Posts Tagged ‘Landscape Art’
Gauguin in Tahiti
Gauguin took his oil painting discovery even further in Tahiti, which also did not fulfill his dream of finding the “noble savage” – as Europeans had already turned the island into an extension of Europe. But he was able to use the contrast between what he had hoped for and what he found. He often placed a primitive scene in the foreground and images of civilized life in the background, and eliminated perspective and shading so the background encroached on the foreground.
Gauguin’s manipulation of traditional perspective and his expressive use of color had a major influence on the late -19th- and early -20th-century art movements especially Fauvism and Expressionism. In 1901, Picasso saw several Gauguin paintings at a friend’s home, and they inspired him to launch into his Blue Period. It is no wonder that he is among the founders of modern art.
Seurat: Pointillism
The loose approach of the Impressionists freed the next generation of artists to be even more experimental. They extended Impressionism in new directions.
Georges-Pierre Seurat (1859-91) wanted to scientifically explore the nature of light and color and use that knowledge in his art. He found that colors, when adjacent to each other, affect the other. For example, a blue lamp on a yellow stand casts some of its blueness on the stand and the stand casts some of its yellowness on the lamp.
He also found that each color gives off its complement, from the other side of the color wheel, in its shadow. So the blue lamp has in its shadow, not only blue but also orange. The yellow stand throws off hints of purple, so the blue lamp shows splashes of yellow and purple. Seurat applied his dots to emphasize these effects and make the colors seem more vibrant in the viewers’ eyes. His most celebrated landscape painting is ”A Sunday on La Grande Jatte”.
The Tree Tradition throughout Art
There is a unique relationship that humans share with trees—we have a codependence on earth, and throughout history trees have been used as a symbol for life and vitality. We are all familiar with the expression “the tree of life,” as well as literary analogies that have been drawn, such as “The Giving Tree” and “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” The structure of the tree is even used as a metaphor for the family dynamic.
For hundreds of years artists have captured the aesthetic beauty and cultural significance of these pieces of foliage in their work. Not only do they appear in classic, realist landscapes, but there are also a myriad of abstract tree paintings that show them in a different light. Many fads come and go in art but trees have been—and probably will continue to be—a source of inspiration for artists.
Impressionism
Impressionism is the most popular art movement of all time. As a result of it, these cheery landscape paintings dress up our homes and offices, cheer us up in hospitals and inspire us to take trips abroad.
Originally, the term “impressionist” was given as an insult because the paintings looked unfinished to the viewer accustomed to many layers of glazes. It appeared that artists were too lazy to refine their brushstrokes and images were blurred, without finely defined contours.
The impressionist artists were interested in the interplay of colors and light, the fleeting quality of life. Impressionism is the soft focus that gives the sense of a lovely impression caught just before it slips away.
Advancing and Receding Color in Landscape Paintings
Landscape paintings use a two-dimensional surface to show a three-dimensional scene. In order to create a believable painting, the artist must use his/her knowledge of colors and edges.
Cool colors appear further away from us than warm colors when seen from the same location. Mountains in the distance will become cooler with greater distance. Also, they will become grayer, less intense, and with edges that are less distinct. Objects in the foreground will appear to have more intense color as well as sharper edges.
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.