Artist Tip #29 - The Foreground

The purpose of the foreground is to provide an entry into the painting.  It should be kept simple to avoid competing with the Center of Interest.  Here are a few paintings that illustrate this principle.  First, this rural landscape, with just a bit of color in the foreground.  The viewer's eye immediately jumps to the mid ground - the barn and other buildings - which is what this painting is about...

Next is a seascape.  Seascapes usually have a simple foreground because it is just water - perhaps with some swells or even waves - so the eye jumps right to the main subject in the mid ground...

Here is another example where the center of interest is in the mid ground.  The foreground is entirely a smooth roadway with a shadow.  We've talked before about the dark doorstep which leads the viewer's eye directly into the painting...

One other fact we've discussed previously is that it is almost impossible to make objects in the foreground too large.  It's very easy to make them too small!  Here's an example where a tree branch in the foreground is actually longer than the barn in the mid ground... and it looks just fine...

So when you do put "objects" in the foreground - tree branches, roads, fences - they need to be LARGE to look correct!

It's not easy to keep the foreground simple.  It does, after all, cry out for more value contrast, more definition, and more texture.  But fight the tendency to put too much detail in your foreground, and those viewing your painting won't get "hung up" there to the detriment of what the painting is really about (unless, of course, it's really about the foreground).

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Art Collector Tip #2 - Why Should I Collect Fine Art?

There's one best reason to collect fine art...  you love it, and you want to see it in your home or office every day, for a long, long time.

There is really no magic to collecting art.  Simply buy what you love.  Art is very subjective, and nobody can tell you what's good or bad... you just need to look at a lot of artwork, let your tastes develop, and decide what you like.  Don't buy art because it matches your decor... your decor will change, but you will own the art for a lifetime.  Think of art as an accent to your decor, rather than as a matching part of it.

How do you know if you're paying a fair price for the art you buy?  The value of art depends on many things, including the education and reputation of the artist, as well as the venue selling the art. Would you be surprised to learn that most galleries charge a 50% commission for the art they sell, and that it is usually the artist's responsibility to have his/her artwork framed?  As with many items, the best way to determine a fair price is to "comparison shop".  Look at similar artwork, by artists with comparable education, reputation, exhibit and prize history, and learn what constitutes a "reasonable" price.  The size of the piece has a significant effect on its price.  When you purchase artwork, you are not just paying for the cost of materials and the artist's time creating that specific piece, but also his/her years and expense developing the craft that went into the piece.

Today, the internet is disrupting art sales venues, as it has disrupted the sales of many things, and direct buying artwork from the internet is rapidly gaining market share over purchasing art from galleries.  If you are buying art on the internet, be sure there is a risk-free money-back guarantee, as art can appear different "in person" depending on the photography and presentation skills of the artist.  If you are already familiar with the artist's work, you are way ahead, because you know what to expect when you purchase a new piece.  If you purchase the artwork unframed, you minimize shipping costs, and can frame the piece in the way that you prefer.

It is helpful to have some knowledge of the materials used in creating the artwork, as you want it to last a lifetime.  Pigments (paints) and grounds (canvas, board, and paper) should be archival quality so you don't have to worry about your artwork fading, cracking, or disintegrating as time goes on.  The good news is that archival, light-fast pigments and superior solvents and coatings are widely available today, and are used in all mediums (watercolor, oil, acrylic, pastel, pencil) by responsible artists.  In addition, archival grounds are available for all mediums.  You may want to ask the artist about the materials he/she uses to ensure that your purchase will stand the test of time.  With proper framing and care, there is no reason that modern artwork won't outlive you and your loved ones.

Should you purchase art as an investment?  Some art has proved to be an excellent investment, while other art has a dismal investment record.  Purchasing art as an investment is an entirely different "game", and to play this game, you probably need the assistance of "high-end" galleries and art critics, since you're betting on the future "value" of the artwork, rather than simply choosing art that you love.  And by the way, the art that you love may very well appreciate in value as time goes on, which will be a bonus for you!

