Lesson from Renoir
When it comes to painting, edges can be the difference between your painting looking amateurish and professional. They control how forms emerge, recede, or dissolve into the atmosphere. In this short lesson, I look at a Renoir painting of a young dancer at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and use it to demonstrate how he handled the painting of edges so you can use the information in your own work. In the short video that I made for you, I use the painting of a master to explain the concept. The painting is of a little girl with a frilly dance costume. Certainly a piece of material that does not call for a hard outline.
Watch the Video and My Commentary
Why Edges Matter
One of the biggest mistakes beginners make is outlining everything and then “filling in” color like a coloring book. This leads to hard, rigid outlines that don’t exist in nature. Many paintings of art students look like colored in drawings instead of a painting. Many times they first draw the outlines of the painting using pencil and then simply try to fill it all in in one layer. Renoir didn’t do this — which is why in this painting you won’t find a single harsh line. Instead, edges are soft, feathery, and alive.
Lessons from Renoir’s Dancer
- No hard outlines
Renoir may have sketched guidelines to place forms, but he didn’t stick to them. Instead, paint freely overlaps those lines, letting color and form interact. Lines are not meant to be simply filled in. They are a guide as to where you will place color with a brush, not a pencil. - Feathered transitions
Look closely at the dancer’s dress: the edges aren’t drawn in — they dissolve softly into the background. This makes the fabric feel light and natural. It’s hard to tell where the dancer’s dress ends and the background begins. It’s how a person’s eye really works in real life when movement is involved. - Flexibility in drawing
Even where you can see a faint line (like along the leg), Renoir doesn’t treat it as law. He paints right over it, keeping the painting fresh rather than rigid. - Hair and detail
Zooming in on the dancer’s hair shows the same approach — edges are broken, textured, and painterly, never flat or stiff.
How to Apply This in Your Own Work
- Start with loose guidelines if you need them, but don’t cling to them.
- Avoid outlining forms before filling them in — think of edges as places where one color meets another.
- Use soft transitions where you want atmosphere, and reserve harder edges for areas of focus.
- Look at how the old masters handled edges: their softness is often what makes the painting feel alive.
Closing Thoughts
Painting edges is less about “drawing lines” and more about letting forms breathe. Renoir shows us that a painting doesn’t need outlines to hold together — in fact, it comes alive when edges dissolve and merge naturally.
If a lesson like this is making something “click” for you…if you’re nodding and thinking “that makes sense”, I recommend checking out my online art school.