Valentine’s Day is upon us and what better way to celebrate than with a powerful visual reminder that love and life will not last forever, and that every living creature will some day die. Our days are numbered and the Grim Reaper waits patiently. And trading Valentine’s Day cards with pictures of trains on them that say “I choo choo choose you” will be the furthest from his mind.
“Death and Life” by Gustav Klimt
#7 in the 10 scariest paintings is one of Gustav Klimt’s most famous works, aside from The Kiss and Adele Bloch-Bauer I, which to date is the highest selling painting at auction. Death and Life is a masterpiece of juxtaposition, or placing two opposite things side by side. It’s appropriate use of warm and cool colors allows the viewer to feel the respective temperatures, thus giving us an uneasy mood.
The huddled group of the living rests peacefully in each other’s arms, warm with the beautiful quilts of pink, orange and yellow, with flowers and pretty patterns. This is a true representation of humanity with all stages of life present with men, women, and children. They huddle close for protection from the cruel world around them. For the time being they are safe, with no worries. But unbeknown to this peaceful sleeping family is the presence of an uninvited visitor, whose slim and ghostly form is but an arm’s length away.
This harbinger of doom knows the death knell can ring for any or all of these people at any moment. Its perpetually smiling skull watches, unresting, and holds ghastly inhuman vigil. In this painting it wears a dark cold cloak akin to a graveyard with crosses showing an infinite amount of tick marks for each of its victims.
Klimt makes excellent use of space here with huddled organic mass of life crowding together in the small space, giving our eyes a never ending spectacle of form and pattern and flesh. Interestingly, the background was first laid with gold leaf, but the artist later painted over it, thus giving us a much bigger contrast between Life and their surroundings, including the impending doom bringer to the left.
It is truly a superb work of macabre art, and an excellent representation of Death. The way the dark skeleton holds the club as it holds vigil over the people reminds me of Judith Leyster’s The Last Drop, where a carefree drunken duo party into the night, as a skeleton gladly counts down to the drinker’s demise, holding in its bony fingers an hourglass. Both paintings are akin to the Danse Macabre of the Middle Ages, where death lurked around every corner and truly danced among the living in ever-inopportune times and places.
So huddle up in your quilts and enjoy it, while you can.
An unwanted guest can stop by at any moment, and he won’t be bringing chocolates.
How is it that the first two paintings in the 10 Scariest Paintings are religious works? Because people have some pretty scary ideas about religion that’s why. Number 10 is the Adoration of the Magi, by Hieronymus Bosch, and that was more creepy and mysterious than downright scary. Number nine in the scariest paintings list is the Isenheim altarpiece by Mathias Grünewald. This one’s downright scary.
You’re looking at the “Temptation of Saint Anthony” above, the absolutely most hideous and scariest part of the painting and is actually one of several panels in the altarpiece. You’ve probably seen the front, it’s one of the more famous crucifixion scenes executed in the Renaissance era.
One thing that’s always fascinated me is how religious people tend to forget the reality of what they display in their homes and jewelry. This is a tortured man who, after having been whipped and forced marched, is executed slowly by being nailed to wood and hung in such a way that the chest cavity eventually collapses and suffocates the prisoner. It’s pretty gruesome stuff.
And gruesome is what is accomplished here by the German painter in what is his largest and most noteworthy piece. It was painted for the Monastery of Saint Anthony in Isenheim, whose monks treated people for skin disease. The people in the panels exhibit such symptoms, including the crucified Christ. Note the gory details of the signs of torture and agony, such as the myriad splinters sticking out of every visible patch of battered flesh.
When opened, the altarpiece shows four panels including a peaceful Nativity scene right next to the Resurrection. When opened yet again we see a whole new set of panels, containing the panel seen above.
Here’s where it gets interesting. This third and final layer shows two Saint Anthony scenes flanking a carved gilt-wood altarpiece. The one to the left shows the Meeting of Saint Anthony and the Hermit Paul. We see a dark, desolate bog with the saint meeting the decrepit hermit. The one on the right is just plain insanity.
Saint Anthony is mobbed by an army of cacodemons, or evil spirits. These hideous monstrosities are armed to the teeth with sticks and clubs and razor sharp fangs, screaming and wailing, while tormenting the poor old saint. Saint Anthony believed isolation is the truest form of worship, and ideas of worldly sin and debauchery are manifested in the form of demons to molest his contemplation.
He refuses temptation, though the terrifying reality of it is seen here as no vision, no hallucination. Here the demons are very much real, as they actually manage to grab onto the old man, and touch him. While the disease ridden man next to him is oblivious to the goings on, Anthony cowers in fear of the monsters.
This demon panel is truly the stuff of nightmares. With giant birds, hybrids, and other never before thought of beasts and devils, it’s no wonder the old Anthony screams in terror.
Religious paintings often seem to attempt to scare people in one way or another. Whether its visions of Judgment Day or Hell, or demons on Earth as the Temptation panel shows, they often serve as a warning that our bodily time on this planet is finite. But our soul lives forever, possibly in eternal agony, lest ye heed their harks and follow in the footsteps of God. Or so they say.
All I can say is I wouldn’t really want to be in Saint Anthony’s shoes in this painting.
Although the weather here lately has been akin to autumn, it’s far from Halloween. So why would I post a series of articles of the ten scariest paintings of all time? Because scary is entertaining, and we always want to be entertained. I hope you agree on my choices and perhaps you, Dear Reader, can supply your own list in the comments section. Funny enough I could well have made a cutesy series of lovey-dovey paintings that would have lead right through Valentines Day. But what fun is that? Never been much of a romantic.
Fear is a strong emotion and as I always say, the best paintings reach deep into the viewer’s subconscious and strike a chord emotionally in one way or another. We let ourselves get scared for the thrill of it. We even pay to go on roller coasters and at Halloween we go through the haunted houses and hay rides, knowing full well they’re going to make us jump. Now without further ado, let’s get a little creeped out by some scary artwork.
Hieronymus Bosch’s “Adoration of the Magi”
Hieronymus Bosch had a skill very few other artists possessed then and now. His ability to transform intangible nightmarish visions into two dimensions is like no other. Very possibly these demons could have been real to him, perhaps manifesting themselves throughout his daily life. It would not surprise me if his contemporaries thought him crazy, to have a “rock in the head,” as they said.
Take this “Adoration of the Magi” (at the Philadelphia Museum of Art currently). Leave it to Bosch to take something serene and peaceful like the birth of Christ and turn it into a nightmare. Take a look at the painting. I mean really look at it. What is going on here?
Clearly we understand what the painting is about, the “adoration” of the newborn Baby Jesus held by his mother to accept gifts from the three kings. Of course this looks like some impoverished Flemish peasant town and the people look nothing like they would have in reality, but it seems every painter paints the Holy Family in their own likeness. For instance the mother and baby are as white as snow. She’s even a redhead.
Something else just doesn’t sit right with that baby. Doesn’t look real, does he? It’s downright terrifying in fact, the way he’s so tiny, like a premature birth; he must weigh one pound. Creepy.
The kings look normal enough, aside from them wearing the clothes of 16th century Dutch royalty. But the surrounding extras in the canvas get weirder and more interesting the further back you go. The spectators all lurk in the shadows away from view for fear of invading the family’s privacy or some other fear involved with witnessing the birth of a “god.” Aside from the kings, none of them crowd around as they do in other artists’ versions. The people actually inside the house should indicate friends or relatives but they keep back. Note the colors here, is the person’s face blue with a red nose?
It’s quite comical actually how the people hide themselves, particularly the fellow to the right, peeping his head through a hole in the wall, even though the edge is inches away. It almost looks as if he thinks he’s hidden. I can’t make heads or tails from the look on his face, so blank and emotionless. Going counter clockwise up, another man peers around the wall with a smile on his face, quite amused at seeing such a celebrity.
Then I’m not sure what the next man is doing. Note his mysterious posture, with arm hiding or defending his face. What is he doing? Further up we have the people climbing on top of the roof to catch a glimpse of the magi. This is where is gets spooky. I can’t express my horror looking at this person’s face. The character on the left seems to smile like the other man peering around the wall, only this time the face is very much akin to a skull. Look at the tiny face, with no eyes.