What about "giclees"?  Despite the fancy name, a giclee is simply a copy or reproduction of an original artwork made using an inkjet printer.  Many reproductions may be made of the original artwork.  Some of these "editions" are unlimited, and some are limited to, say, 300 copies, with each copy labeled with a number (for example, 15/300, meaning the 15th copy of a run of 300 copies) and possibly signed by the artist.  If you can't afford the original of the art you love, you may be able to purchase a copy.  Just realize that you do not own an original piece of art, and that you may see "your" artwork in other places.

So, although it is wise to be familiar with the artist, to do comparison shopping for pricing, and to understand the archival qualities of your art purchase, the bottom line to collecting fine art is: Buy What You Love.

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Artist Tip #28 - Creating Depth

We realistic painters are in the illusion business - we're magicians.  We "represent" a limitless, 3-dimensional, moving reality in a 2-dimensional, limited-size, stationary painting.  As Frank Webb says, "Even if you're a good realistic painter, you'll never fool a dog".  A very important illusion that we representative artists must create is the look and feel of depth in our paintings.  There are a number of ways we can do this...

The simplest is to show shapes getting smaller in the distance.  A special case of this effect, which is very effective, is to show lines converging in the distance.  Both of these effects can be seen in the painting Seine-Side Booksellers.  Here, the people in the distance are much smaller than those in the mid-ground.  And the parallel "lines" on the sidewalk converge as they retreat into the distance.  These are direct results of applying linear perspective to our paintings.  This painting is an example of single-point perspective (there is only one vanishing point).

Another depth-creating illusion is to show evenly-spaced objects getting closer together as they recede into the distance.  This can be seen in the fence posts in the painting Winter Farm:  

Even though the largest 3 posts seem equally spaced, if you measure the distance between them, you'll see that the closest two are spaced about twice the distance of the 2nd and 3rd posts.  And each post is about half as high as the one preceding it.  Here we also see the converging lines of the snow-covered road as it recedes.  Note the very great degree of convergence here... in the foreground, the width of the road is over 2/3 the width of the painting, while around halfway "up", it is less than 1/15th the width.  One thing to keep in mind is that it is nearly impossible for the artist to make items in the foreground too large!

Another method for creating the illusion of distance is to manipulate the contrast, texture, and color temperature of objects at different distances.  Take a look at the painting Sleepy Valley:

The colors get cooler in the distance - bluer trees and grass and purple hills.  They get warmer in the foreground, tending from green toward brown.  The distant objects have a soft texture and little contrast, while the textures get harder and rougher as the foreground is approached.  The result is a definite feeling of great distance in this 2-dimensional painting.

Here's another example... the painting Lobstah...

The hills and water in the background have been painted very soft, while the boat in the mid-ground is well-defined with good contrast and detail, and the water in the foreground has significant texture in the rough-brushed marks.

So, for a realistic painter, perhaps the most important illusion to create is that of depth, so that the viewer is drawn into the painting as though it were 3-dimensional, and can develop a sense of actually "being there".

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The Grand Canal - Original Watercolor Painting

A gondola ride on the Grand Canal is a required activity for all visitors to Venice!

If you'd like to purchase this 15" x 22" original watercolor painting for $300 including shipping within the United States, you can do it securely on my website www.jimoberst.com (click on the image). There are additional paintings for sale there, and my smaller paintings are available on my other website www.weeklywatercolor.com.  Add a unique original painting to your collection!

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Art Collector Tip #1 - Watercolor Papers

I've posted quite a few Artist Tips here (27 so far - you can find them by searching for artist tips in the search box in the right column of this blog), and announced them all in my Fine Art Newsletter.  I hope that not only my artist friends, but also those who are mainly interested in collecting art, have read them and enjoyed learning a bit about what we artists struggle with.  But I feel it's time to include some Art Collector Tips to address more directly some of the questions I hear from my collectors, about both art collecting in general,  and my art in particular.  This first tip is a short tutorial on the watercolor paper I use - typical sizes, surface finishes, and its archival qualities - to help collectors better understand the materials in the paintings they may purchase.

