No postcards please

Etchings by Charles Meryon, French 1821-1868

Here is a question from a reader that I found interesting. I appreciate the questions you all provide me. I have a small file of them to trot out when for blog ideas. I do feel sometimes as if I have picked all the low hanging fruit. The first 400 posts or so are real nuts and bolts art instruction. If you haven't read them I encourage you to do so.

Hey Stape!! Question, if you have an answer - How do I keep the compositions of my paintings (of important structures) from looking like postcards?
...................... Rachel from Cardholders Services
Rachel;
Here are some points with BULLETS;

• Postcards usually choose the most generic and obvious view. Perhaps you shouldn't. Balance the important structure with another less important one or.....
• Choose a detail or an unexpected view. I joke with my friend T.M. Nicholas every time we paint a picture with a prominent house in it (in the voice of an obnoxious gallery visitor) "I suppose it's nice, but I wish it was MY house". The solution to that is often to

PUT THE HOUSE INTO THE LANDSCAPE, RATHER THAN PUTTING THE LANDSCAPE AROUND THE HOUSE.

I often will paint the landscape and THEN drop the house into it to make sure that happens. The painting then says "LANDSCAPE with a house, rather than landscape with a HOUSE.

• We all enjoy sunny, blue skied days, but so do the people who make postcards, avoid that big blue background and use something with a little more edge. Try not to paint too "sweet" postcards are always stupidly cheerful and happy, happy, happy. A less major key look will be less postcardy.
• The deep fault you are having is (I think) that you are choosing your pictures cropping and design from an object standpoint. That is : I am going to paint a picture of this house, better to:

FIND AN ARRANGEMENT OF LINES AND SHAPES IN NATURE THAT SET ONE ANOTHER OFF, WORRY ABOUT THE SUBJECT MATTER LATER.

If the shapes are good, the painting stands some chance of being successful, if they are not, and you can't bend them so that they are, you are never going to make a good picture at that location. Perhaps it would be better to introduce some tropical fish.
Postcards tend to be in all happy and bright colors too, introduce some grays and unexpected or even slightly discordant notes. Think Led Zeppelin ( Whole lotta love) not Bread (Baby Im-a want you). That's where power comes from, no edge, no power! Postcards are too "happy" to cut into the viewer much, you have to have some "attack" to get beyond the "pretty picture" problem.

• Ask yourself what YOU are bringing to this picture,YOU need to be on that canvas. That could be in the brushwork or in your "take" on the subject or in your color. A painting needs to be poetic, a postcard needs to be just what the average person expects to see. It might be better to shy away from those subjects when you can. If you are making postcards hoping that they will sell, my experience has been that the viewer knows that and feels that they want something more artful. Of course if you have a commission to paint a certain subject, you do what the client wants and sneak the art in there as best you can.
  

Here are a few notes on Charles Meryon. The son of a doctor, Meryon became a lieutenant in the French Navy. Upon leaving the navy he decided to become an artist. Because he was color blind he restricted himself to black and white, particularly etching. Working first as a copyist in a production house he later went out on his own focusing on scenes of Paris. He made great series of them.

Meryon was technically brilliant but as much as his art appealed to, and was understood by other artists who revered him, it didn't sell particularly well. In later years Meryon went mad and was committed to an insane asylum. I am feeling a little "off" myself.

I a guest artist this next week at the Ocean House, in Watch Hill Rhode Island, a very grand place indeed. If you are in the area, stop by and see me paint, I suppose I will be working on the grounds of the hotel or on the shore pictured here.