The Line of Beauty. And My Aching Backside.

Painting on location - not for wimps. A 'portable' easel weighs around five tons fully laden, and has more hard corners and sharp edges than a skip full of girders. 

Nevertheless, I used it most days until lately. Just a fortnight ago today I trekked out to a painting spot and found out that you can, indeed, paint while it's raining. Just not very well. On the plus side, as a reward for sticking it out and braving the elements, I was treated to some magical evening sunlight, very dramatic clouds, and a double rainbow, and all of a sudden I was inside a George Inness painting. Still working on that in the studio.

 

I tend to carry my easel in one hand, rather than using the shoulder strap. Obviously, over time this will develop the strength in that arm in a disproportionate manner. I shall build one huge arm, so that I resemble a human fiddler crab. I'll wave it about at parties, in a threatening display. 'Behold my gianty arm! Behold!' 

Anyway. 

Still laid up with sciatica, quite possibly as a result of hefting that damned easel. The weather is fine, the fields are calling, and there are paintings I could begin. And I'm stuck at home nursing a sore butt. The moral of this tale? Standing in a draughty lane for an hour to draw a pretty orchard can have consequences. 

On the plus side, it's given me time to read. I ordered 'The Art of Landscape Painting in Oil Colour ' by Sir Alfred East from Amazon about three weeks ago, but it's been taken hostage by brigands en route. The good news is I just got an email from Amazon's excellent customer service informing me that a new copy has been sent first class. 

Update: it arrived this morning, and turned out to be a skinny pamphlet with 29 pages of closely printed text and no illustrations. Which is why I just removed the affiliate link ad.

Update #2: I found a free PDF download online of the whole book, here.

Note to self: Never, ever buy a book until you've Googled the title and added the words 'free PDF download' to it.

  

The Line of Beauty 

I remembered this phrase when I looked at my reference shots of Hardwick park after I'd made a joiner out of them, and noted the S-shaped curves naturally occurring throughout, in the branches of the trees, and echoed in the layout of the land. I don't know who landscaped Hardwick park - perhaps it was Robert Smythson, the architect - but they knew what they were doing.

 

Looking the phrase up on Google took me to Wikipedia, and William Hogarth's 'The Analysis of Beauty': 'Prominent among his ideas of beauty was the theory of the Line of Beauty; an S-shaped curved line (serpentine line) that excited the attention of the viewer and evoked liveliness and movement.' Ready built in to the subject wherever you look - makes painting in the park a little like shooting fish in a barrel. I'm not going into Hogarth's ideas here, but the interested reader can follow the Wikipedia link above to find out more. 

 I downloaded 'The Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds' too, which puts me firmly in my place on the second lowest rung as a painter of mere landscapes. On the other hand, this and the Hogarth are fascinating insights into eighteenth century opinion, which frankly seems both more thoughtful and entertaining than current art writing. 

What do I think is beautiful? I know it when I see it, but giving any kind of pat definition is beyond me. I've mentioned how I pick my subjects - I wander around until I see something so visually affecting, in a positive way, that it makes me want to paint it. I'm always saying, 'Wow, that's pretty,' but I'm not sure pretty covers it. 

Recognition is involved, somehow, but it's a slippery concept, and one that you can't reverse engineer. The component parts of beauty are separate from the things we find beautiful, and are within us. 

How's that for a soundbite to hold the masses at bay while we quickly make our exit before some bright spark realizes we were just spouting nonsense? I'm not equipped for deep thought, being a bear of little brain, but I do know what's pretty, and that's good enough for me. I'll leave the theorizing to those who have nothing better to do.

Oak saplings and sciatica.

Having been laid low by sciatica, I've been working at home in the studio rather than trekking into the damp countryside. Here are some notes on the painting process as it applied to this small 10" x 12" painting.

It was started on site, with two one hour sessions on similar, dull grey days at around 11am. I took one reference shot the first time I was there.

Why did I choose this spot to paint? Well, having humped an easel all that way and finding my first choice subject somewhat wanting, I wasn't going home without a painting. I stomped around until I found something pretty. In this instance, the view down the side of what used to be a railway embankment before the Beeching cuts.

Back in the studio, the planes are separated out with glazes. A warm glaze of Raw Sienna on the sky, to work into with grey clouds. A cold glaze of Cerulean Blue on the field at the back, to push it away before I start modelling the crop. A warm glaze of Raw Sienna and Cadmium Yellow in the foreground grass before I start adding weeds and grass.

