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ABOUT PAINTINGWhat separates a good painter from a great painter? What makes one painting of a subject clearly superior to another painting of the same subject. I've put a fair amount of thought into this as I've tried to become the best painter I can be. I've tried to understand what my favorite painters do that makes their work so good. I compare my work to theirs to see what I can learn. I don't want to copy them but sometimes seeing how they solved a problem gets me back on track for coming up with my own solution. As the saying goes, we all stand on the shoulders of those who came before.Here are some of my current thoughts (which will undoubtedly change over time): The ability to draw well and compose competently is a given with artists who know their craft. This includes both representational and abstract painters. It's what happens afterwards in a fusion of intention and craft that lifts great art above good art. Intention: What made me want to paint a particular subject in the first place? It is important to keep that in mind so I don't wander off-track. A great painting has one idea and everything else is subordinated to it and supportive of it. If things "go south", as Scott Christensen (a great landscape painter with whom I took a ten day plein air workshop in 2004) would say, is it because I lost track of my idea? I need to step back, remember why I was grabbed by the subject and evaluate what I've done in terms of expressing that. If I can't really recapture the passion and enthusiasm of that initial moment and use it to drive the work, then the painting may be still be pleasant, competently painted and quite saleable or may it fail altogether (and you'll never see it). But it won’t be great. Craft: Why is one painting breathtaking and another so-so? Command of the craft of painting is probably at least part of the answer. It has taken a number of years for me to feel that I have started to have a decent understanding of how to mix oil paint and apply it to a surface with the appropriate brush. Richard Schmid, in his already classic book, Alla Prima, enumerates five components over which the artist must have some mastery in order to paint well. They are drawing, composition (or design), value, color and light, and edges. (What follows are my thoughts about them, not his). Drawing is having the hand-eye coordination and motor control to make the marks I want to make the way I want to make them with whatever media I'm using, whether it's a pencil or paint drips. This takes time and steady, consistent practice to develop and, for most of us, it's not easy. But there is absolutely no substitute for the ability to draw well. Period. The power it gives an artist to express their intention is limitless. Truly great painters are great drawers, too. They may do it with a brush instead of a pencil, but, really, painting is drawing anyway. I love to draw. I've done it since I could hold a pencil. It's how I learn what something looks like. The information goes up my hand and into my brain for storage and future retrieval. Just taking a photo doesn't cut it. It's why I still do all my preliminary work with pencil or charcoal and paper instead of moving cropped photographic elements around on a computer screen, like I hear quite a few artists do these days. But something really good happens when you draw it yourself. There's a transmutation which starts the process of making the subject yours. Photos lie. They distort. They flatten everything in them. They are a chemical emulsion on paper or plastic or they're bits in a computer (if you've gone digital). They are not ultimate truth, just a popular inexpensive kind of representation. Once you understand and learn to compensate for their shortcomings, they are very useful. As an animal artist, I have no choice but to use them, but I still draw from live animals whenever I get the chance so that I will know better when the photos are leading me astray. Composition (for the purposes of oil painting) is the arrangement of the picture elements on the surface to be painted. Many, many "rules" of design or composition have been formulated over the years, but it really comes down to developing an "eye" for what "looks right". I have found that while my fifteen years as a graphic designer seems like a unfortunate diversion sometimes, it did develop my eye. As much as I've struggled in (most) other areas of picture-making, my teachers through the years have stated pretty consistently that my design ability was one of my strengths. So at least I've had that in the bank as one area where I do have confidence. Design is one of a number of ways to guide the viewer's eye through a painting. Some divisions of space seem to be automatically more pleasing to the human eye than others. Asymmetry is more interesting than symmetry, which is why the beginner's tendency to plop the subject smack in the middle is soooo boring. But, sometimes, it's exactly the right place. It all depends... In the end, I, the artist, can do anything I want as long as it works. Who decides what "works"? Everyone who views the work, including me. Who's right? Who knows. What "works" changes over time, too. Frustrated? Yeah, me too. I just do what works for me as best I can and hope someone else likes it enough to want to hang on her wall. Value is the relative lightness or darkness of an area separate from its color. If you've ever seen a color painting reproduced in black and white and it still looked good and was intelligible, then it means that the artist got the values right. Value is great for getting the viewer to look where you want them to. It's not mysterious. The eye will tend to go to the area of greatest contrast, so I sometimes use this "trick" to control the center of interest. For instance, I'm