Art & Perception

On the last day of 2006 I made several pictures of grasses in the snow. They were in a field near the woods I’ve been frequenting for my series of Sourdough Trail photographs. Although that series is concerned with complexity, at least in part, the grasses were classic studies in simplicity.

I feel that I am as much drawn to minimal subjects as complex ones — certainly when it comes to photographs I would like to own — but few of my own images are minimalist ones. Is it possible to encompass both complex and simple images within a single, coherent style? Or do they represent ways of looking at the world that are too different? If you saw both kinds of images in the same show, would you sense that the artist did not have a “mature vision”? Do you work in different “styles” at the same time?

Many people think of underpainting as a working in monochrome — either in grays, or browns. Artists of the past like Jan van Eyck used very colorful underpaintings. The usefulness of this I see in my painting of grapes.

I was painting these grapes from some dark purple-blue grapes in my studio. I made the underpainting much more bright, and warm, than real grapes, as you can see in the picture above.

When the first layer of oil paint was dry, I began overpainting, putting darker shadows over the grapes to make the colors more realistic, darker and cooler, as you can see above.

Here I have gone further with overpainting in another session. Now the grapes have a realistic color, but the brightness of the underpainting color shows through and gives life to the colors. If I had started with dark gray grapes, instead of a colorful underpainting, the colors would be dead when I did the overpainting. This this picture is not quite finished in the cloth. Here is where I left it yesterday afternoon.

Any suggestions?

(detail requested by Steve)

Recently we looked at one of Hanneke van Oosterhout’s finished still life paintings. There were a number of excellent critiques. The painting was already sold, however, so comments could have no further impact on that picture.

Now Hanneke is in the progress of making another still life. It is not yet finished, which means that your comments could help her make this painting better.

We can follow the painting’s development over several days. more… »

In a comment elsewhere, I said, “I am not much interested in technique any more. … Many other artists will always have better technique than me, but when people are walking by, which works make them stop, look, and say, ‘Wow?’”

Does technique really matter?

I often remember something a pianist friend of mine confessed. He said that for most of his career, the way he kept track of how well he was doing was by keeping a log of the number of hours practiced.

That, he said, was a catastrophic error. He should have been keeping count of only one thing: the number of concerts given.

As a painter, I could translate that to: Number of works sold for how much each.

The whole last century of art could be described as an anti technique reaction. When I look at those perfectly executed paintings of the nineteenth century with all those naked boys and girls thinly disguised as gods and goddesses preaching some insipid moral lesson, I am glad we don’t paint that way any more. Why does it matter at all how well you paint it if no one is interested in what you have to say?

What difference does it make how well you can play the piano if no is there to hear?

In another recent post, things got really nitty gritty technical. Regarding that technical stuff, Lisa Call commented, “For me this type of thinking is very left brain and analytical ‘I need to place this color next to that one and then X will happen if I also do Y and Z.’ But I find that my best work is made if I can shut off that part of my brain and just go with what feels right and not stress each small step.”

I thought that comment was revealing. I hope you don’t mind, Lisa, for bringing it up here again. It’s a succinct restatement of the paradox. Technical stuff means being all concerned about technique, but is that what makes art, art?

This post also appears on rexotica.

This by definition must be done over some type of underpainting, in a system of working in layers. If the underpainting is like a base rhythm in music, then the overpainting is like the solo. The underpainting gives a context in which the paint-strokes of the overpainting become more resonant and powerful. When properly done, overpainting does not need to completely obscure the underpainting. It is precisely the interaction of the two that gives the most interesting effects.

Underpainting gets its name because it is painting that is intended to be painted over in a system of working in layers. There is a popular misconception that underpainting should be monochrome, perhaps in gray-scales. In fact, a multi-color underpainting is much more useful. The colors of the underpainting can be optically mingled with the subsequent overpainting, without the danger of the colors physically blending and becoming muddy. If underpainting is done properly, it facilitates overpainting. If it seems that one has to fight to obscure the underpainting, it is a sign that it was not done properly.

Here is an example of an underpainting made in acrylic, by Hanneke van Oosterhout. It is fairly monochrome, but this is because of the muted colors of the objects depicted.

Drawing can be done directly on a painting surface, but working on paper, and then transferring has advantages. Most obvious is that one can make many drawings and then select the best to transfer to a clean white canvas or panel. Another advantage is that drawing allows for experimentation with picture dimensions, before committing to a particular painting surface.

To transfer a drawing, without enlarging or reducing the size, tracing paper is useful. Tracing paper goes back at least to the 14th century (Cennino Cennini describes three techniques for making it). After the drawing is traced to the paper, it can be transferred to the painting surface in different ways. One is to rub the back of the tracing paper with charcoal, position the paper on a white grounded panel, then go over the lines with a hard pencil or stylus. This is the original carbon paper. Another technique is to prick holes in the tracing paper and then use a pouncing bag with charcoal dust to bring the design onto the painting surface. This is better for canvases, because it does not require the strong local pressure of using a pencil or stylus. Furthermore, it is easy to make a transfer, wipe of the charcoal dust, and make another, to experiment with different positioning of the design on the canvas.

Once the drawing is transferred (either in charcoal lines or dots), it must be fixed, using black ink or paint. Once this is done, the charcoal can be removed, and the drawing developed further before underpainting.