skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Yesterday was the last day of my annual Boothbay Harbor Workshop. We went out to Ocean Point on a beautiful sunny day. I chose a familiar subject: the Clark House.
The flat, rocky shoreline was much longer than I made it. I chose to reduce it so that I could include a more interesting foreground of a large rock and a tree that helped frame my subject. Depicting every rock and ledge would have been self-defeating and detracted from the cottage. And looking over and past something led the viewer's eye to the cottage as well.
I always feel free to bring objects in the landscape closer, to eliminate distracting elements, and to enlarge objects in the foreground.
Thanks to my wonderful and talented students for a happy week. I hope you had fun and also gained some insights about painting techniques and procedures. Let's do it again next year!
Yesterday's painting was an example of a largely foreground painting of a beach. Today I decided to show how a sky painting could be emphasized.
I started on dry paper to illustrate how a large space could control the viewer's eye path. The horizon line must necessarily be low so the largest shape would be the sky area. I painted the blue area, alternating from the overhead ultramarine blue and transitioning to a cooler thalo blue and then the flatter cloud areas near the horizon line. I came back in and defined the clouds with warmer shadows on the underside of the clouds and then working up towards the top of the cloud with neutral grays. Some were softened and others were left with hard edges.
The water was just a wet into wet, gradated wash so as not to draw you attention down to the water area.
The contrast area near the lighthouse was simply painted as a silhouetted shape.
When approaching this subject, I found myself having to decide whether I wanted to emphasize the sky or the beach. I decided on the beach, which included the lighthouse.
That meant, first, making the horizon line high. The biggest shape is on the beach. The lighthouse at Hendrick's Head Beach is a locator, but the emphasis is on the beach leading up to the lighthouse.
It was an overcast day, so I used the values in the sky to contrast with the light on the structure. The local color of the beach was painted next in one big wet-into-wet wash.
The rocks near the center of the page contrasted in color with the blues surrounding them. The seaweed washed up at the tide line formed a "Z" which leads your eye across the beach and back to the far shoreline.
The textural suggestions were used mostly in the foreground which enabled me to keep the background smoother and more subdued. There is, however, color change in the tree shape to give it interest.
The dog gives animation to the beach, but also points to the lighthouse.
Today's lesson at my workshop was on boats. First I gave advice on how to draw lobster boats and sailboats. Then I did some value studies and the demo painting on location.
Contrast of values was key to the painting. Note: Reflections are often darker than the object above it. Gradation of value was important to making the water recede. The foreground water is usually darker and warmer than the water out on the horizon. That's because you are looking down at the ground at the bottom of the water in the foreground. The farther away from the viewer, you are only looking at the surface of the water.
The dark foliage on the island behind the boats helped the lighter shapes on the boats "pop". Vertical objects receive less light than objects or planes that are horizontal than vertical planes.
Sizes vary. The focal boat is the "papa", the sailboat is the "mama", and the far sailboat on the left is the "baby".
This was the first day of my workshop here in Boothbay Harbor. After some introductory studies on shapes, especially cylinders, we caravanned to Knickercane Island for a lesson on trees.
As I drew the trees, I was conscious of the size of the trunks and tried to vary them. The oblique second tree breaks up the vertical lines of the other trees. And varying the intervals between the trees was also a consideration.
I also left out several trees that were really there. If you don't believe me, ask my students!
Painting the trees I was also aware of choosing different base colors for each tree. Nothing is more boring than dark brown trunks. I painted the masses of foliage before I painted the trunks, too.
I once told my high school students who asked me if I believe in heaven, All I know is, if there aren't any trees, I ain't going!
One of the principles of art that I have rarely addressed is balance. Balance can be formal (or symmetrical) or informal (asymmetrical). When the elements -- line, shape, size, etc.--are positioned in mirror-like fashion around a central spot in the composition, the balance is said to be formal. If the weight of elements appears like a teeter-totter where a large, heavy presence is balanced by a number of smaller elements on the other side of the page, the balance is informal.
In this painting of two churches in New Brunswick, Canada, the two buildings are of similar but unequal size and weight. The foliage on the right side of the page is larger than the two pieces of foliage on the left side -- the foliage next to the church and overhanging foliage above the church. Without the overhanging branches on the left side, the weight would shift to the right side and throw the composition out of balance.
Formal balance is present in patterned designs. In painting landscapes, I prefer informal balance.
Posts