painting the head of an African buffalo which is half in light, half in shadow. I can put my lightest light on the shadow side and the head will pop out. Or I can keep a background area painted in close values of low contrast so that you won’t notice them as much. Color (and light) is what we all tend to see and have opinions about. But it isn't always what it seems. Colors only exist in relationship to other colors. An individual color can look lighter or darker, warmer or cooler depending on what the adjacent colors are. There is "local" color, the color of a thing unaffected by any particular kind of light, but paintings in which the subjects are only rendered in local color are not ones I personally find particularly interesting or creative. For me, and I think for most really good representational painters, it's all about light and its effects. I don't so much paint a subject as paint the light on it and then tweak that to my own taste to express my intention. There is a level of abstract thinking here that I personally find a lot more interesting and endlessly more challenging than literal interpretation. I don’t think much anymore in terms of something being brown or blue. The colors in my paintings result from a thinking process that may go like this: "That shadow area of the grass has gotten too warm and dark. I need to make it cooler and lighter." I know that the local color of the grass is "green". That's the "hue". What gives richness and variety is varying the value and temperature within an area. Paintings in which this is done well are the ones that you can look at with pleasure forever and see new nuances on every viewing. Edges are what happen when you make a stroke with a brush. They can be hard, soft or in between. They are a transition point and, like in the natural world in which the edges between two habitats have the richest variety of life, offer a wide variety of opportunities for creativity and personal interpretation. Awareness of and control of edges are, I think, an indicator of the highest level of craft in painting. They are another way to lead the eye. Harder edges will stand out against softer ones. In a landscape, the farther back in the landscape one goes, the softer the edges because of the effects of the earth's atmosphere (atmospheric perspective). A variety of edges in a painting adds visual interest and richness. AND A FEW MORE THINGS...Orchestration is one of the things that I now realize that my work has been lacking in the past. I learned about this from Scott Christensen. It's the final bringing together of the whole thing, a balancing of all the elements I've been discussing. Learning to do this has slowed me down. It is taking longer to "finish" a painting now than last year because I now have so many more things to keep track of. I stop, look and see that an area isn't sufficiently resolved compared to the surrounding areas. Then I summon whatever mental energy it takes to come to grips with it and complete it. No evasions or excuses. When I don't see anymore of those areas, then the painting is "done".Judgement and choices. A painting is really a series of judgements and choices. Good ones make good paintings, great ones make great paintings, poor ones, well, you get the idea. Good working painters make good choices most of the time. How do you develop great judgement and how do you know when you have? I think that having your work critiqued by knowledgeable, articulate people who are sympathetic to what you are trying to do is extremely helpful. Looking at and analyzing lots and lots of original art is also necessary. An artist needs to see the best work possible as often as possible to train his eye. One needs to learn what the best work looks like and figure out why it's great. And then apply those lessons to one’s own work. Style. I've struggled since I started painting in oils toward the kind of finish and consistency that I see in the works of my favorite painters. It has seemed until recently like I've started from scratch with every piece. I haven't been worried about having a "style" per se since I've known since art school that an artist's style is the inevitable result of all the decisions they make while doing a body of work over time. I didn't have to consciously set out to invent one. But how to get there? How to reach the point of knowing where I wanted to get to when I started a painting and having some idea of how to go about it? The thought that occurred to me one day was that every artist, in the end, has to create her own language, with its own "grammar" if you will. It's the answer to the question, "How do I make the marks that say 'leaves' or 'fur'?" Maybe it's a literal rendering of each detail, maybe it's abstract slabs of paint. What matters is that it is how I do it and since each one of us is physically and mentally unique, our marks, if we are honest in how we make them, can’t help but be different than anyone else's. What I knew I wanted in my paintings was a juicy surface quality that looks painted, not rendered. An almost calligraphic stroke that could be varied depending on what was needed to describe the subject. (See Tools, below) Tools: Brushes - I started out with fitches (flat with a rounded end), moved to brights (flat with a square end, but shorter than flats) and now use rounds almost exclusively. I've tried a half dozen brands and have currently settled on Silver Brush Grand Prix bristles. For me, one of the great challenges of painting is to see how much information I can pack into a brush stroke. Can I describe form, value and color without losing the drawing? And watch those edges while I'm at it. Oh yes, and I want style points too. After years of brush lettering in the sign trade with sign quills, which are round, it finally occurred to me that maybe I could put