Sketch, Value, Color and Composition. You call it … Language of Art.

Is it must to learn language of art to be an artist?
If you are not a native of English, if you want to speak and write in that language what you have to do? Along with lot of reading and speaking one must learn grammar. Grammar will help you to understand the structure of sentence. Language of art also like that. It's alike a grammar to art. If you want to be truly professional artist you must learn it.