I employ both Arches and Saunders Waterford artist-grade watercolor papers.  I purchase these in full sheets, which are 22x30" in size.  (I do have some larger sheets, but haven't painted on them in awhile.)  I usually tear these sheets into smaller "standard" sizes of half-sheet (15x22"), quarter sheet (11x15"), and eighth sheet (7.5x11").  I also sometimes tear them "the other way", to produce a longer, thinner shape: 5.5x15", 7.5x22", and 11x30".  The smallest of these, the eighth sheets, are what I usually use for my weekly watercolors.  In addition, when I've completed a painting, it sometimes turns out that it can be improved by cropping - cutting it to a smaller size to emphasize the successful parts, get rid of the unsuccessful parts, or move the center of interest.  So a finished painting may turn out to be just about any size.  This is one great advantage of watercolor paintings - it's quite easy to crop a completed painting to improve it - as simple as cutting a piece of paper!

Watercolor paper typically comes in three different surface textures - hot-press (HP or smooth), cold-press (CP or "NOT" - meaning not HP), and rough (R).  HP paper  takes paint very differently than the other two finishes, and I don't like the results I get with it, so I don't currently use it.  I do use both CP and R, depending on the size of the piece and the subject matter.  It's easier to get smooth washes (large areas of fairly uniform color) on CP paper, while it's easier to get vivid dry-brush strokes on R paper.  These papers also come in two colors - natural (light cream) and bright white - and I use both.

This artist-grade watercolor paper is paper only in the most general sense.  It is actually made of 100% cotton fibers - not of wood fibers like "normal" paper.  (The acid in wood-based paper causes it to brown and disintegrate with age.)  The watercolor sheets are mould made, acid free, and sized either inside or on the surface (or both) with gelatin to make them less absorbent - otherwise painting on them would be like painting on a blotter.  They are of archival quality - they will last a long, long time without yellowing or deteriorating when framed behind glass or plastic.  Despite some opinions to the contrary, there is absolutely NO scientific evidence that the canvas typically used for oil and acrylic artwork is any more long-lasting and archival than modern artist-quality watercolor paper.

In a future Art Collector Tip, I'll discuss the physical qualities of the paint I use.

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Eilean Donan Castle - Original Watercolor Painting

This is Eilean Donan Castle (literaly, “island of Donan”) in the Scottish Highlands. The original castle was founded in the 13th century, but was destroyed by the British in 1719, and was restored as a unique vacation home in the early 20th century. I visited the castle in May of 2014.

If you'd like to purchase this 11" x 15" original watercolor painting for $200 including shipping within the United States, you can do it securely on my website www.jimoberst.com (click on the image). There are additional paintings for sale there, and my smaller paintings are available on my other website www.weeklywatercolor.com.  Add a unique original painting to your collection!

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Artist Tip #27 - Fixing Tropical Anchorage

When I ruin one of my watercolor paintings with a bad passage, I usually just throw it in the circular file and paint it over again.  But it is possible to fix some pretty horrific problems if one is so inclined.

In this painting, Tropical Anchorage, I painted the boat hulls much too dark and opaque:

I decided to try removing the dark paint with Mr. Clean Original Magic Eraser.  This cleaning pad contains no chemicals, and does its work by a unique physical arrangement of its fibers.  It's important to use the ones labeled Original - the later, "improved" versions do contain chemical cleaners, and may not be good for your painting's long-term health.

The technique I use is to mask off the area where I want to remove the paint with artist's tape, a thick masking tape with less powerful adhesive so it pulls off easily without damaging the paper or paint beneath.  It's usually white.  I tear or cut the tape pieces to outline the offending area, and burnish down the inside edges to prevent water from seeping underneath the tape.  Then I dip a small piece of the Eraser in water, squeeze it out, and gently rub over the surface, picking up the paint.  I dry the area with a tissue and repeat, until I have removed all the paint.  Then I lift the tape, and Voilà  - an undamaged, unpainted surface where I can give it another try.

