Posts Tagged ‘landscape oil paintings’
The Landscape Painter’s Vision
Happy New Year, everyone! Do you ever wander back to that time when you first started thinking about making art? Do you ever think of the vision that you first had – how your art would be made, its themes, its looks? How simple it was then. For some of us it was just a matter of learning the skills and enacting our vision.
Then with a little seasoning under our belts, we modified, changed, expanded, contracted. We grew – or perhaps regressed. We landscape painters are constantly faced with forks in our roads – and the realization that some of the paths we take are a genuine pressing ahead with our dreams, and others a caving into demands and the easy backslide into mediocrity. It’s sometimes possible to confuse creativity with compromise.
Perhaps it’s a matter of figuring out what is true. Take a break regularly and reassess where you are going, review whether you are doing what you truly like and want to do. What are you doing right? What is uniquely yours? Which subjects and stylistic elements give you satisfaction?
Go back to your dreams. Feel the evolution since the beginning as a natural unfolding. Think of misguided moves only as potholes and part of the process. Breathe deeply, be thankful and be true to your true self.
Children and the Arts
In addition to the five blog spots per week I write about plein air painting for this blog, I also write two more for an online mall with which I am associated called Easy Place to Shop (http://www.easyplacetoshop.com). One blog spot is about children and the arts, the other is about home décor.
It is so important for children to become involved in the arts – whether music, drama, or painting. In school, children give memorized answers or answers arrived through calculation. In the arts, they learn about feelings, that problems can have more than one solution, that there are many ways to see the world, that small differences can have large effects, that neither words nor numbers define the limits of our understanding, that the arts enable us to have experiences we can have from no other source and through these experiences, we can discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling. In short, the arts enrich our lives.
The Plein Air Painter in Studio
The way the plein air painter works with paint in the studio will differ from the way he/she works with it on location. In the studio, the size of the paintings can scale up, so should the palette. Michele Albala uses a palette 19” x 25” and some artists’ palettes are much larger.
In long-term studio paintings, you might use certain sets of colors for many weeks and therefore mix up a large batch of color to last several sessions. After each session you might want to save the colors on a small 4” piece of glass, wrapped in plastic and stored in the freezer. Larger batches can be stored in empty paint tubes which can be purchased in major art supply stores. An added benefit is, if the painting needs a “touch up” for any reason, you have the exact color.
Occasionally, a painting done over a long period may need several changes. To test a new color value without actually committing it in paint on the canvas, cover all or part of the dry painting with light weight acetate sheeting. This allows you to test your changes without losing the present version of the painting.
Site Selection
The landscape painter considers many factors when choosing what to paint, the least of which is subject matter and the level of inspiration it evokes. He/She is searching for the scene which incorporates the visual cues necessary to create an illusion of space within a two-dimensional painting.
Some of the cues are: 1) Volume. Volume, as in a tree, gives solidity and dimension to forms through patterns of light and shadow. 2) Scale. A second tree is added, smaller than the first, implying depth. 3) Overlap. One tree might overlap the other implying depth. A background, such as a mountain, as added, further heightening the sense of depth. 4) Perspective. Perhaps a fence row is added with shadows in the foreground leads the eye even deeper into the space.
Not all these spatial cues will be present in every subject, but even a few can work together to build the illusion of depth. As you learn what to look for, you’ll discover that a few scenes present themselves in an ideal fashion. As you cultivate an eye for site selection, you’ll know which sites to avoid and which will lead to success.
Pricing Your Artwork
In the September 2011 issue of Professional Artist is an article by Jodi Walsh with the above title. First of all, she says there is no single formula. The article I read last year suggested pricing oil paintings by the square inch and gave suggestions regarding that method. However, the following are her suggestions.
1) Have your work critiqued by a professional (instructor, curator, etc). 2) Take a long look at not only the quality, but also your presentation. The back should look as professional as the front. Presentation is key. 3) Consider the topic or subject matter. In what type of home/office environment does it belong? Is the room modern, contemporary, antique, country, etc? 4) Is your medium or process unique and expensive to use (e.g. a sculptor who has high casting costs)? If so, allow for this up front. 5) Is your work framed or unframed? Plain or non-reflecting glass?
Go to galleries and art expos. Examine what other artists are doing. Seek out your medium and size and take a look at their presentation and pricing. Don’t look at famous artists with an established history. Be honest with yourself. This may not be the simple answer, but it is the most useful.
Copper as Support
Perhaps the only thing better than using Iridescent Copper Light (fine) for the underpainting of a landscape painting would be to use the real thing – copper. In the September 2011 issue of The Artist’s Magazine, Meredith Lewis has written about artist Kent Lovelace who actually uses copper as his support.
Lovelace wanders about Europe finding inspiring vistas to photograph and later crop for the perfect scenes. The copper surface must be clean and free from oxidation so he sands it with 60-grit sandpaper and wipes it with alcohol. Then he creates a monochromatic underpainting to work out the composition, textures and values using Old Holland neutral tint. Color glazing follows using only transparent or translucent paints. The layers are thin so the radiance of the copper shows through. Later when he works on the sky he leaves some of the area unpainted so that the bare copper is exposed. The result is a painting which glows with an inner luminosity reminiscent of Rembrandt, El Greco and hundreds of others. For more information on working with copper, visit http://www.copper.org .
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!
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.
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.
Elements of Design – Part 1
When we make a line, we are making a one-dimensional mark. Our line has only length. If we draw another line or if we consider a line with width, then we are creating form because form has both length and width. Form is two-dimensional.
We organize lines and forms into shapes. Complex shapes are often built from simpler shapes, such as circles, ovals, squares and rectangles. The distance between shapes is called space, another element of design. Space also refers to the illusion of depth, or three-dimensions. Thus when properly placed, shapes can give the feeling of three-dimensions on a two-dimensional surface.
There are several ways to create visual three-dimensional space. One way is by using one-, two- or three-point perspective. Another is by using overlapping shapes. The landscape painter uses all these elements of design when creating his/her landscape painting.