Each brushstroke.....

Here's a Metcalf painted about a hundred years ago in Cornish Flats, New Hampshire. This is also where I painted today. I got up early and set up in the field you see in this painting and worked there most of the day. I love finding sites used by my artist heroes. I will do a post or two this summer showing a few of those places. I will show you the artists painting and what the site looks like today. However I have a different agenda tonight. I am going to talk about the building blocks of a painting.

I am going to list the things that must be considered every time your brush touches the canvas. They are legion. Every time you paint a "note" you need to understand the following things. I am proposing a sort of checklist. However it is long enough that it will take some time for you to be able to automatically apply each of these ideas. But if you start to look for several of them it will help your painting and gradually you can expand your checklist to include all of these. You must consider these qualities listed below in every brushstroke.

• Is this brushstroke in the right place?
  

• Is it in the light or is it in the shadow?

• Is it the right value?

• Is it the right color?

• Is it the the right chroma, that is, is it too saturated or is it too grave ( gray)?

• Is the temperature of the color correct, is it too warm or is it too cool?

The brushstroke you place on the canvas will be one of several kinds. The brush stroke will either:

• Be visible or invisible. If it is visible it will:

• Run with or along the form. Imagine a brushstroke running up the trunk of a tree.

• Run around or across (against) the form, like a ring going around or a plane laying horizontally across the surface of an object.

• It may obscure the form. Think of this as a basket weave pattern, or a flurry of small strokes. You might expect to see this in dense foliage for instance.

• It may be a pointille dot. That is a small spot of paint placed usually as an accent, nearly round or squarish in shape, but not greatly elongated.

• have the edge painted correctly, either hard or soft.
  

All of these brushstrokes work together to form a larger unit called a passage. That's rather like words working together to build a paragraph in an essay.

This seems like a short entry, and perhaps it is, but there is a whole lot there. I would call it concentrated. If you commit these lists to memory it will help you as you consider your work I will elaborate more on this and talk about what a passage should contain. I will begin to show the different sort of brushstrokes over the next week or so.