This is not a route to the very freshest-looking watercolor paintings, but if I have an otherwise good painting, sometimes I use this approach.  It's also occasionally helpful in my watercolor workshops to inhibit student suicide.  And it's fun!

This slide show shows the process:



Here is the result after repainting the hulls.  As of this post, the painting is still available for purchase - just click the image for more info or to buy:

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Tropical Anchorage - Original Watercolor Painting

Two boats wait quietly under a tropical sky.

If you'd like to purchase this 15" x 11" original watercolor painting for $200 including shipping within the United States, you can do it securely on my website www.jimoberst.com (click on the image). There are additional paintings for sale there, and my smaller paintings are available on my other website www.weeklywatercolor.com.  Add a unique original painting to your collection!

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Drawing for Free Coffee-Table Books of my Paintings

Sign up for my fine art newsletter by April 23 and earn one entry in a drawing for one of these coffee-table books of my paintings. 

Current subscribers are eligible. Click on this link to enter: http://eepurl.com/Ql8i1. (Sorry - U.S. residents only.) After your entry is complete, you will be given the opportunity to earn more entries by sharing news of this drawing with your friends. More details at http://jimoberst.com/draw1.html. 

Good luck!

Artist Tip #26 - Color Freedom

Artists who paint reality - who represent, in one style or another, the real world - can still exercise a lot of freedom in their paintings while they create a recognizable scene/figure/still life.  One path to this freedom is through color.  In Artist Tip #10, we studied color as a major element of design.  One way to pursue color is to become expert at reproducing colors from nature on our canvas or paper.  Another is to master its characteristics so we can introduce an element of surprise and uniqueness into our paintings.  This second approach is the subject of this artist tip.

It is generally agreed among artists that value ("tone" in the UK), not color, most strongly defines the shapes in our paintings.  This can free us to use color in unusual ways, while not losing the representational quality of our paintings.  Color can be exaggerated to introduce excitement and entertainment.  It's particularly useful to look for and exaggerate color in shadows.  "Color bounce" - the reflection of surrounding colors on nearby objects - is a good excuse to introduce "extra" color, and to grade the color temperature of shapes from cool up high (due to the cool light from the sky) to warm down low (due to warm earth hues).  We can use color bounce to "reflect" colors elsewhere in our painting, thus improving its color unity.

Finally, we need to remember that despite the scene before us, all apples aren't red, skies and water blue, grass green, wood brown, etc.  Generally we can modify colors significantly, as long as we don't choose a color that the represented object "never is".  And when our painting is almost finished, we can introduce a new, surprising color in a few small accents, to give the painting more interest.  Below are a few examples of "color freedom" in representative paintings.

Here is an example of "color bounce".  Notice the yellow and red colors on the back of the Biker's neck, which are a lot more entertaining than if the skin color were uniform throughout:

Below are three examples of colors of shapes that are not typical of the objects they represent.  Nevertheless, the paintings are still representational, and probably more pleasing to view than if colors were chosen to match the actual subject...

This painting of Pemaquid Point Lighthouse introduces magenta into the grassy area.  It makes the painting more entertaining, and balances some of the cool colors that we find above the horizon:

In Sizzling Afternoon, there are no cool colors at all in the sky and water.  Warm colors were chosen to best communicate the heat:



Finally, in See-Through, it's clear that all wood need not be brown:



I hope these examples of color freedom provide some encouragement to artists of realism to try color manipulation and bring more interest and entertainment to their paintings.

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Tranquility - Original Watercolor Painting

Boats moored near shore at the end of the day.

If you'd like to purchase this 22" x 7.5" original watercolor painting for $225 including shipping within the United States, you can do it securely on my website www.jimoberst.com (click on the image). There are additional paintings for sale there, and my smaller paintings are available on my other website www.weeklywatercolor.com.  Add a unique original painting to your collection!