that motor skill training to good use for making my marks on canvas. It was so liberating and it was FUN! Rounds were what artists had until about a hundred years ago. Hals, Sargent, Sorollo and other painters known for their bravura brush work largely used rounds. So why not try it myself since I had used them before for lettering? And, to be honest, all other things being equal, I know that brights and flats are used by lots of artists these days and that using a less common shape of brush gives my work a different look and, I hope, helps it stand out. Palette: After working with Scott Christensen(who required that we use only four colors at his workshop), I really simplified my palette of colors. I mix a lot more colors in a much wider variety of values and temperatures than I did before. My base palette is (from Scott) titanium white, ultramarine blue, Rembrandt red medium and cadmium yellow. Using just these four colors totally shifted my sense of what was possible and really moved me away from trying to duplicate the colors in a photograph. I also learned from him how to use restraint and mute colors so that when you really need to punch an area, you can. It was a revelation. I have since added back Winsor-Newton dioxine violet, cadmium orange, yellow ochre pale, Rembrandt transparent red oxide and turquoise blue one at a time as I really felt I needed them. I will sometimes add raw sienna or my beloved sap green, but generally mix my own greens now along with my greys and earth colors. I find that the additional colors are desirable for animals, which Scott doesn't paint. Stamina: Doing this well ain't easy. Painting at an easel can be hard, tiring work when you give it everything you've got. I started out in a local sign shop when I was 22 years old. Six plus hours a day of coating out 4x8's (no runs, no drips no errors), pouncing patterns, installing signs, digging post holes, hoisting around ladders and jacks and whatever else a sign painter's apprentice had to do tuckered me out (and got me in the best shape of my life). Painting is at least as much mental as physical and six plus hours at the easel sometimes almost tuckers me out more. It requires constant focus, attention and mindfulness and if I just don't have it on a given day, then there's paintings I don't even try to work on. This isn't a matter of waiting for inspiration to strike. Serious working artists work whether they feel like it or not. But I'm not going to successfully orchestrate a painting to finish if half the violin section is missing that day. So, I'll work on one that isn't at a critical point, draw from photos, do thumbnails of ideas, check email, pet the cat, play with the dog, tidy up... there's always something in the studio that needs doing. Oh, honey, that's such a beautiful painting. It looks just like a photograph. I hate it when someone says my paintings look just like a photograph. I know they mean well, but why should the successful resemblance to a photographic image end up being the ultimate criteria for judging the worth of a painting? It's probably at least partly the fault of the modern art movement of the last century when producing a work of art which could be appreciated and understood by the average citizen was a professional kiss of death. It's not that easy to learn how to appreciate and evaluate the quality of a painting anymore. But, if you're reading this as a non-artist, I'd love to have you tell me how much you like the colors or the effect of the light instead, as long as it's true. Finally: Some of you may have noticed that there has been no discussion of the content of my paintings or their meaning or even tales of suffering and starvation. I would only say that my first love is painting animals. They provide me with endless delight and inspiration. I hope that other people will like what I do and I'm flattered when someone loves a piece enough to buy it. But any deep meaning is what you find in it. AT WORK IN THE STUDIOThe Set-up: I have a Hughes model 4000 easel, which has vertical and horizontal movement. On my right is my paint table. It has a glass palette, underneath of which is a sheet of neutral grey mat board. Around the edge are all my pots of brushes. The tubes of paint are in a shallow drawer, ready to hand. Behind me is a mirror propped on my old easel for checking the accuracy of my drawing or how the painting is looking in general. On my left is my computer table. Since I converted to digital cameras I only use prints from photos taken before October 2004. Everything since then is stored on a hard drive and accessed by my cataloging software, so I work from images on my computer screen as a supplement to my drawings. I love the ability to zoom in and out as needed without doing hardcopy enlargements. With luck one or two of our three cats will be hanging around, along with Niki, my collie. They're always good for a little procrastination.The work flow: I usually have a half dozen or so paintings going at any one time. If I reach a stopping point because I don't know what to do next or the whole canvas has been worked on and there is now so much paint on the surface that if I keep going I'll mess it up, I just move on to the next one or start a new one. I have a pile of sketches and layouts of paintings I want to do and I'll either leaf through them or browse my photos. Music: I almost always have music going. What I choose depends on mood and what I'm working on. I often do like to play African music when I'm working on African subjects but sometimes It's just gotta be Jefferson Airplane or Quicksilver Messenger Service. I gravitate to 60's rock, pre-1930's jazz, celtic and, as I said, African. The process: Most paintings start with a brush drawing done directly on the canvas. If I have an exacting or complex composition I may project the