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.

materials

paint

I use Winsor & Newton artist's quality oils. And I love them. I'm still using tubes I bought back in the 80's, only two of which show any signs of paint hardening in the tube. Lately I've bought more oils from Spectrum, who make a low cost range, and Michael Harding, a top of the line English brand.

Searching for the perfect paint is a losing battle. It's one of those sideshows, like the technique hole, that can divert you away from what matters about your painting if you're not careful. Paint is coloured mud. If it goes on nicely and keeps its colour over time, that's its job done. Buy artist's quality. Student quality paints are cheaper for a reason - they aren't as good.

mediums

Turpentine. Linseed Oil. Liquin. Paint fat on lean. That's most of what you need to know about oil painting.

    

palette

The palettes I use for mixing paint on are a sheet of glass laid on a sheet of white paper in the studio, and plywood palettes when painting on site. I seal the plywood with linseed oil.

My palette in the sense of what colours I use, and what would I recommend? In oil paint:

Titanium White
Mars Black

Cadmium Red
Alizarin Crimson

Cadmium Orange

Cadmium Yellow
Cadmium Lemon

Opaque Oxide of Chromium
Viridian

Cobalt Blue
French Ultramarine

Permanent Mauve

Naples Yellow
Yellow Ochre
Raw Sienna
Burnt Umber

That's 16 of the 30 colours I'm currently using, and represents a colour range I'd find it hard to do without. I pick for permanence, and for a warm and cool version of each primary.

Paint is peculiar stuff. I love Cobalt Violet, but I can't recommend it - it handles like treacle, lies down and dies in mixtures with its weak tinting strength, and looks cold and grim in tints. And it costs the earth. On the other hand, it looks gorgeous on its own over white. I've got a selection of greens that pretty much could all be replaced by the two in the list. Some colours - Prussian Blue, Light Red - have their place, but their full on tinting strength means they have to be held in check.

Conclusion? In the end, paint choice is down to you. You pick the pigments you're comfortable with and which suit the paintings you do.

In watercolour:

You can do more with less. If it gets above 12 colours, you should probably cut back.

Cadmium Red

Cadmium Lemon

Opaque Oxide of Chromium

French Ultramarine

Yellow Ochre

Burnt Umber

Payne's Grey

 

brushes

I fashioned my own, with the hair from my head stuck in forked twigs. Until I went bald.

Buying artist's brushes has always been a risky proposition, since the prices are generally calculated to make you faint. You want how much for that small hairy stick? Made from the pubic fur of a rare Asiatic ocelot it may be, but I'm not paying that. 

And handcrafted by dusky maidens.

Actually, paying premium prices for Kolinsky sables is a good investment for a watercolourist, providing you take excellent care of them. An illustrator friend reliably informed me that they're worth it.

Me, I get through handfuls of cheap nylon brights. They get worked hard, but treated well, but even so tend to start losing shape and getting raggy after a while. I solved my brush problems altogether just this last week when I found Rosemary & Co. online.

Quality brushes at great prices, and fast, smooth service when you order online. And no, that's not an affiliate link. That's a happy customer link. I don't get a penny out of recommending them. Check out the site, download the pdf catalogue, order the free print catalogue.

A word on brushes: You will, I guarantee, over the course of your painting career, buy all kinds of fancy pants brushes. Sable riggers. Fan brushes. Badger blenders. Sword liners. You will use each of them once, maybe twice. Then you'll go back to the handful of boring everyday flats and rounds you always use, and that's okay. Keep the fancy brushes. They look all professional and stuff.

surfaces

I used hardboard battened with 1" timber for years. Then I discovered 3mm MDF this year. You can buy 4' x 2' sheets, which you can get home on the bus. Make sure you wear a dust mask when you saw MDF to size or sand it - the dust is carcinogenic. Seal both faces and all edges with a water coat of PVA, then prime it with two coats of Winsor & Newton oil primer. Allow 24 hours between coats, and another 24 before you start painting on it.

A note on primer: When a major art materials manufacturer goes to the trouble of developing oil primers that do the job - use them. I used to spend hours making gesso to Renaissance formulas, with the result that my house stank of decomposing glue size and the gesso was prone to mould attack and spalling in cold weather. Don't waste your time.

MDF seems to be less prone to warping, and there's none of that priming both sides malarkey you have to do with hardboard. I'm painting up to 10" x 14" without battening the board, and it seems to be okay.

Buying ready stretched canvases is probably best done in bulk when you know what sizes you commonly use. I've bought rolls of cotton duck and linen and stretched my own, but it's another thing that can bite into painting time.

Paper is another personal choice thing. I buy packs of Waterford HP, medium weight 22" x 30" sheets. I cut these down to a half or a quarter sheet, which suits the size I work on.

drawing

I bought a lifetime's supply of cheap Chinese made HB pencils years ago. Boxes of them, with those erasers on the end that make nasty smudges if you use them. And I bought a box of black Bic fine point ball pens that I'm still using. Keeps me from getting fancy when I'm tackling preliminary drawings of a new subject.