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Port Penrhyn Marina - Original Watercolor Painting

The marina at Port Penrhyn in northwest Wales.

If you'd like to purchase this 11" x 15" original watercolor painting for $200 including shipping within the United States, you can do it securely on my website www.jimoberst.com (click on the image). There are additional paintings for sale there, and my smaller paintings are available on my other website www.weeklywatercolor.com.  Add a unique original painting to your collection!

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Artist Tip #25 - Edge Variation

Our paintings are composed of shapes and lines, which are two of the seven Elements of Design.  The other five elements are essentially just characteristics of shapes and lines.  Edges separate the various shapes and lines in our paintings, and it's important to vary those edges to avoid boredom and bring entertaining variation to our creations.

There are four general types of edges that artists can produce:

• hard
• soft
• rough (or intermediate)
• none (or lost)

A hard edge is a very well-defined difference between two shapes in terms of texture, value, or color. A soft edge is a gradual transition between two shapes, so that the position of the edge is not well-defined.  A rough or intermediate edge is just that - some sort of combination of hard and soft.  Its exact characteristics depend on the medium being used.  I paint in watercolor, and a rough edge is created by dragging the brush sideways over the paper, thereby depositing pigment on the "hills" of the paper and not in the "valleys".  From close up, it does indeed look rough.  From far away, where the details are not visible, it looks soft.  The fourth type of edge is a lost edge, or no edge at all.  Edges are most often lost only along a part of the edge of a shape.

And what of lines?  Lines are really just very thin shapes.  They also can be hard (completely defined), soft (painted into wet), rough (that is, with some skipped spots), and lost (where a large part of a line is not explicitly painted).

The worst edge mistake of most beginning painters is to make all of their edges hard.  Besides producing a monotonous and boring painting, hard edges make the shapes appear to have been glued to the paper or canvas.  They remind us of coloring books, where we learned as children to stay "inside the lines" if we wanted a pat on the back from our mentors.

Even if a symbol has a characteristic edge type, we should include a bit of another type here and there for the sake of entertainment.  The painting At Anchor has examples of all of these various edges:

Although the cloudy sky is normally represented with soft edges, there are a scattering of rough edges for interest and variation.  What we usually want to avoid in the sky are hard edges.

Soft edges can also be seen in the reflections of the ship hulls in the water.  There are plenty of hard edges on the ships and between the silhouettes of the land and the sky and water.  The land silhouette on the right has many lost edges - although separate buildings are suggested, there aren't any real edges to define them.  The viewer's imagination has to do that work, which is a good thing.  A few soft edges between this shape and the sky would have improved this painting.

If you look closely, you can find not only hard but also broken lines in the masts and rigging, and some of the rigging doesn't quite reach the mast where it's headed (lost).

Here's one more example to consider -  the painting Country Church:

Note the tops of the background trees - mostly rough edges, to suggest leaves, but some edges softened for the sake variation - and also to assist in the illusion of depth.  There are plenty of hard edges in the building, and notice the lost edge between the darkest part of the tree trunk and the ground, and the rough edges between the shadow shapes and the grass shape.

So - to make your paintings more entertaining, and to give the viewer something to ponder, vary your edges.  Having almost all of your edges hard is the worst edge mistake you can make!

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Artist Tip #24 - iPad and ValueViewer app for reference image management

We're going to take a little break from design, and talk about using an iPad (or other tablet) to manage reference photos.

Shortly after I got my iPad (a first generation one, so I'm currently badly out of date), I abandoned printing out references on paper and began using my iPad to store and display my painting references.  I use iPhoto on my iMac to manage all of my photos, and I have them organized into a large number of albums... for example: barns, city scenes, Paris, Cornwall, people, animals, etc.  I just sync my iPad to the appropriate albums, and all of those references appear on my iPad.  Here is a screen shot of my iPad showing some of the reference photo albums I always have available:

Here is a look "inside" one of my albums, showing thumbnails of the reference photos:

When one of these thumbnails is touched, it expands into the original reference photo:

So when I get ready to paint (in my studio, for a demo, at a class or workshop, or while working at Artists Workshop Gallery), I just take out my iPad, decide then and there what I'll paint, do the drawing, set up the iPad with the reference on it where I can see it, and start painting.  In addition, the reference can be "adjusted" by pinching and dragging to adjust the design.  It is a great system - I can't believe how I used to print everything out in the "bad old" days!