When we get to the background it’s all over. I’m finished, can’t even begin to explain it. Off to the right isn’t too bad, we have what looks to be soldiers or hunters letting their horses drink. But to the left, I’m lost. If somebody can explain this, please do so. It looks as if a crazed mob on horseback, or once again soldiers are pursuing somebody. It looks as if someone without clothes on is at the front of the crowd fleeing for his or her life. This is the adoration of the magi, Hieronymus, what is going on here?!
So what would have been an innocent birth of Jesus, is now a horrifying fright fest.
Now I’ll have nightmares about Christmas. Thanks, Bosch!
I bid you welcome to the sixth post in the “How To Paint” series. You can look at the Intro, Materials, Subject and Composition, Color, and Techniques posts where we went over the fundamentals and how you can get started with oil painting. From here on out we’ll tackle some common themes and subjects and eventually get to a step by step painting. As usual feel free to skip and jump around. These next posts in the series are not basics but more specific topics.
The image above is the “Birth of Venus” by William Adolphe Bouguereau. You may think it ironic, the choosing of a painting of a goddess surrounded by angels, cherubs, and other non-human entities in a post about painting people. But ever since we’ve been able to express ourselves through art we’ve been using our own human form to represent non-human subjects of all kinds from God, Satan, angels, the weather, the seasons and celestial bodies, to abstractions like emotions and vices and so forth.
Bouguereau painted regular people as well and was so good at depicting the human body and all its features in such realistic detail that some people claim it isn’t even art.
The Human Form
I think it’s worth looking into how we draw people before we paint them. By studying the human body and sketching it out, you get to learn all of its contours and shadows, and gives you an idea of the colors you might use when paint it.
The first thing we must look at is anatomy. Using live models is probably the perfect way to study the anatomy while drawing or painting, but this is expensive and rarely available outside the classroom. An easier way is to use photo references and/or use medical journals and anatomy books. Jean Michel Basquiat was a big fan of using “Grey’s Anatomy.” Leonardo da Vinci studied anatomy vigorously and understood that artists must study muscles and bone structures before they could properly depict people in two or three dimensions.
Whatever your method of studying anatomy, it pays to have reference guides of some sort handy and anatomy should be as close to reality as possible. Whether you are painting people abstractly or photo-realistically, if your anatomy is wrong, your painting is going to be wrong. It’s just that simple.
The good part is, you can learn the human body fairly easily and as long as you have the key concepts you’ll be fine. So let’s take a look at proportions of the body, measured mainly in “head” lengths.
A. The human body is approximately eight “heads” tall
B. The torso is three heads tall
C. The thigh area is two heads tall going from the knee cap to the bottom of the torso
D. From the knee cap down is two heads
E. The neck is 1/4 of a head
F. The top head of the torso is the shoulder area
G. 1/2 of a head down from the chin is the shoulder line
H. The shoulder line is two head lengths wide
I. The nipples are on the level of the bottom of the second torso head and are separated by one head length
J. The belly button is at the level of the top of the third torso head down, and is at an equal distance to the two nipples by a length of one head
K. The distance from the belly button to the space between the legs is one head
L. The width of the waist at belly button is one head length
M. The upper arm is one and one half heads long
N. The lower arm is one and one quarter heads long
O. The knee cap is 1/4 head lengths diameter in a circle
P. The ankle is 1/4 head lengths from the ground
These are general proportions of the body. Of course you don’t always have the luxury of painting somebody standing in this position, but it won’t be hard to use relative proportions no matter what the pose.
Once you have the bodily proportions down you’ll want to look at the head a little closer. Here’s some guidelines for facial features and proportions (use either the original above, or the one with guidelines here)
The eyes are in the exact center of the oval head
The eyes are apart of each other by one eye width
The bottoms of the ears are generally in line with the that of the nose, and the tops of the ears at the eyebrows
An equilateral triangle is formed from the center of the lips to the center of the pupils
If a line is drawn from the top of the nose along the edges of the width of the nose, it will touch the edge of the mouth
The boundaries for the smile are in line with the pupils
From the bottom of the nose to the bottom of the chin, 1/3 down is the lips, and 2/3 down is the crease of the chin
The nostrils are halfway from distance of the chin to the pupils
Keep in mind these are general guidelines and you must use them relatively depending on the angles and viewpoints of your painting.
Painting People
Besides proportions of the body and facial features, when you paint you must consider the hues you will use, and how the light and shadows will affect your subject. While shadows are important in painting people, perhaps they are even more important in sculpting. Sculptors know how light will affect what people will see when shown on their work from different angles.
1. Flesh hues
Figure out what colors you’ll need and set them nearby or put a little of each color on your palette. Some good flesh hues are:
A very basic flesh hue of a little burnt sienna mixed with white
A base of equal parts of yellow ochre and cadmium red mixed with white
Equal parts Naples yellow and cadmium vermillion with white
Flesh hue or tint, straight from the tube, Grumbacher makes an excellent flesh hue
A darker flesh could be burnt umber, ultramarine blue and a little Alizarin crimson
When painting the face or any other body part, remember that the blood flowing is more visible at the nose, ears and hands where the flesh is thin. These areas will need to have more red.
These are two base mixtures for flesh, the one on the left being the red and yellow ochre, the one on the right being the vermillion and Naples yellow. These are just bases, to which you can add more white or burnt umber or put more or less of the base ingredients. Really dark lines of the face and body I use raw umber, but generally the edges of skin and most other objects don’t create an outline in reality. Rather the edges of skin are soft, with the object or background behind it supplying the needed contrast to make it visible.
2. Other colors used
Shadows could generally be warm if the flesh is cool and vise versa. If your flesh is warm and red, your shadows could be the flesh mixture mixed with a little of any blue. Some darker areas of flesh can be the flesh mixture with a little burnt or raw umber mixed. Raw umber mixed with Grumbacher flesh hue gives a great warm dark tone for flesh, which can be used for shadows.
The colors you use in the face don’t always have to be so cut and dry. Yes, you will need flesh hues but at the same time, studying the reference could show you there are many different colors you could use. Use these colors to your advantage. Portrait painters know the power of complementary colors when they add a little green to the dark areas of the face to intensify the reds of the flesh.
3. Painting the eyes
Painting eyes can be very frustrating and difficult to do, but with enough practice it is possible to portray life-like eyes which exude human emotion.
For starters the eyes can be broken down into parts: the pupil, the iris, the whites, and the eyelids, all of which sit in the eye socket, slightly depressed form the face.
When painting the eyes, remember proportion. There is a distance of one eye width between the two eyes.
The pupil will generally be black or extremely dark raw umber and usually have a reflection in it. This reflection should be two toned, matching the whites of the eyes.
The iris will have several tones and is never just one color. When you found the desired color, fill in the area with most of the color, with an outline of a darker shade of that color. Depending on how the light hits it will depend on where the lighter spot of the iris will be. In the eye picture above, the light comes from the upper left, leaves a reflection on the pupil and lightens the iris at the lower right. At close inspection, there will be lines in the iris pointing to the center of the pupil.
The whites of the eyes are never pure white but shades of gray, and will most likely not be the brightest spot on the face or the whole painting. Look at the eye above and count how many tones the white of the eye actually has.
The eyelids should be painted how you see them, keeping in mind not to make the eyelashes too conspicuous.
4. The lips
Lips can make or break a portrait. They can make an otherwise realistic looking portrait look fake. John Singer Sargent said, “A portrait is a likeness with something wrong with the mouth.” And if he has trouble painting mouths, you can imagine how I feel about them.
To paint lips,
first follow the facial proportion guidelines and place your lips.
The colors mixed should derive from your flesh hue but add a little more red or rose.
Be careful not to make the lips look too pink (unless of course they are wearing lipstick). The lips above have quite a bit of pink to them, but should still look real.
I use a mixed lip color plus a tiny bit of raw umber or crimson for the mouth line.
Make sure to show a little reflection on the bottom lip, but not much or they will look too glossy.
