If only I knew

Frederick Mulhaupt 1871-1938, lived in and painted Gloucester, Massachusetts.

There are now over a thousand posts in this blog. When one writes a book, it is a reasonable assumption as you write page 342 that the reader has previously read page 40. But in a blog people just parachute in anywhere they damn well please. I get a lot of e-mail queries that I have answered before or written about a year or years ago (have I really been doing this for years?) it was to be a one year project, you know. Keep those questions coming, it's not a problem, I ignore some of them anyway, or snap off a quick return to  the interrogator alone. I get some questions that really help me to know what to write about and inform me when I have been aphotic when I want so to be limpid. Here is an example of a question like that resulting from my last post on premixing the color of your light.

Dear,  Mr. Stape

Does this premixed light color have white in it, or is it a color or mixture of colors without white?

Deb Pilatory

Yes of course it does. I should have said that. The premixed color should be mostly white in fact, The premixed color should be high key, like the light itself, real high key.

The blog started out with me explaining the most basic information about painting and studio knowledge. I progressed through ever more complex subjects like design, color, tree anatomy, the art business, framing, American painting, a woman giving birth to rabbits in Elizabethan England and the curious narrative of Dirk Van Assaerts. There is a whole lot back there and some of it is useful. If you have the time,  I urge you to explore the blog backwards, that is,  starting from its beginning and working forward. It should take you about six to eight weeks. There is no index. Even I have no idea what all is in those archives.

Antonio Cirino 1889-1983 Rockport, Massachusetts artist

Tonight's subject is  "If only I knew" For me painting is about half observation, and about half problem solving. I am always looking at my art (and yours) and asking "whats wrong with this thing, why isn't it working and how could it be made to? " 


THERE IS ALWAYS AN ANSWER TO EVERY PAINTING PROBLEM, EVEN THOUGH YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW IT.


I might not know that answer, but there is one. If Willard Metcalf, Rembrandt, or John Sargent were to sit in front of my canvas they could rapidly fix its' problems. So if I knew what they would have done, I might know at least one answer to the problem. Often there ARE several. Sometimes the answer can be found through  careful observation and analysis, but just as often the answer lies in invention, design, obfuscation or rearrangement of the elements of the view.

For me a painting is finished when I have solved all of its' problems. In old movies physicists worked on multiple blackboards stretched about the walls of a classroom, writing endless equations and mathematical claptrap until they reached that last blackboard and did finally solve the equation. This is the process that lead to the discovery of flubber .

When I don't know the answer to a problem in a painting I begin plugging in solutions, what if I soften it all up or subordinate this passage to that one? I try a change, and if it doesn't help I take it out with the side of my knife and try something else. I have stood in front of a painting (particularly seascapes) and tried solution after solution for WEEKS. There are thousands of decisions in a single painting.

A painting has to be pretty much all "right". The viewer won't tolerate much unconvincing drawing or unpleasant design flaws, nor will he waste much time on a painting that is merely accurate or ordinary. Folks are easily bored, at least the ones who spend real money on art. The more expensive the art gets the smarter the customers seem to become in the traditional painting world. Oddly, the opposite is true in the modern art world.

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 If you would like to know about the upcoming July workshop in New Hampshire please
click Here. I have included the cost of the workshop and information on the location in the White Mountains. I can teach you a whole lot, and probably save you years of screwing around. Why torture yourself ? Don't get left behind! You are worth it! Everyone's doing it. Act now.

The workshop takes place at a historic, wooden 19th century Inn in the White mountains with a view that is astounding, and all we have to do is paint. I park my car and forget it for the whole time I am there. I knock myself out from breakfast till bedtime to make sure that the workshop is as intense and useful as I can possibly make it.

Premix the color of your light

Sanford Gifford, Kauterskill Clove

Light has color, as a landscape painter you need to identify what that color is (or what color you are going to use) in a painting. Often the light is warm and butter or honey colored ,late on a sunny day. But on a gray day it might be cool or even silvery. There are situations when the landscape is suffused with red light. It is very useful to mix the color that is in your light and have a pile of it on your palette. Most of the colors of objects in the light will be effected by it. You can feed this color into whatever the light is hitting. This is useful for two different reasons. One it saves you having to mix every color in the light from scratch. You can inject a mix of the local or apparent color of the object with your light mixture and get pretty close to its illuminated color. This saves a lot of mixing time on location and clearly communicates what is in the light an what is not. On a sunny day I am going to expect to mix a red and a yellow into a lot of white to make the color of the light. What red and which yellow can be adjusted depending on the look of the day and what you have on your palette.

Above is a painting by Sanford Gifford that is suffused with the color of the light. Her has pretty much used the color of his light to paint everything that takes light from the sky. If it turns towards the sun, it gets the yellow mixture into its' note.

Here is another Sanford Gifford with golden light. One of the things that routinely happens in nature is that the color of the shadow is, or at least contains, the complement of the color of the light. So a golden sunset will call for blue or violet shadows. If you have the color of your lights it is easy to come up with an opposite color to add to your shadows. The complement of the light will form a major part of your shadow note and can be fed into those to establish the shadow color.