About a year ago, fellow artist Charles Harrington recommended to me an iPad app called ValueViewer, which makes this approach to reference photos even better:

This app lets you load one of your photos into the app (or you can take a photo with your iPad if you have a newer model with a camera and are painting plain air) and then manipulate it to improve the composition and simplify the drawing.  The image can be rotated by 90 or 180 degrees, and then straightened by a few degrees by simply rotating the image with two fingers.  It can be expanded and reduced in size by pinching, and moved around the viewing area by dragging with one finger.  The size and shape of the viewing area can be adjusted to fit exactly the dimensions of one's paper or canvas.  Various grid lines can be superimposed on the image to aid in drawing, as in this example:

In addition to the original color image, one can choose a gray-scale image, a  two-value black and white image, and a 3-level gray-scale image, to help one to choose proper values.  The "final" reference image can be locked from any changes, and the menus can be removed from the top and bottom of the screen by double-tapping the screen.

So... if you do a lot of painting from photographic references, I strongly suggest that you equip yourself with an iPad with the ValueViewer app to simplify your artistic life.  Of course, you can also carry on it images of your own completed paintings, and images of others' paintings that you admire.  A used first generation iPad can be picked up now for less than $150, but I suggest you splurge and get a later model, with a built-in camera.  It's useful for for much more than your reference photos!  And you'll save a lot of money on ink.

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The Lieutenancy at Honfleur - Original Watercolor Painting

The Lieutenancy building stands at the entrance to the Old Basin at Honfleur. It was built in the 18th century, and was the home of the Governor of Honfleur.

If you'd like to purchase this 11" x 15" original watercolor painting for $200 including shipping within the United States, you can do it securely on my website www.jimoberst.com (click on the image). There are additional paintings for sale there, and my smaller paintings are available on my other website www.weeklywatercolor.com.  Add a unique original painting to your collection!

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Artist Tip #23 - Using Symbols to Simplify Shapes - Part 2

In our previous artist tip, we introduced the idea of simplification through using symbols.  We shall continue this discussion by introducing additional symbols that represent items often making an appearance in our paintings.  It remains each artist's task to identify the objects that he/she paints frequently, and to develop symbols to represent these objects in the way he/she prefers.

In landscapes, one often must represent a deciduous forest, as in Lake Lucerne Sailing:

Here the deciduous tree mass is represented by a single mass of color, with some variation in hue and value.  The edges are rough-brushed to represent the rough edges of trees, and a few trunks and branches are suggested.  The gives a much simpler and more appealing representation than actually trying to paint each tree in the mass.

The painting Porta Nigra shows symbols for both figures and wet ground:

It's important to develop an aptitude for painting figures in the landscape.  Without figures, many landscapes look vacant, as though a bomb has dropped.  Figures in the landscape must be in the same style as the rest of the painting.  For example, if the painting is done loosely, the figures must also be painted loosely to look as if they "belong".  Wet ground is indicated by reflections.  Reflections always come directly toward the bottom of the painting.  To avoid the wet ground looking like a lake, it's important to indicate a few surface marks.  In this painting, the cracks in the concrete serve this purpose.

Often in landscape paintings, the background consists of distant buildings or cities.  An example of this can be seen in Evening on the Bosphorus:

In this case, a middle-eastern city is indicated simply with a mass of color, with slightly varying hue and value for interest.  The shape at the top of the silhouette, with towers, minarets, and domes, is all that is needed to suggest the city.  Drawing and painting the many actual buildings would lead to an overly busy, and likely overworked, background.