Erasing? Get a putty rubber.

conclusions

Buy the best paint you can afford. You're better off with 4 tubes of artist's quality paint than 50 tubes of cheap stuff. That's red, yellow, blue and white, in case you were wondering.

Shop around. Don't like the price? You can probably find what you're looking for at a lower price elsewhere, and the internet will help you find it.

Know your own mind. This comes with experience. After a while you know what kind of paint and brushes and whatever else you're best off using. Just buy those.

Above all else, don't go haring off trying out new and different media. It's like starting from scratch all over again. Don't waste your time. Find the three things you do well, and hammer them into the ground. Tired of oil painting? Take a week off and do some watercolours. Or spend a while making an etching. Then back to oil painting. Don't spread your efforts out too far, or you'll never get anywhere.

Odd Nerdrum

Odd Nerdrum, 'Self Portrait'. Photograph by deflam, on Flickr. 

Yesterday I discovered the paintings of Odd Nerdrum, Norway's best painter, online. And today I understand the court is hearing his appeal against what sounds like a somewhat shoddy case against him, on charges of tax evasion, for which the 67 year old painter was sentenced to two years in jail. 

Where he's not allowed to paint. 

I'm not going to discuss the rights or wrongs of the case - in the absence of information, I have no opinion on the matter - but guess where my instinctive sympathies lie. Shame on you, Norway. Just when I was beginning to like you. If you don't like the thought of an ageing genius languishing in jail, go and sign the petition calling for his freedom here. 

Eyesight

I was born myopic. Really very short sighted indeed. Without spectacles, I can focus to about 9" away from my face, and everything beyond that turns into an Impressionist blur. 

Which is absolutely brilliant. 

Because, as a painter, it's the best of all possible worlds. When I peer over the top of my specs, all I can see is big, soft edged shapes and average colour values. When I slide them back up my nose, I can see pin sharp detail in depth. Which is exactly the best combination a painter could ask for. 

Whenever a drawing or painting threatens to get bitty and piecemeal, just take off the specs and immediately see the big picture. And pretty much nothing but. 

 It applies to painting from photographs too. I've talked elsewhere about working from photographs, but the problems I listed - particularly excess detail - can be overcome by the simplest means. Turn off your camera autofocus, and using the focus ring on the lens, just blur the picture slightly. Take a sharp picture, and a fuzzy, out of focus one. Or just run your sharp picture through a blur filter in GIMP. Go on. It's free. All the functions of Photoshop at the price point everybody loves. 

Detail is a weird thing to deal with, and a snare to get hung up on if you're not careful. If you're a photo-realist, who takes three months to paint a large canvas, squaring up a photograph and painstakingly copying it, detail is everything. If you're an impressionist, trying to catch a fleeting light effect, detail is a trap. 

Most figurative painters work somewhere between those two extremes, and constantly run the risk of getting snarled up in a tight, fussy interpretation of what they can see. It's something that lends itself to overthinking, which will hamper your painting efforts if you let it. 

Perhaps the best way to deal with detail is to not consider it as something separate, but as part of the process. A simple solution is to start with a big brush, and never get too small. If you ever find yourself fiddling with a one hair brush and squinting, you're doing it wrong. 

As you gradually work towards smaller and tighter areas, relate your small brushstrokes to the large ones in terms of how you make them. And remember, you can't paint everything, and if you did it would look awful.

Imagine, for example, you're painting some trees. In the foreground, some leaves are hanging above you and 'in shot', as it were. You could paint these one by one insofar as they contribute to your composition. How closely you observe them is up to you, but if you go into so much detail that they take over the whole painting, you've failed. Paint objects as well as they need to be painted for the part they play in the painting as a whole. 

And at some point, as they recede into the distance, individual leaves become foliage masses. That tree fifty feet away? Probably best rendered by a well drawn green blob with some subtle edge and mass detail to suggest foliage. That stand of trees in the distance? A tiny blue speck explained by context and well judged tone and value. 

Remember that a painting is about big, beautiful shapes. You should be able to judge a painting from across a large room. On the other hand, if you walk across that room and find the painting gets no clearer, you're entitled to feel somewhat cheated, and a little more detail might well be in order. 

You have to strike the balance between the broad picture and the telling detail for a painting to work. I once ruined a landscape painting by working too closely from photographs. If you ever do this, make sure you keep stepping back from close detail work to judge the painting from its proper viewing distance. While detail is necessary, some passages should be broadly handled to provide contrast and give the eye a rest. I ended up painting detail all over the place, which just looks weird. 

There's a particular kind of amateur painter who thinks that adding detail can only improve a painting, but they're wrong. Exactitude in painting matters, but it's a different kind of exactitude. A ragged flick of paint, providing it's of the right tone, the right colour, and in the right place, can tell the viewer more than any amount of fussy, nit-picking detail. Context is everything. 

What if you're not lucky enough to have been born short sighted? Squint. When you're face with a big, complex subject, whether it be a landscape or anything else, the first thing to do is to see less of it. 

Squint, until you can just make out the big shapes and get a handle on how to tackle your drawing or painting. Start with the general and work towards the particular - and only include as much of the latter as you strictly need.