Archive for July, 2011
Artists Answer
In answer to the newsletter yesterday by Robert Genn, Canadian landscape painter, many artists replied on a
variety of topics.
How do I go about getting into other cities? RG: the best way is to have a stand-alone website. Cruise the Internet for galleries where you think you would fit. Write to 4 or 5 artists represented by that gallery and find out if the gallery is doing a good job for the artists – paying them promptly, etc. Then write to the gallery and let them know you are interested in being represented by them.
Is it better to be a local artist or an out-of-town artist? One reply said she got more feedback as a local artist and it is a way to build self confidence. Another said that it depends on where you live. She lives in a tourist town and tourists like to talk with local artists. Another said because of the promotion of local food, local talent is now appreciated more than in the past.
A Beautiful Gift For Our 10yr Anniversary
When my husband and I retired nearly 10 years ago we worried what we wouldn’t be able to keep ourselves busy, and researched new hobbies we could practice together. On a whim, we decided to take a golf lesson during a vacation to Hawaii, and ever since then we can’t get enough of whacking those little, white balls.
Last month we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary with a golfing trip to the famous course in Augusta. On our last night there my husband arranged a private dinner on the lawn in front of the club house. The candles glowed in the moonlight, and we could hear the bullfrogs croaking in a nearby pond. It was beautiful!
Upon returning we hosted an intimate family dinner at our home. Our oldest son presented us with amazing abstract paintings by Larry Dyke. One of the pieces called “,” is a picturesque commemoration of the golf course at Augusta. Now every time we look at our piece of Larry Dyke art we fondly recall that week spent together.
The ‘Local Artist’
Last week Robert Genn, Canadian landscape painter, wrote a newsletter about the local artist. Some questions arose, such as, “Do galleries favor the local artist or the out-of-towner?” Evidently, he had made an earlier comment about it not being desirable to be a local artist. He had also been bothered by George Bernard Shaw’s remark, “When you know the artist, you think less of the art.”
Genn further commented that he didn’t want people dropping in on him while he was trying to figure things out (i.e., when a painting wasn’t working and he was trying to correct it). He was aware of the ease of selling low-priced work to friends and the negative effects this had on artists when they worked with commercial art dealers. He also had the idealistic idea that his paintings could be sold by distant dealers at decent prices to honest collectors who had good taste. This would leave him free to study, travel or pursue his muse in relative local anonymity. “To be successful,” Genn said, “you need good work, someone who thinks it is good work besides your mom and trustworthy distant galleries.”
Ocean City
As it turned out, both my friends were unable to come to my house today. We talked by telephone.
Next Monday we will probably be headed for Ocean City. If we take our landscape paintings to the Art League there, someone will take them to Lewes, Delaware, where they will stay for at least a month. This is a great opportunity for showing because Lewes is a lovely town and a great tourist attraction. There is no cost to enter the show and we will pay only 20% commission if we are lucky enough to sell. So I must get busy and put the finishing touches on my latest!
It’s Too Hot to Paint!
For the past week, the daytime temps have been in the upper 90s with a heat index in 3 figures! Now, that’s just too hot to go outdoors and do plein air painting! The 70s is about my favorite.
Tomorrow my friends Betty and Suzanne will meet at my house at 9 AM to talk art. We must get our dates and times coordinated as we have paintings to pick up and deliver and entries to be mailed, and, of course, the latest paintings to be critiqued. We’ll save the outdoor painting for a cooler day!
Learning to Draw
“I’ve encouraged both myself and others to experience the joy of drawing,” said Robert Genn, Canadian landscape painter. “It may be separate from painting, but it is certainly key to much that is great in painting. To find a line, to make it work, to really see it and know it holds life and energy or is pregnant with feeling, is to experience a kind of excitement that even sensitive observers cannot truly know. If only for the forward march of our own character, we need to fill our sketchbooks.”