As a final example of symbols, let's look at several different skies.  In Twilight Sail, a sunset is simply but effectively indicated with yellow, pink, and purple hues:

In A Splendid Day, soft clouds give a hazy but sunny feeling to the painting:

The addition of a few rough edges to the sky in Standing Room Only changes the feeling to one of a disturbed sky, with perhaps some unsettled weather on the way:

There are many symbols that are of use to the painter who wants to paint quickly, and give the impression of looseness.  Each artist needs to determine which symbols he/she needs to develop, and practice them until their use is second nature.  Symbols provide one method to move from simply "reporting" what is in front of us to interpreting and suggesting our subject in our painting in a more creative way.

Marina San Giorgio Maggiore - Original Watercolor Painting

Across the Venice lagoon from St. Mark's Basilica lies a small island, San Giorgio Maggiore. It is home to a marina filled with sailboats, and its skyline is dominated by the domes and campanile of San Giorgio Maggiore church.

If you'd like to purchase this 11" x 15" original watercolor painting for $200 including shipping within the United States, you can do it securely on my website www.jimoberst.com (click on the image). There are additional paintings for sale there, and my smaller paintings are available on my other website www.weeklywatercolor.com.  Add a unique original painting to your collection!

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Mousehole Harbor - Original Watercolor Painting

Mousehole (pronounced “mowzel”) is a picturesque seaside town in Cornwall, UK, with a beach and harbor ringed by stone jettys.

If you'd like to purchase this 11" x 15" original watercolor painting for $200 including shipping within the United States, you can do it securely on my website www.jimoberst.com (click on the image). There are additional paintings for sale there, and my smaller paintings are available on my other website www.weeklywatercolor.com.  Add a unique original painting to your collection!

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Artist Tip #22 - Using Symbols to Simplify Shapes - Part 1

Simplify, simplify!  Representational artists hear these words over and over again from teachers and art textbooks.  If we don’t simplify the scene before us, we are likely to create a tight-looking, overly-busy painting.  It may be accurate, but it isn’t inviting and entertaining - it has no mystery; everything is clearly defined, making it difficult for our viewers to interact with the painting.  But exactly how to simplify the scene before us is not always obvious.  If we study the paintings of an accomplished artist who is thought to be “loose”, we see most of the represented objects greatly simplified.  We also notice that there is a consistency among the artist’s paintings - the simplified figures, trees, skies, sea, etc. look somewhat similar from painting to painting.  What is happening is that the artist is using symbols that he/she has developed to represent many of the objects before him/her in a simple (and loose-looking) way.  Symbol development is an important part of any artists’ pursuit of simplification.

The simplest symbol of an object is its shape.  If we are presented with only the shape of a human figure, with no internal detail at all, we immediately identify it as a figure.  This is true of most objects - a flower, a tree, a rock, a fence.  The easiest-to-recognize symbols are usually front or side views; a silhouette in 3/4 view has to be done more accurately to be easily recognizable.  If we are representing an object far away, and particularly one that is backlit, the shape is all that is needed.  For a closer object, we can embellish the shape a bit with some edge and internal details, but need to avoid overdoing it lest our painting becomes too busy and tight-looking.

In Summer on the Farm, we see gravel road…
 
...represented simply as a shape diminishing with distance, a light value, some shadows to define its surface, a few scrapes and lines to suggest ruts, some spatter, and some weeds growing in the ruts.  Once you have mastered this symbol, suggesting a simple gravel road in your paintings becomes routine.  And look at the foreground deciduous tree symbols in this painting… rough brush marks to suggest bark, light on one side where the sun hits, a mass of color for foliage, with some rough edges. suggested leaves and a few stray branches, and a dark shadow underneath the crown.  If these trees were further away, we’d paint very little of the detail (rough bark, suggested leaves) and just stick with their silhouette.

Now take a look at the evergreen forest in Sound of Silence...