pencil drawing and do a rough tracing or if the canvas is too big, do a traditional grid transfer. I then re-draw with a brush, correcting and refining as I go. Once the basic shapes are there, I lay in the areas that will be darker values. I'll check the drawing in the mirror and correct as necessary. I usually use either a warm earth tone or a purply cool tone, whatever feels right. Then I start to take the whole painting towards the darkest values, usually in a color temperature the opposite of where I want to end up. I lay in the dark accent areas like shadows, still keeping the relative value relationships. For instance, distant hills will still be lighter than the foreground to create atmospheric perspective I also try to hold onto to the value relationships of picture planes as explained by John Carlson in his book on landscape painting. The sky is the lightest, followed by flat ground, sloping ground and then vertical planes, like trees. Getting these correct is crucial to creating the illusion of three-dimensional space on a two dimensional surface. Sometimes I do these big area lay-ins with a flat brush in a random pattern. Next is introducing a variety of different color temperatures in various areas. I may go back, re-state and tighten up the drawing at this point if it got lost in the previous steps. This is the middle point, of adding color and interest and using value to create form. When I'm done with this step, I usually let the painting sit for a day or three to dry and to get some distance. Sometimes what looked fantastic at the time, doesn't work at all the next day and, happily, vice versa. Then it's the beginning of orchestration time. Sometimes I'll push one area, like the animal, as far as I can or I might work all over and bring the whole thing along together. If I look at it and have a little sour feeling, I'll pick a spot I'm sure of and start there and usually I can get it rolling again. By the time I'm well into this stage, I'm starting to put down the last strokes that will be what the viewer will see, so I focus on those very closely. This is where I start to go for style points and I can't do it if I'm tired or distracted. Then it's time to pet the cat. It's a push and pull to bring it all together. One part looks perfect until I do the bit next to it, so I have to correct the first bit. I'll check the drawing again and may find out, like I did on a painting of two young Mara lions, that the painting looked flat because the back lion's head was the same size as the one in front so it destroyed the illusion of space. So, I scrapped out the finished head, which I had rather liked, and re-drew it a little bit smaller and re-painted it and liked the new one even better. I work around the whole painting trying to introduce a variety of shapes, values and color temperatures. Anything that will help tell the story. Anything that distracts is eliminated no matter how nicely it was painted. When there don't seem to be any more problems to solve, I'm done. AT WORK IN THE FIELDEquipment:2 Nikon D70 digital SLR cameras with 2gb Lexar pro flash memory cards 2 1gb backup flash memory cards 5 extra li-ion camera batteries 1 28-300 Tamron zoom 1 70-300 Tamron zoom with a 2x doubler 1 Flashtrax 40gb flash memory card downloader / hard drive with two extra batteries 1 Wolverine 80gb flash memory card downloader / hard drive for backup 1 I-Sun solar battery charger The idea is to be able to go into a remote area with no power and not have to depend on recharging from a vehicle. I've ditched having to haul lots of film around and pay for processing, but now need to make sure that I have enough juice and backup to power everything. But I took enough images on my safari to Kenya in October of 2004 to pay for one of the Nikon bodies already and the pictures were far superior to what I would have gotten with film. 1 Nikon Monarch ATB 10x42 binoculars 1 Leica Televid spotting scope with 20-60x eyepiece and video tripod Sketchbook pens, pencils, watercolors maybe oil paints, depending on location and time available; then I'll have my Soltek easel too As an animal artist, my photographic needs are somewhat different than what I think of as "real" photographers. I need fast ISO's (what used to be film speed) because I want to shoot without a tripod. So I'm willing to accept more "noise" (what used to be called "grain") than a pro. I want lots and lots of shots (I brought home 4980 images from the 16 day trip to Kenya safari last October). While I want them in good focus, tack sharp images aren't as critical because the photos are to be used for reference, not as an end product. I keep everything because even a slightly fuzzy or not so great photo may have useful elements like the detail of a leg. However, I want my stuff in great light just like a pro and so, early morning and late afternoon is prime time for me, too. I'll sit and watch, sketch and shoot pictures from one spot for hours. I haven't met anyone at this point who will sit with a critter as long as I will, so I travel by myself. So far, I've done field work in here in Humboldt county and other parts of California and Oregon, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Canada and Kenya. INFLUENCESHere are some of the artists, both alive and deceased who have awed, inspired and taught me through the years.Walter T. Foster art books by Walter J. Wilwerding Animal Drawing and Anatomy by Charles Knight Wildlife artists: Bob Kuhn Charles Rungius Wilhelm Kuhnert Ray Harris-Ching John Schoenherr Early California painters: Maurice Braun Edgar Payne William Wendt English and French artists: James MacNeil Whistler John William Waterhouse Edgar Degas Alphonse Mucha American artist/illustrators: Frank Brangwyn Dean Cornwell American painters: Richard Diebenkorn Russell Chatham © 2005, 2007 Susan Fox |