Softly blend the bottom line of the bottom lip with the surrounding skin to make them look natural, there should be no hard line here.
Be sure to add appropriate shadows: directly under the top lip, and under the bottom lip and in the chin crease.
5. Ears
Painting ears can be tricky as they are a very complicated body part. The ear is a continuous tangle of contours and if not careful, you can detract from your painting. A tip here is to keep the ear simple believe it or not. Doing this will not take away from but keep the focus on the face.
As said before, blood flows close to the surface in the ear and ear lobe, so color it accordingly. Also be sure to add the shadows, but once again, keep the ear simple.
6. The nose
The nose shouldn’t be too difficult to paint. The trick is to make sure it looks three dimensional and comes out at you. Do this by
making it redder, once again due to blood flow
being sure to add appropriate shadowing underneath
being sure to add highlights, and reflections, especially on the tip
7. Hair
This leaves the hair, and the only thing to do here is to use your reference and try to match it as best as possible, being sure to include highlights and reflections. Picasso said he pities the artist who has a thing for blondes because they are so hard to paint.
These tips should suffice for painting faces for the most part. As far as the rest of the body goes, just look at your reference, be it the model or a picture. The only way you can really accomplish a good painting of people is to actually do it, and it will take practice.
I’ll be sure to include people in the step by step painting instructions.
Welcome to the fifth post in the series “How To Paint,” on techniques of oil painting. The other posts hopefully have laid some groundwork for the actual painting process, and now we finally get to the whole point: painting! You can read the Intro,Materials,Subject and Composition, and Color posts to get an idea of what we’ve gone over so far in order to get ready for putting brush to canvas. If any of you out there use these techniques or find these posts helpful, you better send me a pic of a painting so I can put it in the “Painting of the Day!”
Let me say that while these posts have been pretty long and I go into as much detail without writing a book, the whole painting process itself doesn’t have to take that long. Once you have your materials and supplies ready the next thing to do is just do it. Put on some music and let the painting flow. Some masterpieces took years to paint. Most of my paintings I completed in one sitting (maybe it shows). Of course those sittings can be anywhere from a couple hours to eight, but the point is it doesn’t have to be a big deal.
I explained some of the points on composition and color earlier but I must say you don’t have to follow anyone’s instructions to the t, just do what feels right. Painting can be whatever you want it to be. Perhaps you get out what you put in but it’s all a matter of perspective. You’re only going to learn by doing, but at the same time try to absorb as much information as you can about the subject. So let’s get on with it, shall we?
General Pointers
All this might be very difficult to explain so I’ve included some pictures of the techniques taken from my little camera. Be forewarned that this camera does not have a macro setting, and I never claimed to be a photographer. So take it or leave it!
Let’s re-hash on the materials. You’ve got your
Paints- paint tubes of at least the primaries, white, and some browns
Canvas- got to paint on something, right?
Easel- got to hold that something somehow, right?
Brushes- got to— yeah you get the picture
Turpentine, or turpentine substitute, a paint thinner with rag
Palette- disposable or not
Desire- I have to be cliché some time!
So that’s all you really need to get started, and all you’ll ever need really. But you can always get more into and get a “mahl” stick to steady your hand, a “graticola” or other perspective finders, pencils or crayons for the sketching, extra mediums and solvents (though turpentine works fine for a thinner), and maybe a few more things.
Here I have my disposable palette with a few dabs of paint I know I’m going to use. I don’t go along with the idea of putting all the paints in a row on your palette before you paint for good reasons. I did this probably the first time I painted and haven’t since. I put my paints on the palette as I need them so I don’t waste any paint. If you put all that paint on your palette, who’s to say your going to use every color? So although you’ll see many artists do this, I don’t do it and don’t recommend it. But I do always put white and raw umber, because there will never be a painting that I don’t use white to mix, or raw umber to darken.
Now let me point out some properties of the paint you’re going to be using. This whole tutorial is centered around oil painting, and I probably should have said this earlier but much of these techniques can be used with acrylics as well. Acrylics are cheaper and possibly easier to use (thin and clean up with water, etc.), but I’ll concentrate on oils specifically.
As I said oil paints are very versatile and a lot can be done with them. You can manipulate in all kinds of ways. Use brush strokes to your advantage. Pile up thick impasto to give texture. Once on the canvas, you can mix it, push it around, scrape it away, wipe it away, whatever you want with it. You definitely want to get full use out of the oils, and apply the correct amount of paint. Spread out too thin and dry and you’re not getting full use of the paint. You want your paint to be the consistency of soft butter, and as you paint you’ll want to load up your brush.
So here’s the proper way to load a brush with the consistency you want, and proper full use of the paint:
Dragging the paint too thin and dry will not produce the desired results, as you can see above the correct usage:
Let’s say I wanted to turn this red spot into orange. I can mix the color right on the canvas by adding a dab of yellow. Normally you should add the darker, dominant color into the lighter color , but by placing the yellow next to the red, I can slowly pull bits of the red into the yellow until I have the color I want.
And once I have these two colors, I can blend them together. I take a dry brush and with small circular motions go from the yellow side to the red side, bit by bit working the two together as I go.
If I decide the orange is way too bright, and I wanted a much duller, grayer color, I add some of orange’s complement blue. With a dab of cerulean blue on a clean brush I work the paint into the orange until I have a much more neutral color than the bright orange we had before. This can be done to any spot of paint already painted with the particular color’s complement, or the grayer color can be mixed on the palette.
And if I wanted to lighten this new color, all I do is is add white straight to it and mix it around a little until I get what I want. The result here is a creamy light orange/beige color you might find in interior house paint, which was achieved quite simply right on the canvas:
Fat Over Lean
It’s important to remember one simple rule when painting over top other paint. This rule is called “Fat Over Lean” and involves the amount of oil in your paint layers and how they dry. The paint straight from your tube is made up of two things: a.) the pigment, or ground up color, and b.) the vehicle- the oil, usually linseed oil. “Fat Over Lean” states that you should paint the thinner, or leaner layer underneath with paint that doesn’t have as much oil in it, and the thicker or fat paint, with more oil in it last.
This may sound confusing when you’re not used to painting, but when as you go along it makes more sense. When you thin the paint with thinners or turpentine, the paint has less oil than paint straight from the tube. If you tried to paint a very thin paint over thick, it won’t even stick. So when there are several layers, the darker thinner layer is applied first, with the thicker paint coming next, and the very thickest as highlights.
The reason being oil paints dry at different rates. The more oil in the paint, the longer the drying time. If you have thicker paint under thin paint, the top layers dry first and cracks while the underlying thick paint is drying. Fat over lean sees to it that the first layers dry first and the last layers dry last, keeping the paint firm and stable in the long run.
Wet In Wet
Adding wet paint into paint that isn’t dry yet is called “Wet in wet,” or “Wet on Wet” painting. The painter Bob Ross was a proponent of this technique and taught it religiously. You can purchase his videos along with painting kits with everything you need at your art supply store or on the internet. As I’ve said before you can’t get more creative following tutorials such as his where you basically have to copy what he’s doing, but they certainly have value in teaching you techniques. Especially if you’re planning on doing some landscapes, or even if you’re just starting out, his videos will be a great help to you.
Bob Ross’s technique involved wetting the entire canvas with a thin “Liquid White” underpainting, so every bit of paint from your brush mixes right in. This can help psychologically when there is something to paint or add into. A plain dry canvas can be very intimidating.
One of the great things about oil paints as opposed to acrylics is the drying time. It takes days before the paint even begins to dry, so painting wet in wet is very easy to do. Parts of the painting can be constantly changed and added to, or subtracted from. Acrylics, on the hand take minutes before they dry and are hard to alter once you’ve painted.
Ways To Paint
Now you know the basics and how to work the oils around to your advantage. You know to paint thin layers first no matter what the subject, and add paint on top with less turpentine or more oil depending on how you look at it. You can use the Wet in Wet painting technique, using a thin under painting of white, or you can purchase Bob Ross Liquid White or Liquid Clear from your supply store. Here are some specific techniques you can use to achieve your masterpiece:
1. Scumbling- This goes hand in hand with painting fat over lean and basically calls for a very thin and dark first layer, and dragging a brush loaded with thick paint over it, to get a choppy scumbled look. This picture would demonstrate how you could paint a tree or other vegetation:
2. Impasto- Painting with impasto is using very thick gobs of paint being built up. This is good for quick or expressive paintings. The Impressionists generally used impasto.