When I paint outside I have a pile of paint that is the color of my lights, I use it for underpainting the sky to get light in that, and I use it to more easily and swiftly create the color of things in the light.

I don't really make a shadow color, but I am always aware of what it is. On a sunny day I like to feed cobalt violet into my shadows, so  that functions as a premixed shadow. I also like to throw ultramarine and burnt sienna at my shadows, by varying the mix of the two I can control my color temperature there. Burnt sienna is great for heating up shadows, particularly in their reflected lights. I like to heat up my deepest shadows. the darkest accents work best if they are fiery hot. Often I am installing this because I like the way it looks rather than because I have observed it.

Having a standard color laced into my lights tends to unify a painting. rather than a mosaic of unrelated colors the lights are "coded" through by a constant note. If something out in nature has an interesting color that doesn't conform to this system I am free to disregard my  systematized light. But generally the light does have a color and that influences every surface it hits and determines the shadow color too with its complement.

The Sanford Gifford above was painted using a systematic color for the light. This painting was no doubt done in a studio from a drawing made on location, or a painted sketch. He did not stand out in the field with that canvas matching the colors of a sunset. He invented it and imposed it onto his drawing. Gifford "fixed" a color for his light and used it through out his painting.He got a believable light effect and the painting is suffused with his light color that he has sown into the entire  tableau.

Landscape painting is a lie, well told!

© The Estate of Edward Seago, courtesy of Portland Gallery www.portlandgallery.com


 I received this comment on the last post:

 This is interesting and a bit confusing to me...if you 'key' your painting, don't you risk losing that lovely, oh so lovely atmospheric sense, the 'lightness' of nature that is almost like 'dew' to behold? I understand it all depends on what the light effect is of the particular scene you are viewing, but still, the phrase 'key your painting' troubles me and makes me think that it is similar to making NATURE conform to something she is not....of course, I am talking from a stand point of almost zero experience....and how does this translate to indoor/ still life painting? Personally, I love the Boston Painters, whose work, while it definitely utilizes dark darks and flat shadows, always feels 'light' and that the light effect 'was just that'.

Exactly! I want to make nature conform to something it is not. I wish to make art. Nature is one thing. Art is another. Arts a lie! The root of the word is artifice. Here's the definition of that. "Clever or cunning devices or expedients, esp. as used to trick or deceive others: "artifice and outright fakery. You cannot "observe design, color or emotion into a landscape painting. All of these things are installed by the artist. Look at the wonderful Seago above, would you mistake it for a window? Is it truthful?

It is possible to set up a still life in the studio and carefully transfer its appearance onto a canvas, at least if you have controlled lighting. But landscape is a different game. For a number of reasons.

•  Outside, nature is always changing. Every time you look up it is slightly different. There is no "thing" to copy exactly. You cannot set up outside and copy your way to a great landscape painting.

© The Estate of Edward Seago, courtesy of Portland Gallery www.portlandgallery.com

• The landscape is a warehouse of more props and details than you could ever want. It is essential to select the important, and reject the unnecessary clutter. It is impossible to paint every leaf in a forest and still get every blade of grass at your feet and maintain any semblance of unity or grace.

• You can paint exactly what is before you as carefully as you can, but I will eat  your lunch, EVERY TIME. Paintings carefully copied from nature before you are usually ordinary. Usually fine landscapes bring a treatment or a "take" on  the landscape that is individual to the artist. Their paintings look as if they could only have been made by that artist. Their paintings are personal, expressive and individual. Edgar Payne doesn't look like Corot or Constable, nature may be constant, but each of these different artists have made paintings that are distilled from the experience of nature rather than a precision reproduction of the actual scene in front of them.
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© The Estate of Edward Seago, courtesy of Portland Gallery www.portlandgallery.com

