Archive for June, 2011
Vincent Van Gogh
There are different types art. Expressionism was a modernist movement. It generally refers to intense emotions. The paintings are usually distorted or altered.
Expressionism art was developed in the late 19th and early 20th century. One of the most famous expressionist was Vincent Van Gogh. His is best known for his painting “The Starry Night.” The great many artists assumed that the chief function of art was to express their intense feelings to the world.
Palettes
Usually palettes are made of wood or glass. Because wood has a natural middle-value tone that makes it easier to judge values of color mixtures, this is a favorite of many plein air painters. French easels come with a wooden palette and some of the Pochade boxes have glass palettes built into the lids. Disposable paper palettes are also available, but are often white which provides a very high value contrast for color mixing. Recently, Richeson came out with a grey-tone palette which might be a better choice.
Palette boxes are available for keeping the paint from drying between painting sessions. The palette box by Masterson can be tightly closed and holds palettes up to 12” x 16”. I put mine in the freezer to further preserve the paint.
Brushes
The artist who does landscape paintings needs a variety of brushes and hog bristle is most suitable for oils. For the initial stages of a painting, a large brush is essential for toning the surface and blocking in large shapes. A size 14 or 16 bright or short filbert is suggested. For the next stage, creating the painting, size 4, 6, or 8 filberts are suggested because they are the most versatile and can be used for rounded strokes as well as thin strokes. Because they have longer bristles, they hold more paint than brights. Flats also have longer bristles and are similar to filberts but have a square tip.
Shorter-bristled brights are less flexible and hold less paint. Rounds are shaped to make round strokes and are well suited for impressionist paintings. A synthetic #2 filbert or round is good for detail. If these brushes are too soft and flexible they will not be able to manipulate the paint.
The Plein Air Palette
Because a plein air landscape painter takes his gear into the field, he tries to keep the weight down. Paint is heavy, so most painters take only a few colors. Also, most outdoor painters work small, so their palettes should be small also.
So which colors should you take? Let’s look at some possibilities. 1) One possibility is the Harmonious Earth Palette, colors might be yellow ochre, burnt sienna, ivory black (for blue) and titanium-zinc white. An orangey mixture of yellow ochre and burnt sienna increases the illusion of blue. 2) The Split-Primary Palette is a warm and cool of the three primaries: cad yellow light and deep, cad red light and permanent alizarin, ultramarine blue and phthalo blue. These would give high chroma. If white is added, the colors will be more natural.
3) The Primary Palette gives a more realistic range of warms and cools than the Split-Primary palette, however some of the greens aren’t as rich. Colors in this palette are cad yellow light, cad red light, ultramarine blue and titanium-zinc white. 4) Primary Palette plus Naples Yellow. Most color mixtures involve white, but in this case, try a light tint of Naples Yellow Hue mixed with each of the color combinations in #3 above. This has lots of warmth and using the blue gives greater contrast than the black in #1.
Painting Surfaces – Boards & Panels
Canvas boards for oil painting or acrylics are available from many companies and in many types. Some of the very inexpensive ones may not hold up well, so it would be wise to try a variety to see which one you like.
Panels can be obtained from the lumber company. Ask for a Masonite panel which will probably be 4’ x 8’ and the clerk will even cut it to your specification. These are less expensive than the canvas boards, but more labor intensive as you must gesso them yourself. If you choose this path, avoid overly thick and streaky strokes that leave visible tracks. A good choice is to use a small sponge roller which will create a soft, pebbled surface that is a good painting texture.
Painting Surfaces – Paper
For centuries artists have painted on paper. It is light, inexpensive, convenient and comes in a wide variety of textures. The favorites are hot-press watercolor paper, which is smooth, and cold-press, which is textured, in 140-pound or 300 pound varieties. Always choose acid free archival paper.
In order to use watercolor paper for oil painting, you will need to tape it to a board with low-tack masking tape. Then prime it with either a coat of acrylic paint or at least one coat of gesso. After priming, the paper will buckle, but will dry fast and will be ready for painting.
Painting Surfaces: Canvas
For many years, oil painters have used canvas as the choice support for their paintings. The canvas surface is woven either from cotton or linen and covered with one or more layers of gesso. Financially, if the canvas is smaller, it is less expensive to purchase a pre-primed canvas. For larger paintings, it is more economical to buy canvas by the yard and stretch it yourself. Pre-primed canvas can also be purchased and would save you the time of doing that step.
If you paint small, you might be interested in canvas boards. Some can be quite inexpensive, but they don’t always hold up well. It takes time to find a canvas board that you like and will hold up well.
Plein Air Workshop at McCann – Part 2
On Thursday afternoon we went out doors to paint. I found a grove of 6 or 8 hemlock trees to paint. Hemlocks are a kind of evergreen tree: the upper branches have needles, but all the in-between and lower branches are small, barren and grow horizontally, bending downward at the ends. I painted on my square canvas and almost finished the painting.
On Friday, Joanna and I were the only students and we are both oil painters. We went to a creek area with large hemlocks on each side. It took me most of the day to finish my painting, but it is attached.
The under painting shows through somewhat in the brown area at the bottom of the painting, but I’m not sure about the iridescent copper in the under painting. Perhaps I painted over it too thickly. It’s purpose was to make the painting glow.
Plein Air Workshop at McCann
This past Thursday and Friday, I attended a plein air workshop at the J. Barton McCann School of Art near State College, PA. Susan Nicholas Gebhart, Central PA President of the Pastel Society, was the instructor. Four pastel painters and two oil painters attended.
On Thursday, our lesson was to try different under paintings. We used a half sheet of watercolor paper taped to a board. Then, laying it in landscape fashion, placed a tape about 6” from the left side down the width of the paper, creating a long rectangle. Using another tape placed horizontally, we divided the right side into two rectangles. The paper was rectangular, but the photo shows it as being square.
Using acrylic paints, we covered each rectangle entirely, sealing it. Where we expected the ground to be later, we used darker colors; where the sky might be, we used lighter colors. Now our watercolor paper was ready for oil painting or pastels. When finished and framed, this can be three views of a scene and very attractive. Susan can be reached at http://www.snicholasart.com or 814-360-2116.
Simplification
When I decide to do a landscape painting, after I have selected the general scene and cropped it to fit my purpose, my next challenge is to find a way to translate the vast amount of detail in that scene into a coherent statement that makes sense not only to me, but also to a viewer. Copying nature is not possible. The challenge is finding the most essential elements of the landscape and organizing them into a coherent whole.
A landscape painter must find a way to translate a living and complex scene into a set of simpler shapes and patterns that stand for the original scene. The strokes the painter chooses can communicate the same emotion as the actual landscape and serve as an analogy. Simplification is a way of seeing the world at every stage of the painting, not just the beginning stage.
Learning to simplify is not easy. It is a process that evolves through conscious observation and practice. If we follow our essential maxim that “Less is more” then we must learn to see the world in a new way – in its most basic, essential forms.