3. Impressionist- By giving the viewer impressions of the light off of objects, the Impressionists allowed your eyes to blend small patches of color:
4. Pointillism- The Pointillists were Impressionists who believed tiny spots of colors placed side by side can be blended in the viewer’s eye:
5. Painting with the knife- Painting knives can be sued for more than just mixing paint- you can paint entire paintings with them. Here you apply large patches of color if you don’t want the brush strokes to show:
6. Or use the knife for detailing:
7. Glazing- Glazing is applying layer after layer of thin paint to produce your desired colors. It’s difficult to show here because if requires the layers to dry before adding another layer. But here I show the thin layer of yellow added to the thin red to create the appearance of orange:
Now these are a few of the basics of oil painting, and like I said before you can’t learn by just watching. So try it out for yourself and see what you can come up with. Coming up I will do a step by step presentation of painting. Until then…
May I present to you, dear Readers, the fourth post in my series “How To Paint.” In the series you will learn everything I know about oil painting. It is my hope that you can find some value in this advice and perhaps teach you something you didn’t know already. I know I learn something new everyday and I always seek out new information on painting and otherwise. If you haven’t already you can see the Intro,How To Paint: Materials, and How To Paint: Subject And Composition. Feel free to skip and jump around, but I generally intend these articles to be linear, in that each post should lay some groundwork for the following posts. Have fun and enjoy
Color: Properties And Theory
What is color? Color is nothing more than light reflecting off of objects. The matter in the objects themselves don’t actually possess the color, rather the properties that impact how much light is reflected or absorbed to give our minds the final impact of what we see. Scientists have been interested in color and the properties of color since Isaac Newton first held a prism to sunlight to show the spectrum with all the colors of the rainbow. The Impressionists of the late nineteenth century knew that what we see is basically light reflecting off of objects giving us an “impression” of the object. To them the subjects themselves were not as important as how light played off of them to give us what we really see. In essence, color is light.
As artists we concentrate on the effects of color on our visual perception and how colors react to one another to create a desired visual experience for the viewers. One doesn’t necessarily need to know all the scientific terms and properties of visual light and color, but it pays to know what we’re dealing with in terms of expressing the color on our canvases.
Color Wheel
What Newton also gave us when he came up with his Color Theory was the Color Wheel. (Refer to the Color Wheel at the top of this page as often as needed.) This color wheel can be used by artists of all kinds, designers, architects, advertisers, marketers, window display advertisers, and web designers among others to assist in providing an aesthetically pleasing and effective result. We use this color wheel to help us understand visual psychology.
1. Primary Colors
As a staple of Color Theory today we say that there are three primary colors. These three primary colors red, blue, and yellow a.) can not be broken down further and b.) can be mixed to create all the other color on the spectrum. Therefore they, along with black and white, are the building blocks of all visual fields. They are basic and powerful.
2. Secondary And Complementary Colors
Secondary colors are attained by mixing two primaries. You can see that orange is in between red and yellow on the wheel indicating it was achieved by mixing those two primaries. When two colors are opposites they are considered complements of each other and can be seen on the color wheel as any color directly across from itself. Many effects can be achieved by utilizing complementary colors and their properties.
For instance when two complementaries are put side by side, a garish clash can result. But, with skill, these opposites can be used to “intensify” each other and work off of each other. Van Gogh particularly knew the value of complements as seen in the examples here and here. The blue of the sky in the first causing the oranges in the trees to be stronger, while the purples of the field in the second creating a vibrant yellow in the sky.
3. Tertiary Colors
When you mix a primary with a secondary you are left with a tertiary color. Another way to put it is you make a tertiary with four parts of primaries, the building blocks. Yellow + Red + 2 more parts of Yellow = Yellow-Orange. You can see the tertiary yellow-orange was achieved by mixing the primary yellow with the secondary orange.
4. Analogous Colors
The orange, yellow-orange, and yellow being next to each other on the color wheel makes them analogous. These colors are said to be in harmony with each other.
Other Color Terminology
Aside from the color wheel, some basic color terms are as follows:
1. Hue
This is basically classifying a color as having a property that distinguishes itself from a black and white value. When one color is added to another, a change in hue is the result. As I pointed out in the Materials post, the adding of the word “hue” to the name of a particular paint generally means it is cheaper. In general color terms, hue is another word for color.
2. Tone
Simply put, how light or dark a hue is. Differences in tone are seen as a hue goes closer to black or closer to white. Changes of tone are achieved by adding black or white to any color. The term “value” is used to describe a color on any position of a scale from light to dark.
2. Tint
This goes hand in hand with tone, and is the adding of white to a color. The color Pink is no more than a tint of red, because a little red is added to white to make it.
3. Shade
The opposite of tint is shade, or the adding of black to a color to make it darker. Generally when painting, we don’t actually black to darken a color but rather a dark raw umber or other such earth tone.
4. Warm And Cool Colors
With an imaginary line going more or less from yellow to purple you can generally see cool colors on the half of the wheel with blue on it and generally warm colors on the half with red on it. I use the word “generally” here because technically you can have a warm blue and so forth. Yellow can be split in the middle with cooler “lemon yellows” toward the blue side, and warmer “Cadmium yellow mediums” toward the warm side. Purple can either have more red or more blue in it to change its temperature. On the canvas, warm colors tend to advance, and cool colors recede.
The mood of the painting can be made by making the painting chromatics either warm or cool. Depending on the purpose and desired effect of the painting, all warm colors can make a happier, intense, fiery, or warmer feeling to the painting, and cool colors generally can make a calmer and serene, colder, and sadder painting and so forth.
The temperature of a color can go hand in hand with color symbolism. There are many different opinions on what emotions certain colors can evoke, but here are generally agreed upon symbols:
Red can mean fire, blood, anger, violence, love or passion.
Yellow, symbolizing the Sun, shows life and energy.
Blue, being cool and calm can show serenity, sky or Heaven and holiness.
Purple is the color of royalty and power, originating from the dye being so expensive, leaving only the rich to wear such a color.
Black can be death or evil.
White is the symbol for peace or innocence.
I’m sure many of you could add your color meanings, and these certainly are only a few of what can be interpreted from the psychology of color. A lot can come from the context in which you use the color as well.
Paint Mixing
Now to get to the point of all this color talk: how we use and manipulate colors to create paintings. Paint mixing is an art in itself and must be mastered by any aspiring master painter. It can a very fun part of the painting process but can also be a very frustrating one. With the help of the Color Wheel, one can achieve the desired effect by mixing accordingly. As you progress and grow as a painter you get the feel of the pigment itself and how the oils flow and their traits and characteristics on the canvas. As a beginner there will be much trial and error when attempting to mix the colors you want, but hopefully of few of these tips can be used to make it a little easier.
Points on mixing:
Different paints have different levels of transparency. Generally a paint is either opaque, meaning you can’t see through it at all, or has a level of transparency, with a lot or a little of what’s underneath showing. A paint such as Burnt Sienna is very transparent, and applied in thin layers, leaves the underpainting to show. This paint can be made opaque simply by adding any white to it. On the other hand, most paints can be made more transparent by adding more oil or thinner to them. This is used when “glazing.” Thinners and other solvents can be added to paint to make it more usable, generally paint straight from the tube can be too thick to use.
Always add the darker color to the lighter color. This means if you want an orange, put an amount of yellow on the palette and continuously add small portions of red to until you reach the desired color. Doing the opposite can mean wasting large amounts of paint in the end.
On that same token, don’t worry too much about wasting a little paint and not using all of it. The important part is that you achieved the desired effect and got the exact colors you wanted. I’ve actually read an artist giving the advice of making sure to use all of your paint on the palette to cut back on waste. This is utterly hogwash and will result in a horrible painting. Whether you’re a Realist or an Abstractionist, you have a certain result in mind when you put brush on canvas. A little wasted paint just comes with the territory.