Others commented: “My first love was drawing; I will always love it. If I am to grow as a representational painter, drawing and painting from life are mandatory. Drawing well is a skill that requires constant practice (from life!) or it will wane. You never get to keep your current skill level or grow without constant practice. It’s a muscle. It’s not dissimilar to training for a marathon. You can’t train once and expect it to keep you in condition for future marathons.” Gaye Adams
“I’m a drawing convert. In 1996 I was challenged to do a sketch-a-day in pen for 10 weeks. For the next 70 days I tossed my pencil and eraser and worked only in pen. At first the task felt overwhelming. But in a short period of time things began to change. Not only did my drawings improve so did my observation skills, design, edge quality, and confidence. It seems like such a simple concept but it does have a way of making a huge difference. My passion for drawing has stayed with me and I have my instructor Chris Van Winkle to thank for the challenge!” Brenda Swenson
John Holt wrote: “We learn to do by doing; there is no other way.”
The School of Life
According to Robert Genn, Canadian landscape painter, every year about 900,000 North Americans buy paints and brushes for the first time, and every year 800,000 of them decide that painting is not for them. It seems that at any given time 3% of the population is trying to paint.
On the surface, painting looks easy, satisfying and possibly lucrative. However, after trying it, reality shows that not to be true.
Genn included a little test. He made a list of 12 personality characteristics: curious, philosophical, passionate, energetic, obsessive-compulsive, self motivated/entrepreneurial, loner/non joiner/outsider, hard worker, patient, exhibitionistic, egoist/egotist, individualistic/resistant to prior programming. To test yourself against his findings, give yourself a score of one to ten on each of those characteristics. If you score over 70 out of 120, you’ll be a likely candidate for a life in art. You’ll notice these traits all sidestep the possibility of innate talent. Talent only completes the equation.
Art in the Waiting Room
“Can painting improve your health?” asks Canadian landscape painter Robert Genn in his twice-weekly newsletter. One of his followers had written that she noticed that she had no migraine on days when she painted, whereas on no-painting days, she did have a migraine. Robert replied that migraines are one of the most frequently reported maladies of artists, are not understood by the medical community, that adult women are three times more likely to have them than adult men and that there are several “triggers”.
This led to many responses, but one was very appealing. Mike Barr from South Australia pointed out that the art on the walls of doctors’ waiting rooms and other medical centers is very important. Instead of the diagrams of aortas or posters calling for immunization against some threatened pandemic which would increase the blood pressure of an already sick person, how much nicer it would be to look at a Monet print or other calming painting. Art works on the waiting room walls help us to feel calm. Better still are paintings of local places that are likely to strike a chord and evoke happy memories.
Shape and Mass – A Line Drawing
For the landscape painter, it is so important to personally translate a complex scene into simpler shapes and values on the canvas in order to create a believable painting. The following is an exercise in translation.
Using a photograph which includes trees, outline the shapes you see on another sheet of paper, sketching the planes where possible. Add contour lines to show volume or roundness. You might also want to include a line that roughly corresponds to the division between light and shadow. You may not actually see this line, but the line you draw attempts to describe how the form is shaped.
The goal of the exercise is not necessarily to create a realistic drawing, but to help the artist in the perceptual shift that is necessary for simplification – the basis for landscape painting. The restrictions force the artist to carefully analyze the shapes and then figure out how to convey the most visual information with the fewest shapes possible.
Less is More
“Simplification and massing are the ultimate perceptual exercises for the landscape painter,” says Michael Albala in his book Landscape Painting. It is not difficult to paint or draw a shape, but to see a shape through layers of surface detail and complexity requires a shift in the perception of the artist that is not always easy to attain.
It is by simplifying a few major shapes that a forceful visual image is created. Using basic shapes and patterns causes form and structure to begin to appear and the painting becomes understandable to the viewer.
The artist needs an understanding of planes to identify the shapes and masses in the landscape. A plane is just a flat surface. It is easy to see on flat surfaces such as streets and architecture but is more difficult to see on rounded surfaces and in nature. Fortunately, where the plane ends, there is a change in value. Squinting enables the artist to group parts of the painting with similar values together and makes details disappear. It enables the artist to see the basic shapes.