The entire forest is a single symbol.. a green mass, with yellow and orange highlights and some value variation, some rough edges, and evergreen tree shapes sticking up above the major mass.  It’s darker at the bottom to anchor it to the ground.  There are a few trunks and branches suggested by scraping some paint away, and a few hanging branches are indicated at the edge of the shape.  Don’t forget that a good shape has incidents at the edges - see Artist Tip #21 to refresh your memory of this.  For the forest on the right, smaller and further away, we use the same symbol but greatly simplified, just a mass of color with a few tree shapes sticking up.  If, instead of developing this symbol, we tried to paint exactly what we see, we would have a very tight-looking and less interesting painting, with lots of individual trees and branches.  The overall shape is the thing!

Now consider the water and reflections in Off Port Clyde...

The calm water is indicated by just a few soft horizontal lines, and gradual darkening as it comes toward the viewer.  The slightly random hard-edged reflection also suggests that the water is calm.  Note that in this painting, the water, sky, and distant land are all symbols, while the boat itself, the subject of the painting, is rendered in detail.

Early Snowfall also shows calm water.  You can see the horizontal lines, but here a wet-into-wet soft reflection is used.  Both hard- and soft-edge reflections are legitimate symbols of reflections of objects in calm water.

In Beyond the Surf, we see surf and rough water....

There are no reflections.  The rough water is indicated by some thin, rough white horizontal areas representing far-away waves and surf.  The pounding surf by the shore is simply a random white shape, with a rough and soft top edge, and some shading down low to represent the shadow in actual surf.  Once you master symbols like this, you can quickly indicate a rough sea, regardless of the actual weather outside.

In our next Artist Tip, we’ll take a look at a few more symbols for you to consider, to ensure that this idea is firmly established in your approach to your paintings.  If you want your representational painting to look “loose” and not photographic, it’s important to develop symbols for the major ingredients of your typical subjects so you can easily simplify the scene before you, interpreting and enhancing it rather than just “reporting” it.

Artist Tip #21 - Good Shapes

In artist tip #9, we introduced the Elements of Design - the elements we have to work with to create our paintings.  The first element we discussed was shape.  Our entire painting is made up of shapes.  But what makes a "good" shape - one that is pleasing, interesting, engaging, and not boring to the viewer?  That's what we'll be talking about in this artist tip.  In the following, I'll take you on a journey from a bad shape to a good shape, based on my personal experience, and what I've learned from some very accomplished artists.

To begin, let's consider a very simple painting of a barn, rendered in only two values and one color, so that it's simply a shape:

Unfortunately, this is a very boring shape.  Any shape that "fits into" an approximate square or circle, as this one does, seems boring.  There is too much sameness for it to be interesting.  So, let's try to make this shape better by moving it from nearly a square to an oblong:

That's a bit better.  This is definitely less boring, but it's not going to hold anyone's interest for too long.  Let's try something else - let's give it a diagonal or oblique "thrust":

Now we're seeing a more interesting shape.  But we're not there yet.  Take a look at this version:

Here, we've added shapes and lines all around the edge of the previous version - a cupola, a weather vane, smoke stacks, shrubs, fence posts, tree limbs, a utility pole with wires, a road - that all connect with the basic barn shape.  They lock the shape into its environment, rather than leaving it looking like a cutout pasted on.  And they add lots of interest - there is plenty for the viewer's eye to wander over in this version.

So I suggest that a "good" shape has the following major characteristics:

• two different dimensions
• oblique
• incidents at the edges

There are many design errors that can lead to a boring painting, but one of the major ones is not paying attention to making good shapes.  Whenever you're working on a painted shape, think about keeping its major dimensions unequal, giving it an oblique character, and adding plenty of small incidents at its edges to lock it into the rest of the painting and to make it interesting to the viewer.  And these characteristics are automatically transferred to the other shapes touching this shape - in this case, to the negative space of the background.

One of the reasons I enjoy painting ships is that they automatically create good shapes - their hulls are unequal, oblique, even curved shapes, and the masts, rigging, and sails produce many edge incidents.

If you'd like to review some of my past artist tips, you can find them all by scrolling down to the search box in the right-hand column and typing in "artist tips".