Oil paint is a very versatile medium. With oils, paint can be mixed on a palette or on the canvas itself. It can be thick, or thin, can be painted wet in wet, and be pushed around on the surface any which way you want. With color already on the canvas or brush, different colors can be added and mixed simply by stroking the brush. Once again, use trial and error to accomplish your goals.
Use color charts to get the color you want, don’t be afraid to use references and color manuals, it’s not cheating.
All kinds of colors can be attained simply be consulting the Color Wheel. As I said in the Materials post, I do recommend having a certain number of extra colors besides the very basics on hand. There are several reasons for this. For one, if you want large amounts of orange, you’re not going to want to mix the red and yellow every time to get it. If you run out of the orange you already mixed, it will be difficult to mix the exact same orange again, and you may end up wasting a ton of paint. Secondly, if you wish to subdue a color or gray it, you’ll want the complementary color right on hand to do this.
Grays and Neutrals
A gray or neutral color is neither warm nor cool. Grays can be made from black and white, or mixing equal parts of two complements. Neutral grays make excellent backgrounds for paintings.
Graying and neutralizing colors can be used depending on your purposes. Most paint by itself can be very bright and garish and will need its intensity dropped a little. To gray a color, simply add a little of its complement. Adding purple or violet to yellow will dull it just a little, so its not so bright and intense. Use the Color Wheel, if your blues are too intense, add some orange. You may not use the color orange very much in your paintings, but you will certainly want to neutralize blues often, so it pays to have a tube of orange paint around.
Some decent grays I find are mixed with
1 part Ultramarine, 1 part Burnt Sienna, 5 parts white
1 part Ultramarine, 2 parts yellow ochre, 1 part crimson, 10 parts white
2 parts Cerulean, 2 parts yellow ochre, 1 part crimson
3 parts orange, and 1 part its complement Phthalo blue, with white
1 part orange, and 1 part its complement Cerulean, with white
Depending on what you’re painting you can mix and match colors. The first gray above makes for good clouds.
Black
Black is basically what we see when an object absorbs all the colors of the spectrum and reflects no light. The Impressionists were adamant in not using black on their palettes due to it not appearing anywhere in nature. Shadows, you see, are never black but contain some of the color of its object and some complements of the surface reflected on. Plus black can tend to look quite flat on canvas.
To get around this, a “chromatic black” can be attained by mixing 2 or more hues, usually an earth tone with a blue and crimson. Some decent chromatic blacks:
Equal parts Prussian blue, Alizarin Crimson, and Burnt Umber
2 parts French Ultramarine, 1 part crimson, and 1 part Burnt Sienna
A 50/50 mix of crimson and Phthalo blue
Adding white to any of these makes interesting grays.
Just The Right Color
As I said before sometimes you just have to find colors by trial and error and experimentation. The key to experimenting with mixing is keeping the number of hues involved to a maximum of 3, or 4 at the most. Too many colors mixed makes very muddy colors.
Sometimes the right colors come from unlikely unions. Take olive green for example. This color can be achieved by mixing green with purple, or by adding a little bit of black to yellow. Some interesting colors are Citrine, mixed from orange and green, and Russet mixed from purple and orange.
Here is a list of everyday objects and materials you may want to paint or include in your paintings and the paints used to get them:
Light flesh- yellow ochre + Cadmium red light, with white. To darken/shadow, add a touch of burnt umber, burnt sienna, or blue. To lighten, add Naples yellow and/or more white
Light flesh (2)- Naples yellow + Cadmium Vermillion + white
Dark flesh-Ultramarine blue + burnt umber + a little crimson + white
Plants- Green plants of all kinds ranging from grass to house plants, to leaves can start with permanent green light and dulled a little with any red.
Sky- The best sky is made from Cerulean blue and white
Clouds- The highlights Cadmium yellow + white, the midtones Cerulean blue + Cadmium yellow + a little crimson + white, the darks add yellow ochre to the midtones, and the reflected lights add a little crimson to the highlights
Gold- 4 parts white + 4 parts Naples yellow + 1 part Cadmium yellow light
Gold (2)- 3 parts Naples yellow + 1 speck orange + 1 speck Cerulean blue
Copper (Green)- 4 parts Naples yellow + 1 part Cerulean blue
Copper (Tan)- 1 part white + 5 parts Naples yellow + 1 speck Cadmium red + 2 specks burnt sienna
Bronze-6 parts Cadmium orange + 1 part Cerulean blue
Obviously there are many more combinations to use for these objects and many more everyday objects. All you have to do is try it out for yourself. See what you can come up with. Train your eye to see actual colors and how the light affects the subjects in different ways. When you look at a black cat, know that you are actually seeing all kinds of blues, greens, crimsons, and many other colors, not just black. Knowing this can not only help you to portray objects properly but will make your paintings more interesting.
This concludes the post on Color, but in no way concludes the discussion on Color Theory. There are many different points of view on color and visual perception. Seek them out and learn all you can.
Welcome to the third post in my “How To Paint” tutorial. In this series I intend to share my knowledge of oil painting, and with a little luck I might persuade a few of you out there to pick up a brush and give painting a try. Hopefully I can share a few pointers and get some feedback from you. If you’re just getting in you can see the Intro, and How To Paint: Materials post if you’d like, or read on to find out what you can paint and how you can express it. If you’re coming back after reading the articles, welcome back. Either way I hope you enjoy this article and the others, and maybe we can all learn a thing or two about one of the most rewarding hobbies.
Once again this is a long and in depth post. If you are not planning on reading the whole thing, may I offer you Have Fun With Art, Part 2, and Is It Really Art? to amuse yourself? Or perhaps this to stimulate your brain.
Subject Matter
The first thing you must do is come up with something you want to paint. To do this you may ask yourself what is your purpose for the painting. There are many reasons people paint and the intended product can be summed up into different categories.
Is the painting intended to be decorative? If so one may consider the interior design of their home or others. Will the colors be harmonious with the decorations in the room, will the colors be warm or cool (more on this in the Color post)? The subjects of these paintings could be birds on a branch perhaps, or a beach, a landscape, etc. etc.
Is it representational? Simply put, is the painting meant to be of something, and that one thing the main focal point of the painting? While decorative paintings may be landscapes and abstract forms of color, the representational painting will be of an actual house or a portrait. We’re talking realism here.
The third category is a creative expression. These paintings don’t have to fall into either of the other categories and are mainly for the artist. Is there a meaning behind the painting, a message to convey? The dadaists and the minimalists probably didn’t plan on their paintings being in museums or hung on living room walls. Painting gives you an infinite amount of freedom.
Painting is a wonderful medium to achieve your goal of expressing something as it gives you total control of the outcome and license to create, remove, or destroy objects in reality. Even though a landscapist intends to directly convey the lay of the land on his canvas, the painting is not intended to be a photograph. There is still some message and meaning behind the painting. And no matter how realistic the painting looks, there is still some abstraction. It is a painting imitating life, and the painter reserves the right of “painter’s license” to alter reality as he sees fit.
The use of “painter’s license” can be seen in the most straight forward of paintings. Even in the landscapes of centuries ago, objects were moved as necessary to make a more balanced and aesthetically pleasing picture. If a water tower on the right of the visual field looks too heavy, it can be moved to the left to balance it.
Whatever the intended purpose your painting will have, all paintings are an expression of the artist. In order to express yourself and your message, a vehicle for this purpose must be chosen. To sum up, a painting can be a decoration, a representation, or an expression. It can one of the following:
Landscape/seascape
Portrait
Still life
Abstract expression
Representational realism, figurative paintings, etc.
Types of paintings such as Cubism, some Surrealism paintings, etc. fall in between the previous two categories
Composing Your Subjects
Now that you know what to paint, you have to figure out how it’s going to look. I didn’t say how to paint it, because the actual techniques used to paint will come later. Here I’m talking about how to “compose” the painting. Almost all of the paintings I ever painting were sketched first quickly on a separate sheet of paper, as well as actually on the canvas before I even started to paint. This is a good idea for anybody unless you have a clear idea of exactly how your painting will turn out. The “underpainting” will be just a rough outline of major shapes, so it’s not exactly just drawing and filling in color.