• The range of values outside exceeds our pigments range. The value of a painted sky is often too dark even if you use pure white. It is necessary sometimes to approximate the look of nature. A blue sky might be higher key than you can paint and still have any blue pigment in your note for instance. But most importantly, the 'look' of nature is secondary to the "look" of the painting. If the painting doesn't move the viewer, you can't assure them that it looks just like nature. Art is one thing, nature is another.
• There is a historic "language" of landscape painting, and it is inventive. The greats have rearranged and riffed on nature to make their paintings. Landscape painting allows for lots of re arrangement and artifice. it is that quality that for me is what makes landscape so appealing. If you play it straight you will usually end up with matter of fact paintings. It is not what it is a picture of, but "how" it is a picture of, that is important in the landscape.
• No one would mistake a Corot or an Inness for a window. They are created illusions based on nature but arranged and presented in a manner unique to their particular creator. Landscape painting is best when it approaches poetry and weakest when it is an accountant's laundry list of the objects that happened to be in front of the artist.
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  © The Estate of Edward Seago, courtesy of Portland Gallery www.portlandgallery.com
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• Imagine an historical account of the battle of Gettysburg. A 100,000 page description including how every single soldier put on their shoes and explaining their genealogy and sartorial preferences with a complete accounting of their high school grades, and body mass index thrown in for good measure, would not be more informative than a description that seizes on the salient points of the battle and tells the story of a few men's experiences that typify the experiences of a great number of the participants. Selection and simplification are the bifurcated roots of design.
• There is a big difference between a believable or a beautiful landscape, and a truthful one. A great landscape painting is more than truthful. A map is truthful, a painting is a construct, an artificial creation that recalls nature rather than records it faithfully. Art is a lie! well told, that says more than the truth.
• I love the Boston school too, my roots are there. But, the Boston school painters were largely studio painters. They painted figures and interiors and still lives. Except for Bunker, ( oh yeah, and Enneking!) I can think of few who really concentrated on the landscape. This is true of the current generation as well. Landscape painting is a peculiar and different discipline than studio figure painting. The New York and Old Lyme painters, like Hassam, Metcalf and others were more serious about the landscape. For most of the Boston school landscape was a sideline or the background for figures. Aldro Hibbard was a student of Tarbell and the other Boston School painters of the previous generation to his own, he was a landscape painter, was he still Boston school? Maybe, maybe not.....Kaula, a lesser known Boston painter did a lot of landscapes, Benson did a few, but he would be forgotten today if his pure landscape was all that he had produced. There is (in my opinion) not a particularly strong landscape tradition within the Boston school and most of it's great practitioners were figure painters and not landscapists. I bet I made a lot of enemies tonight.

A little dab'l doo ya!

Emile Gruppe

 A reader asked me this question;

  I have never used lead white. But titanium white to me is the color killer. I cannot get over how much it dulls and cools colors. Even the tiniest amounts sap the life from the color mixture you are working on. Since we are talking about palettes, do you have any instruction on color lightening while avoiding the neutralizing power of titanium white?

There's an interesting question. I have written about this before and somewhere back in the over 1000 posts behind this one lies pretty much what I am about to say now.

EVERY DROP OF WHITE YOU USE IS A DROP OF COLOR YOU DON'T USE.

 White will kill your color, make it chalky or vapid. Titanium white is very opaque and it will eat your color if used in excess. What I mean by that is it will overpower your colored pigments because it is so opaque. But still I think it is the best solution for 99% of the painters out there. But here are the alternatives.

• Zinc white, the Emile Gruppe above was painted with zinc white, Gruppe and zinc's other adherents liked it because it didn't eat up their color so much., It is much more transparent than the titanium, weaker. BUT be warned, there is a major question about the permanence of Zinc white. It makes a brittle paint film and recent thought seems to have turned decisively against its use. If you are going to use zinc white you may have permanency problems.
• Flake or lead white is less opaque than titanium also. It handles beautifully, looks good on the canvas and dries quickly. It has everything going for it except one thing. It is poisonous. I don't recommend that anyone other than  hardcore professionals use it. It is not appropriate for amateurs. Unless you paint pretty well you won't see a big benefit from its use, and will needlessly expose yourself to lead. It is a good idea to wear gloves when working with lead white, never eat or smoke when working with it and never spray it or sand it. Aerosolized lead is a dangerous thing. Don't breathe lead.

I think as I said before, that titanium is the right white for most painters. This One is the whitest thing imaginable, nothing else is like it. 

If you paint darker, that is, you key your paintings down little you will have deeper richer color. Just as transposing a melody down an octave on the piano gives a richer sound, keying down a painting gives richer color. You can make your paintings with color almost straight from the tube if you keep the key of your paining a little bit low. The answer is to use less  white.

An old, and very skillful  artist told me about twenty five years ago "make nature look like your palette" I thought that was really strange for a while. I had worked so hard to learn to "hit" the color of nature in the value s that it presented itself in front of me. What he meant was to voice nature in values  that were more like those of the pigments sitting on your palette unalloyed.

I have known a painter or two who have substituted Naples yellow for their white and used that in its place. I never thought that worked so well, to fold a soft yellow into the entire painting. it gave a "look," that while OK in a single panting would be oppressive in a roomful of them. Tricks are like that, they frequently take away more than they give. Naples, real Naples is a lead paint too, like flake. So it is poisonous. However, most Naples today is a mixture of titanium white, yellow ocher and some cadmium ( or cheaper substitute like arylide) yellow. These Naples are not labeled hues for some reason. Remember, a hue is a mixture of colors that imitates the real thing. The Naples hues have none of the lovely softness of the real Naples. They are strident and a bit acidic.You can tell a real Naples because the tube is very heavy, like lead.

Lastly, passages that are transparent, contain no white. That's what transparent means in painting practice, non white in there! The white of the grounds shows through the paint to keep it light in appearance.. The paint itself is only a thin film. You can bet the white problem and paint some very high key notes anyway by working transparently on a white ground.

I think the best strategy is to paint with less white but still use titanium. It s the best nontoxic permanent white. Titanium is inexpensive and made in lots of different styles by different makers. If you go easy on it you will have fine color.