I model the hawthorne hedge with shadows and add some edge detail. As well as sky holes, it's got field holes where the field behind shows through - it's best to pick and choose the number and placing of these to avoid a flat, lace doily look, and keep an impression of substantial form.

Oak saplings in the foreground have been drawn in as outlines, to be worked on later. Furrows in the field and the foreground path at far right lead the eye into the painting and towards the tree at the far left, taking the eye past everything of interest along the way.

I realize at this point that some edge detail - tree top at left, telegraph pole and horse trough at the right - will be cut off  by the frame rabbet, and wonder what to do about it. Best to take this into account before you start, but never mind.

At this stage I consider the overall colour and how to liven it up. Being a landscape, it is pretty green. It's sometimes good to push the edge colours a little to separate the planes. Given that the field at the back has been glazed blue, I work into the hedge with orange. Red added to dark green livens up the hedgerow shadows a little. If it's still too samey I'll start thinking about overall glazes to get more colour variety in there. Glazes eat light, though. Things can get murky, and also weird if you get an unanticipated optical mixture.

At no point does the notion of finish come into it. I'm happy to paint just tight enough. This doesn't mean that I let things slide, or let bad painting stand. I'll work and rework an area until it says what I want it to say. I just don't do it with a tiny brush and my tongue sticking out of the corner of my mouth.

If you find yourself painting individual leaves with an eyelash taped to a toothpick, you should quit painting and turn to something more obsessive. Building a one to one scale model of Chartres cathedral out of pasta, maybe.

Copying? Steal from the rich.

The other day I did a Google image search of Constable's paintings, found a photograph of Flatford Mill, and copied it in my drawing book.

What I took away from my half hour with Constable was that in a large painting, there are no accidents. Everything has its place, and the pieces interlock and work together like clockwork. And this apparent lack of spontaneity and freewheeling improvisation is something we could do with more of. Because planning and rehearsal makes great paintings.

Is anyone doing this kind of painting now? I hope so. More to the point, is anyone teaching it? The skill set required should be kept intact and passed down.

This week I started a new small painting of Pleasley vale and did some work on one done nearby that's almost finished. Starting a painting is effortless, but finishing them to a standard and quality I can live with is a trial. You run the risk of fiddling until you ruin it if you do too much, or of never finding a solution if you do too little. Repeated overpainting can be good in that you accidentally build up a beautiful paint surface.

So much of painting - or at least my painting - consists of putting right what I did wrong. While trying not to ruin something else in the process.

Field edge, Pleasley vale.

Hardwick expedition

In search of a new landscape subject I packed my drawing bag and set off on the hike to Hardwick Hall.

The walk, across the busy A617 and through Rowthorne, took a surprisingly brief 50 odd minutes to the park gate. Add another ten for the uphill stretch between there and the hall itself, all of it pleasantly landscaped grassland lined with trees. A better man could tell you what kind, but I'm going to go with Horse Chestnut, based on the stopped clock principle.

(A stopped clock is right twice a day. If I confidently state that every tree I'm asked to identify is a Horse Chestnut, occasionally I'll be right. Similarly, every strange plant is declared to be Scarlet Campion.)

I didn't go into the hall or gardens, partly because I've seen both many times, mainly because it costs about a million pounds these days. Actually, they're both worth a look, and the gardens will only set you back a fiver. The park, sizeable and spacious, is most of what I came for anyway. It offers many opportunities to the astute landscape painter; a variety of land and trees, intimate corners and handsome vistas. I was on the look out for my favourite longhorn cattle too. Skittish and slightly alarming, they add a welcome hint of danger and generally look decorative. Sadly, I never saw a single one today, which was a disappointment. Perhaps they were having their hooves done.

Hardwick Hall

I spent a while exploring and taking reference shots before I settled to drawing a piece of park land, starting in pencil and finishing in water colour. After that I walked home, this time taking the Rowthorne trail, a former railway spur that serviced the local collieries. 

Hardwick park

It's a good thing to get out of the rut you're in, even before you think you need to. I've been painting and drawing the same stretch of local landscape for a while now, and it's time for a change. On the painting front, I've had a good long look at the stuff I've done since I started up again in March, and it's going well. I've picked four of the dozen or so small paintings I've done in that time and declared them halfway good. At any rate, they're going into the pile I'll be sending pictures of to galleries when I'm ready.