To understand composition in general it pays to understand some very basic visual psychology. Thinking about this helps you realize how people will see your painting in the end, and will keep you from making a visual mess (well, usually). Here are some very basic visual psychology elements that come into play when your painting is viewed:
Our eyes strive for simplicity and balance
A visual field has certain forces, which, depending on the statement, must be followed in order to attain simplicity
Objects on the visual field have a weight which differs depending on its position
People generally read a painting from left to right
Certain colors are heavier than others and stand out more (red)
Certain colors appear to recede (cool colors: greens, blues), and others to advance (warm colors: yellows, reds)
Simplicity and Balance. The visual field is loaded up with energy. A square has its vertical, horizontals, and diagonals keeping it intact, and any object on the invisible lines is at ease. An object off such lines seams to be moving and pulling toward a more simpler position. A balanced picture seems to convey a feeling that it need not move any further to be the simplest composition. The forces in the field are at rest, and there is no tension. This gives us a pleasing experience looking at the painting.
No matter whether the canvas is a representation of real life or a total abstraction, the forces of our world in reality impact the way the picture is perceived. For example, the top half of the painting holds a much heavier presence than the bottom half. The objects toward the top of the painting will appear to be heavy and falling, striving to obey gravity and come to rest on the bottom of the painting.
This notion of picture of gravity is true of any one single object, in fact. Note the number 3 in font or on your keyboard.
Close inspection will tell you that the top half is slightly smaller, so as not to appear top-heavy. The result is a pleasing object at rest, and the opposite does not become obvious until it is switched upside down.
The forces of a painting don’t always have to act on the objects themselves, but can act on perceived notions, or invisible lines. Take for instance this painting of a cat. Technically the whole cat is balanced regardless of the prominence of the head on the left side of the painting, because of the perceived glance to the right.
If the cat’s body stays exactly the same, but the head, though the position doesn’t change, is looking to the left, the whole painting seems to weigh too much to the left and is off balance:
This leaves not enough head space to the left of the painting, and other parts may have to be altered to attain balance. This is the vertical center line coming into play here. The left and right side of the painting are two totally different energies. The cat’s head being on the left helps to maintain proper weight, but if the whole painting were reversed, the right side would be so heavy it would seem the picture will start to tilt:
A visual field is automatically broken down by our eyes as we view it. Certain parts are generally more important, certain invisible lines act out in certain ways on the objects on and around them, and the top and bottom, left and right of the field are noted in our minds and so forth. If an object is misplaced or unbalanced, while we may not cognitively realize it, something seems not quite right about it.
Keep in mind that a perfectly symmetrically balanced painting usually doesn’t make for an interesting composition. If there is a field with a straight horizon line and a tree smack dab in the center, it makes for a pretty boring picture. But the method of using mirror symmetry can be used to convey a feeling. In this picture of an Amish man after a hostage situation in which several girls were murdered, the main subject is in a situation of anger and unease. The perfect mirror symmetry with the crossed arms helps to convey this tension. The picture is rigid and simple.
As I mentioned above with the cat the subjects head being on the left side of the painting with the glance to the right balanced the composition. Part of the prominence of the left side of the painting comes from the viewer reading the picture as one would read printed words. Hence the importance of “stage left” in theater, where the hero would make their entrance as opposed to the antagonist or other less important role coming in from the right. When being photographed, the astute celebrity or prominent figure would be wise to stand in the far right of the group so they are seen first and their names written first in the caption.
I talked a little about how a painter can get around this problem when painting group portraits in this post. When Emperor Napoleon I was to get painted in a scene with Talleyrand, the “power behind the throne,” the painter was met with a problem. Napoleon was painted on the left entering “stage left” and Talleyrand was painted with color emphasis and in the center of the painting. When the artist explained the painting to Napoleon, he was colorfully told that he would be the first thing people saw. Talleyrand, on the other hand was separately told he’d be in the center of attention. Both men were be satisfied.
The fact that the left side of the picture carries more weight is an important one in engraving. The smart engravers such as the genius Leonardo knew that the final product was a mirror image of the engraving itself. When engraving he would actually execute the work backwards so that the actual engraving would be balanced properly to the viewer. Recent engraving methods involve tracing the reverse of the first imprint so the original picture shows up the way it was intended. One common trick to see if your painting looks right is to look at it in a mirror to give you a fresh view. This trick is flawed in that the mirror image should look false if the composition is correct. If it looks more properly weighted, than your real composition is wrong. You get the picture.
Color Theory and Psychology are complex subjects and I won’t go into them in detail here, but more so the post about Color later. It is something I wrestle with constantly and am still learning more and more with each and every painting. Painting being nothing but shapes and colors, it behooves the painter to know everything he/she can about the properties of color and how to use them.
On the visual field colors act on the objects and planes, and on the eyes of the viewer. Van Gogh used the color red to balance out the Bedroom painting. In this painting, the number of objects on the left cause it to weigh more heavily toward the left. Even though the largest object is on the right half, the painting needs to be balanced. He accomplished this by making the blanket red. Red being a heavy color (the heaviest), its use here helps to balance out the composition.
Tips And Tools Of Composition
We’ve gone through an introduction to how we see paintings, and how a painter should consider a few points in making the composition. It’s at this point I must plug my favorite book on the subject called “Art and Visual Perception” by Rudolph Arnheim. In this book I found priceless information about how and why to compose paintings, among many other things. I’ll go through just some of the tools of composition you can use.
1. The Rule of Thirds
This is used by painters and photographers alike and states that the pictorial field is broken down into thirds by invisible lines. Before a photographer takes a shot, he or she might hold both hands up and imitate a “viewfinder” to see how the shot will turn out in turns of positions of the objects and key elements. Once again, it is ill-advised to place the focal point in the exact center, but rather on key invisible lines or points. The rule of thirds places these invisible lines on the field at thirds vertically and horizontally:
This simple model can be sketched onto the underpainting if desired to achieve the best effect, regardless of the size or shape of the canvas. At intersecting points are key positions. Your main focal point of the painting can be at any one or two of these points for the best aesthetically pleasing result.
This model does not have to be followed to the T, and certain parts of it can be used to create your composition. Generally, the main focal point or main subjects don’t have to be at a point but could fall along the lines. The Last Supper is an excellent example of the use of the rule of thirds in general. A horizontal third line can be used for the horizon, or the upper third line can be used for other lines in the picture. If it looks too much like it was used purposely, the painting will look academic. The same is true of all compositional tricks to make the painting look better, they must be subtle or the picture will look fake.
2. The Golden Ratio
Now this little bit of information may a little more intermediate than the other tips on this article, but can come in handy. It’s actually a mathematical ratio that is supposedly the most aesthetically pleasing to the eye. It is in this ratio that many great painters stretched their canvases to achieve maximum eye-pleasing results. It is also used as a guide to object placement on the canvas. Whether or not this is true is debatable, but it doesn’t hurt to try it out yourself and see if the results are what you intended.
3. Compositional Guidelines
Try and follow these guidelines and you really can’t go wrong. Use this list as a checklist after you have drawn up a rough draft:
Is the composition balanced? Are there any objects that appear too heavy, is there enough head space of the people to the top and sides? Have you used the direction and placement of the objects to your advantage, are there any conflicting forces and tension?
Use the Rule of Thirds. You can map out your scene from reality using a viewfinder or taking the index fingers and thumbs of both hands and holding it up to from a rectangle. Ask yourself if the key elements are properly placed in the scene, and are they on a third line, diagonal, or third line intersection.
Number of elements. As a general rule, keep the number of elements odd.
Spacing of elements. Keeping an even space between each and every object can make the painting look too orderly and contrived. Try to vary the spaces between the objects.
Are objects touching? If two side by side objects are sharing a line, this can make for a confused reaction of the viewer. Remember to either overlap everything or make them obviously separate to avoid this.
