Archive for November, 2009
A Whole New Take on Landscape Art
While we often think of landscapes as being a form of painting that’s firmly rooted in realism, that’s not necessarily the case. Thanks to the influence of impressionist and post impressionist painters like Vincent Van Gogh, many of today’s artists take great liberties with the landscapes they paint. The artist’s emotions on a given day might manifest themselves in the work.
More than anything, landscape paintings are meant to make the observer feel something – whether it’s a longing to visit a distant land, a tinge of nostalgia, or even a sense of wonderment. Some artists employ bold strokes of outlandish color when painting everyday nature scenes, and that originality truly increases the value of the piece.
Warm and Cool Colors
In our daily experiences, we associate red, orange and yellow with fire and heat. When we enter a room decorated in those colors, we feel warm. Likewise, we associate cold starry nights with blue. Deep water is blue. Ice has shades of blue and green. A room decorated in blues and greens makes us feel cool.
In general, a color is warmed by the addition of yellow or red and cooled by the addition of blue. In doing landscape paintings, it is necessary for the artist to be able to recognize the warm and cool colors of nature. Some days are sunny days and the landscape is composed of warm colors and cool shadows, whereas, other days are cloudy days and the landscape has a cooler feeling with warmer shadows. The artist must be able to control the warmth or coolness of the hues depending on the ultimate effect (s)he wants to create.
Intensity: The Third Dimension of Color
Intensity is the third dimension of color and refers to the strength, saturation, or purity of the color. In most cases, the color is at its greatest intensity as it comes from the tube.
To reduce the intensity of a color, white may be added to lighten it or black may be added to darken it. In both cases the purity of the color is decreased. Also notice that as the intensity is weakened, the value has changed. The intensity of a color can also be weakened by adding its complement. For example, blue can be grayed by adding orange.
Nature is full of such a variety of colors! If one is doing landscape paintings, it is very important to be able to control intensity, value, and hue, because changing one nearly always changes the other two as well.
Value: The Second Dimension of Color
The second dimension of color is value. Value is the most important dimension for any artist working in color. Errors made in hue or intensity are much less serious than errors made in value.
The value of a color refers only to the lightness or darkness of a color. If we lighten the pure color by adding white, the result is called a tint. If we darken a color by adding black, the result is called a shade. In neither case did we change the hue, only the value.
In landscape paintings, the artist must recognize value differences in the subject and properly interpret them using the colors on the palette. The dark of some landscapes is much darker than the black of the palette, whereas, the reflection of light on a metal is many times lighter than the white.
Hue: The First Dimension of Color
Hue is the name used to denote a color. Red, yellow, purple, pea-green, etc., are different hues and are found on different locations on the color wheel.
The three primary colors of pigments are red, yellow, and blue. They are pure colors and cannot be made by combining any other colors. In my mental image of the color wheel, red is at 12:00 o’clock, yellow is at 4:00 o’clock and blue is at 8:00 o’clock.
The secondary colors are mixtures. Red and yellow combine to form orange (at 2:00), yellow and blue form green (at 6:00), and blue and red form purple (at 10:00).
Colors that are adjacent on the color wheel are said to be harmonious because each contains some color of the one next to it. Colors that are opposite on the color wheel are not at all related, and are called complements. When these are mixed, they form black, but when used in the same oil painting, they make the painting pop!
Mixing Colors for Oil Paintings
In order for us to see anything, there must be light. Light from the sun contains all the colors, as demonstrated when the sun light shines through a prism and is broken into all the colors of the rainbow.
When the sun shines on a red apple, we see that the apple is red because the skin of the apple absorbs the remaining colors. Likewise, a green apple reflects the green light and absorbs the others.
Paints that we use in oil paintings are especially dense in pigments. When we mix them, we are mixing “color”. We are working with the pigments that reflect the colors we want to see (and absorbing all the rest), and combining these colors to form the other colors we want to see.
Shape, Value and Edge
If you stop to think about it for a minute, you will realize that when you look at anything, three parts are involved: shape, value, and edges. You will probably recognize the shape at once. Is it a pear, a box, or a silo (or, whatever)? The value is the color you would see if the image were reproduced in black and white. Is it inky black or almost white, or somewhere in between?
When looking at something nearby, you are probably aware of the sharp edge that exists between one shape and another. When looking at something far away, the edge between two shapes is less distinct.
In landscape paintings, what matters to the viewer is whether the distant mountains seem to be far away, and the objects in the foreground seem close. To the artist, it’s a matter of shape, value, and edge.
Landscape Paintings from Florida
It’s time for the snowbird to fly south. Having grown up in Ohio and lived a while in Illinois, I had become accustomed to winter temperatures in the -20F to +30F range. When I moved to Maryland, I loved the winters in the +20sF range. Later, I had a chance to live in Florida, where the winter temps are in the 70s and 80s. Now, that is really nice!
So I’m leaving the land of crimson, flaming orange and screaming yellow leaves which, due to a recent rain, are now almost all on the ground. My next landscape paintings will be of palm trees, live oaks, and lakes from the Land of Sunshine. However, come next spring, just like the birds, I’ll return to this beautiful land of pines, oaks, and azaleas, set up my easel, and paint ’til my heart’s content!
Landscape Paintings of Rome
The height of its glory, the Roman Empire stretched from Spain to southern Russia, from England to Egypt and included all the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. They were awestruck by the Greek influence prompting the poet Horace to note, “Conquered Greece took her rude captors captive”. Shiploads of Greek marbles and bronzes were sent to decorate Rome and when there were no more originals, the Romans made copies
The Roman forte was managerial skills, organization, law and engineering. They used concrete extensively and invented the arch, the barrel vault (an extended arch forming a cylindrical roof), and the groin vault (two barrel vaults of the same height at right angles). These enabled the Romans to build roads, bridges, aquaducts, and sewers wherever they went.
For the Romans, the landscape paintings were architecture. Their most famous buildings are the Parthenon, the Colosseum and the Panthenon.
Landscape Paintings of Greece
The roots of Western civilization lie in ancient Greece. For a brief period between 480-439 B.C., called the Golden Age or the Age of Pericles, after the leader who championed democracy and encouraged free thinking, an explosion of creativity resulted. The Greeks invented democracy, logic, ethics, the Olympics, mathematics, laid the foundations of art and philosophy, and developed architecture that we still mimic today.