shapes and masses kept large

Maynard Dixon, The Forgotten Man

Here is a question I received lately.

Bullet #2 about shapes and masses kept large, is something I want to make work for me better- can keeping the value the same within the mass, and keeping lines soft, enough to get a bunch of little objects read as one unit?
Ms. Prim N. Shrivley

Ms. Prim;
Keeping your masses simple and your shapes large is one of the skills that develops over time. It is part observation and part installation. It results in a breadth of vision that can please the viewer with clean design and lend dignity and import to subjects that are mundane or commonplace. Here are some bullets;

• The idea is to subordinate the smaller variations or details to the larger shape on which they ride. Look at the Maynard Dixon above, if you squint at the mans jacket you will see that it is really just a small light area and a big dark. Notice the shadow of the lapel and the shadow next to that where the sleeve sits against the side of the coat. Those deep shadows are only a little different than the area around them. They have been subordinated to the larger shape of the jacket shadow. The passage says DARK JACKET with shadows, rather than, dark jacket WITH SHADOWS.
  
• This is a matter of emphasis. You can look at any scene in two ways, piecemeal, that is as an inventory of its parts, or you can see it broadly. Seeing broadly detail is minimized and the whole scene is apprehended in its entirety. The first time I was told about this I didn't get it at all. I eventually learned to apply it, but for me it was a long process. Ives Gammell (my teacher) used to tell me, don't look into your shadows. He meant to get the "big look" rather than scrutinizing the variations within the shadow field.
• Squinting will simplify the the shapes in a scene and help you get the idea BUT, really this is a convention. This is a deliberate simplification of the little stuff in order to sake the big stuff dominant. Any time you paint details you can imagine turning down the volume on them a little.
• Connecting lights and connecting dark shapes are both ways of helping along the "big look".
• Look again at the painting up top, notice the marching trousers behind our dejected hero. See how simplified they are? They are just lights and darks, in all of those pant legs and skirts there is one (1!) fold. There is nothing there to hang up your eye. This gives the painting an artful look. Vision is busier than this. This formalizing and distancing makes the image read as something special, an altered more acute and discreet vision.
• Edward Hopper used this all the time. Below is "Earl Sunday Morning". This picture has had the hell simplified out of it. There is nearly no detail. Look at the awning in the middle of the painting for instance. It is just a long shape. there are no folds or details within it because Hopper left them out. There are no little brick details in that facade either.
  

I will return to this subject again in my next post.

A Gruppe and some fast food

Here I am again, blogging from McDonalds. Maybe tomorrow I will have my internet connection back. I am going to shoot some bullets at this Gruppe painting.

• All off the greens and blues are pthalo of course, the green grass at the foot of the barn, the foreground shadows, even the deep color of the pines at the right.
• All of the shapes and masses are kept large, that is they aren't chopped up with distracting, interrupting details. Every nuance within the shapes is subordinated to the larger shape. That is , when you look at it you see the big shape and THEN the variety within in it.
• The trees are handled as a blur of fine sticks against the sky. Both have to be wet to do this and it takes a bit of practice. I always liked that effect though and have painted a zillion trees that way. This is more a convention than something you will always observe. It is a simplified explanation of what is actually seen.
• The big squared off shape of the sky as it descends above the pine tree at the right makes the sky the positive shape. It is painted over the trees and makes the sky the "big" shape. This curving, thrusting form also brings the viewers eye around that corner and down towards the river. Gruppe does the same thing again to the right of the barn roof.
  
• Notice how Gruppe has linked all of the light shapes of the rocks beginning at 9:00 and continuing along the stream into the picture. The upright trunks of the trees are tied into that series of shapes too.
• The dark pine next to the barn's roof and the pine that "ends" the stream bracket and close in the illuminated tree and barn "punchline".

That's about as much McDonalds as I can take. Be back soon.

WHEN I GET SCARED

Emile Gruppe

I am typing away in a MacDonalds, The hurricane didn't much any damage here, lots of rain, a little high wind. I still have power, many people around here don't. But I did lose the internet.
I am writing a post on the picture above, if the internet is willing I should be able to get it out tomorrow.

I should throw something of value out here tonight. Lets try this;

WHEN I GET SCARED I DROP BACK TO A THREE COLOR PALETTE.

As you all have seen my palette in previous posts, I won't list my colors, but I have both chromatic and earth colors on my palette. I am not requires to use every color on the palette though. Embedded within my palette are several smaller three color palettes. For instance I could use cadmium yellow, cobalt blue and cadmium vermilion. Often when I decide to use just three pigments I move them in front of the other pigments to remind myself I am only using these three.

When I am floored on how to paint something, at least its color. I will simplify the problem by only using three colors. It makes a smaller problem because there are few choices to make and the notes I do make are easily repeatable. So When I am stuck or just "getting killed" out there. I switch down to a smaller palette.

Gotta go the Macdonalds is closing. More soon.

A Gruppe painting discussed

As long as Emile Gruppe has surfaced I think I will talk about a couple of them. Emile is one of the artists who from about the 1920's through the late 70's was one of the most sucessful and well known painters of the Cape Ann school. The other "big guy" was Aldro Hibbard. Although I like Gruppe well enough, he is eclipsed for me by Hibbard. The Gruppes seem a little "quick" for my taste. But that is what they were about, and people who like Gruppe like him for that reason.

Gruppe was a splendid designer and pattern maker. The autumn scene is of the Congregational Church in Rockport, sometimes called "Old Sloop" church. The big dark tree on the right is balanced by three or four lighter birch trees leaning away from it at the opposite angle, on the left. These trees include a pattern of darks against the brightly colored midground. Gruppe has used counterchange all over this picture, setting the dark parts of the trees against the light parts of the sky and on the left darkening the sky so the white birches are boldly relieved against it. The strong darks make the colors "pop". A strong shadow is usually called for in order to get a strong light. It is the contrast between the light and the shadow that makes the picture "pop. This pattern of darks is liked together into a web like net thrown over the midtones of the distance.

The strongest and biggest dark (on the right hand tree) is placed next to the church, which gets our attention to that area. Sometimes artists call that a tonal climax, the darkest dark and the lightest light are placed together at the subject. It is a useful device sometimes.

The foreground and the base of the tree look to be painted in the mixed "umbers" that I mentioned last night. They contain all three primaries. The foreground grass looks like it was painted with ocher, but Gruppe used no earth colors, so it was mixed from chromatic color.

I wish Gruppe had taken a ruler to that steeple though. Gruppe lovers don't care, but that would bother me if I owned the painting. Its lean would haunt me. The bottom left corner of the lantern (that part of a steeple) needs to be kicked out a little to look "square". Gruppe was an excellent draftsman, I just think it wasn't important to him. It is that sort of thing that puts me off Gruppe sometimes. I never have that problem with a Hibbard, he adhered to a higher standard in his drawing.

Notice the repeating gables of the buildings across the middle ground. They have a relationship to one another that is rhythmic. The repeated shapes differing in size and perspective give a jaunty bebop sort of a feel.

One of the advantages of painting loosely as this is that you can get away with a lot of arranging. The more literal you are, the less poetic your arrangements will be.

YOU CANNOT OBSERVE DESIGN INTO A PAINTING!

In order to have rhythm and design in your painting it is necessary to push it around so it has those things. They will not mysteriously appear , they have to be consciously installed. A meticulously rendered highly accurate rendition is often arrhythmic.