Is the composition obvious? As I said above, you don’t want to make it look like you got your arrangement straight out of a book. Even though following the rule of thirds is a good idea, for example, don’t make it obvious. You can stray from the rule a little bit, and have a key element slightly off of the intersecting point to achieve a similar effect. You want the painting to look natural.
Conclusion
In summary paint what you want but figure out how you want to paint it. If there is a mood or message, you’ll want to figure out the best way to express this. Some of these basic compositional rules can be broken if the intended meaning of the painting is an abstraction, or statement. It all depends on what you want to accomplish.
When drawing up your composition, consider the elements and how they will react to each other. Will the painting look natural and at ease? Use the checklist above to make sure all parts of your painting are placed in the best possible position.
I wrote this post as a prelude to a series of posts in the near future set out to help beginner painters, wannabe artists, and anybody else interested learn how to paint. I will include every “how to” paint resource I can get my hands on, so even if don’t take away any of my advice at the very least you should find somewhere else that can help. I know I’m not the best painter but I will share with you everything I know about painting from A to Z, and if that’s not enough you can use the links I’ll provide. The purpose is to help you, I’m not trying to sell anything. My advice is absolutely free. So take it or leave it!
First let’s look at why people paint. Why should you get started? People paint for a variety of different reasons.
They might do it as a hobby, “Sunday painters” if you will.
Some do it to let off steam. It is very therapeutic, the process of painting itself and the satisfaction you get from it.
That leads to people doing it for something they can be proud of. When they feel they’ve accomplished something they can actually put it up on their walls for everybody to see.
People paint for a couple extra bucks. There are plenty of people that can make a few dollars at fairs or flea markets, or on busy city streets with their artwork. There is a market for this, because not everybody who wants artwork can afford the stuff found at galleries.
People paint for a living. Painting as a profession will never die. Even with all these technological breakthroughs, people still want good oil paintings hanging in their living room. People still want their portraits painted in genuine paint. Granted it takes a lot of skill to be able to reach this level.
Some do it hoping to achieve greatness, with aspirations to be like the masters and to emulate them. A true artist rarely comes along in history. Could it be you?
Whatever the reason for painting, I highly recommend it. Most people come up to me and say they can’t paint, nor ever will be able to, and I think this is just hogwash. Some people just don’t feel like ever trying, and I understand this is not everyone’s cup of tea. To each his own.
You never know until you try. Most creative ventures are never begun because of an underlying fear. I’m guilty of this one myself and it’s what keeps me from pumping out canvas after canvas. I don’t want to fail, I don’t want to waste my time if it turns out bad, and I’d rather not find out the hard way that I’m not as good as I think in my head. But it’s this type of thinking that prevents some of the greatest artwork ever from being created. I may be no Leonardo, but I know I can do my best, and I know sitting around worrying about it accomplishes zilch. So I get around my fear.
The good thing about the would be amateur is the wealth of information available. With the internet, there are infinite resources at your fingertips, especially for the “How to Paint” tutorials. Each book or article is written by a different artist with different views and styles, no two are exactly alike.
What I intend to accomplish here is to provide a step by step tutorial on how I paint, and how you can too. Like I said I’m no expert, but maybe we could learn together. Each post will be a different chapter, which will include topics such as “Materials,” “Composition and Subject Matter,” “Techniques,” and plenty more. I intend to show plenty of pictures as we go, and maybe even a couple videos.
All of us have different backgrounds and maybe some of you have gone to art classes and art school and whatnot. I myself went to one drawing class when I was 11. It was comparable to my ninth grade art class, and didn’t really teach much (or rather I didn’t learn much). So most of my learning has been by doing and developing as I went. There is no better advice than to actually do it. Painting is not learned by reading a book alone.
Although there have a good deal of decent art books that I’ve read rich with information. The best art book I’ve read by far is Rudolph Arnheim’s “Art and Visual Perception.” It’s not light reading and I didn’t finish it in a day, but the point is to absorb the info on the pages, not just to race through it. This is the kind of book that I’ve gone back numerous times to reread passages, and I always end up learning something new every time. “Art and Visual Perception” is a great book that’s half psychology, half art book about how people see things, look at things, and understand them, and how this relates to art. I’m sure Arnheim could sum it up better, so you can take it from him. I wouldn’t recommend it to just anybody, but it is a must read for any serious painter.
There’s also a number of good television shows about painting that you can always find on public television in the afternoon. I think we all know and love Bob Ross. When I was first starting out painting years ago my parents bought one of the Bob Ross painting kits. It was great, it came with everything you need: palette, brushes, about 10 tubes of paint, painting knives, a book and a VHS, even a small canvas I think. You can’t develop creativity from tutorials like this, having to copy exactly what you see, but it’s great practice. I still use Bob Ross techniques for painting pine trees and reflections in water.
So all kinds of methods can be used to learn how to paint. I recommend hitting up the arts and crafts shop and buying one of those starter paint kits. If you’re brand new at it, I would start with acrylics, being easier to use, and you can wash the brushes in water instead of turpentine. Or you could get some oil paints, they’re generally a litle more expensive. You can get some small canvas boards for cheap, just for practice mainly, or you could get the larger stretched canvases. I use Fredrix medium tooth, red label canvases.
But whatever you do, just do it. Fail at first, it only teaches you. But have fun with it, and have with this tutorial. Stay tuned for upcoming posts, on “How to Paint.”
As promised this is the second edition of “Have Fun With Art.” You can read the first post, Part 1, here.
More people would be interested in art if they just knew how to have fun with it. Now this may take a minimal amount of participation, but like everything, you get what you put in. For instance, you may not consider yourself artistically inclined, but when is the last time you actually tried to do something creative? Whatever you create is art, don’t let yourself down. And do not listen to negative criticism, it is worthless.
Aside from creating art yourself, you can still be an active participant at museums and galleries. You can do this by looking at the paintings and trying to figure things out about it, trying to guess the artist’s motives, or even mood. Not to mention you can be active literally when certain museums have workshops that let you make art in a fun way. This is for all ages, so get your hands dirty!
The Warhol in Pittsburgh has workshops for visitors to experiment with the type of materials Andy Warhol used, including silk screening. This is every weekend from noon to 4. Not too long ago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art had a similar event with Warhol techniques. Keep up to date with your local art museums in your newspaper for events such as these.
Whimsical Portraits
I hear it all the time that artists have humongous egos because they constantly paint themselves. These narcissistic painters must love looking at themselves in the mirror. What most people don’t realize is that models can be expensive and your reflection is always there to pose for you, and won’t fidget that much.
The good part about this is a little thing called “Painter’s License.” This is a rule that states as a painter I can paint whatever I want on my canvas, and any and all resemblance to persons living and deceased is strictly intentional. Painter’s License allows the landscapist to move a water tower to the left side of the picture to balance the composition or an artist painting his own likeness to omit that blemish.
Take this picture I painted of myself at a nineteenth century dance hall. I never picked up the guitar to play a serious tune in my life. OK, I did once in high school, but I couldn’t play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” today if I tried. The point is it looked good and what the hell. How about Self Portrait as Napoleon, talk about ego.
I stumbled on this guy’s website and it gave me a good laugh (read the captions, they’re hilarious). What he did was photoshop himself as famous artwork or photographs. Why not? I painted my landlord as Henry VIII once just for fun. Not because he acted like the English monarch, just because he looks a lot like him. Apparently he didn’t like the idea that much, and in retrospect I don’t blame him at all. But it was fun to paint.
Here are some notably odd self-portraits:
This is Jan Vermeer’s self likeness painting. It is odd because only about 35 Vermeer paintings exist today and this is the only self portrait we know of, from behind…
Jean-Baptiste-Simeon-Chardin self-portrait
This was late in Chardin’s career when he switched from oil to pastel. It shows himself as an old tourist. Very peculiar, isn’t it?
Salvador Dali. That’s all I have to say.
Something of interest here is the portraits of Madame Ginoux by both Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. The woman was painted by the two artists at the same time in the same room. There is is a clear distinction between the two. In one, the woman is sitting showing a body language of affection toward the artist, with a more likelihood of romanticism, while the other shows a more cold demeanor. The same is true of the representations by each artist. Can you tell who painted each?
Poor Vincent. He should probably stop sending his body parts to women, he might be more successful.
Spot the Celebrity
Sometimes painters appease certain people by putting them in their paintings. It was not uncommon for an art patron to have the artist include him as a saint or biblical figure, or otherwise glorify them. Sometimes a painter may include a certain celebrity or colleague as a compliment.
In the next couple of paintings try to pick out the following celebrities:
a) Walt Whitman
b) The king and queen in an unlikely place
Interesting Remakes
As I talk about in my post about reproducing art, I explain that many artist will recreate a famous painting or another artist’s composition. The idea is that the artist puts his own style into the new painting, and creates something new in his own way. Click on the original painting below to see the new rendition: (Diego Velazquez is perhaps the most emulated artist in history)
Diego Velazquez’s Las Maninas, as repainted by Pablo Picasso (click for Picasso)
Diego Velazquez’s Pope Innocent X as recreated by Francis Bacon:
The Johannes Vermeer (seen above) as repainted by Salvador Dali as a ghost:
Francisco Goya’s “May 3, 1808″ as recreated by Pablo Picasso:
Paul Cezanne’s “Bathers” as Pablo Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon”
Art As Mood Enhancer
As I’ve said before some art can be an incredible mood enhancer. If you’re ever feeling down and need an uplifter, just look up some Frans Hals paintings. I can’t say it enough, these pictures will make you smile.
Conclusion
There are many ways to have fun with art, but I must recommend mostly actually doing it. Many people have come up to me telling me how they can’t paint or draw. Well, its probably because they never do it, for one thing, and even if they think they’re not good at it, they should do it regardless.
Nobody’s good at anything when they’re a beginner, it just takes practice. No matter who you are there are numerous benefits to creating art. The act of creation itself can be very gratifying. Not to mention, there are numerous psychological benefits to making art. It gives you something to be proud of, the process is very therapeutic, at the very least it gives you a hobby, something to do.
Here is a link to the National Gallery of Art Kids homepage. Hey, if you think you can’t draw then acting like a kid again would be helpful. But I think anybody can have fun with it. Play around, click on the still life program to create your own still life with props of your choosing. Overall its a pretty good resource.
I’ll finish off with this Joan Miro painting inspired by an old folk tale.
The dog barks endlessly at the moon to which the moon replies,
Scandalous! Shocking! Without modesty! Nudity has been portrayed without shame throughout history and has been met with varying criticism depending on the time and culture.
Early Nude Art
Ever since early cave paintings the natural human form has been portrayed in its full unclothed glory. This was just how the artists saw his fellow people, and depending on the region, people wore very little anyway. Since then societies have presented the nude form in paintings, drawing, photography, and any other media. This either demonstrates humanity’s strong sexual nature, or just a propensity for making aesthetically pleasing artwork, or perhaps a combination of the two.
Perhaps no society was more naked in its art than Pompeii. This ancient Roman city would meet its doom at the wrath of Mount Vesuvius when the volcano erupted and wreaked havoc on the city below. The city would be covered and ruined by the lava flow but an 18th century find would uncover remnants of a forgotten world, including the remains of many of its inhabitants exactly how they met their fiery demise.
The society shows no sign of bashfulness in its many frescoes and surviving statues. In them you’ll find depicted sexual acts, more sex, sex, and just plenty of nudity. Being an ancient Roman city, they often depicted gods and goddesses in their art. The most risque probably being Priapus, the god of fertility. Also of interest are the many statues from early Pompeii, which today may raise a few eyebrows. This one’s no “David.”
Erotica
Further through art history, namely long after the invention of oil painting and when art drifted away from a dominant religious tone, nudity was a common thing. Retouching on the ancient themes, pederasty in Roman mythology in paintings and sculpture, carnal love, and in general sexuality (sometimes not so delicate) were painted time and again. This was perceived usually as good taste. Of course, that wasn’t always the general consensus.
In Michelangelo’s career, he painted the human form realistically and without apologies. The subtle homo-erotic tones of the Sistene’s ceiling probably went straight over the head of the pope and any other religious leader for that matter. The musculature of the male form painted in detail and the poses of the many male figures probably would have been omitted from a religious painting. The olives resembling certain parts of anatomy were perhaps there as a joke or subtle reference.
In the case of Caravaggio, his pubescent cupid displayed in “Amor Vincet Omnia” or Love Conquers All , would in these days be met with hostility, and the artist considered a pedophile. But in those days, the nude form young and old was nothing to shy from, and the boy was simply another model paid to pose. Caravaggio’s painting is characteristic of his work, steering clear of the idealized subjects, instead showing a common street boy, crooked teeth and all.
Much modern debate has come over Amor’s primary owner keeping the painting behind a curtain. While some say that he was embarrassed of the supposed eroticism and kept it hidden, others say that covering a painting is meant to keep it as a piece de resistance, to be uncovered only after the rest of the artwork was shown, as the best of show.
Borderline Pornography
It probably wasn’t until the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe, particularly Victorian times of the 19th century when nudity in art started to seem inappropriate. In an age when even in the summer one must cover themselves with layer upon layer, and sexual matters altogether were strictly taboo, its no wonder the paintings were more G rated. This isn’t to say that the subtle was absent. Take this Fragonard painting The Swing. It was also called “The Happy Accidents of the Swing.” Humorously showing a glimpse up a dress, an unquestionable infidelity, and a cupid statue with a “hush” gesture all show this French painting’s sexual symbolism.
Tame by today’s standards, The Swing was quite sultry in its day. Going further into the beginning of the nineteenth century, Goya would make a breakthrough in erotic art and paint the first showing of pubic hair. See “The Naked Maja“, which was the complement of the Clothed Maja. Both paintings are wrapped in mystery, as to who the model is and who the intended recipient, but most people conjecture Fransisco was romantically involved with the sitter. Either way, it would get the artist into much trouble. It even got him fired from a lucrative court position, as a result of the Spanish Inquisition deeming the painting obscene.
Later we continue to have scandals resulting from a repressed mass of people. This John Singer Sargent painting called “Madame X” was originally painted with one shoulder strap off and on her arm. Mothers cover your children’s eyes, they’ll be scarred for life! Sargent later had to repaint the strap in it’s correct position, to appease the prudish public.
In the nineteenth century, the “Father of American Painting” Thomas Eakins would be in hot water for removing the loincloth of a nude model in an art class. One of the girls promptly told her parents of such a horrible thing, which would lead to Eakins’ removal from professorship at the Pennsylvania Academy. Eakins wasn’t ashamed of the naked human body and frequently shot many nude photos, even posing nude himself on the other end of the camera as well. His paintings sometimes had nudity in them as well.
Subtle Undertones?
Modern photography is rife with naked forms ranging from the sexually charged to the artistic erotica. Modern advertisement also has subliminal sexual undertones for its psychological value, portraying people in borderline explicit poses and gestures in an effort to maximize effectiveness. Sex sells!
Speaking of sex selling, the paintings of Rembrandt van Rijn have been known to contain subliminal messages to reach the subconscious. The Dutch word for sex has been found in the underpaintings of several works written in large, barely visible letters. The painting of the Militia of Captain Cocq could possibly have a deep subconscious image. See where that shadow is grabbing? Captain who? Interesting.
Modern and Contemporary Nudity
Painting in the modern day, especially at art schools involves the female nude for a variety of reasons. Besides its classical and/or romantic value, the female body is generally a good subject to paint for its curves and contours, giving the student valuable practice in form and shape.
One may say that society has come a long way since Fragonard’s Swing painting. But at the same time it is not that probable that a painting of a school teacher skinny dipping with his students would be generally accepted, at least not in modern America.
So times change, as well as views on sexuality, nudity, and the human body. Each society and culture has its own views, and inside each has subcultures with differing views and values, such as nudist camps. It also matters which part of the world you’re from, as a nudist beach in France is more the norm than a nudist beach in New Jersey.
No matter what day and age, boys will be boys and seek the naked drawings in art books, erotically charged paintings will turn us on, subtle sexual undertones may touch our subconscious and we will always have nude paintings on our walls for whatever the perceived value.
