Nature is, as John F. Carlson said, an overloaded property room, and often as landscape painters we find it challenging to create a painting that has a sense of unity, as opposed to being a composite of parts. There are many “picture-making” strategies for simplifying and unifying nature into a work of art, such as […]
Carlson’s Theory of Angles- An Introduction
It was over 20 years ago when I first got my hands on a copy of Carlson. I had wandered into the bookstore at the Scottsdale Artist’s School trying to escape the overwhelming odor of maroger and of course went straight to the landscape section, which was what I was really interested in. I picked […]
Painting Fall Foliage
It may be hard to imagine right now, but soon it will be that time of year– when we are all tempted by the bright colors of fall foliage to throw every high chroma color we can lay our hands on onto a canvas! In many ways, painting this season can be even more daunting […]
Seago Skies
Edward Seago (1910-1974) was a British landscape painter. He is one of the best known and widely collected British artists of the 20th century. He enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime including royal patronage by several members of the Royal Family, including the the Queen Mother, the Duke of Edinborough and Prince Charles. Seago painted […]
The Vault of the Sky
What shape is the sky? As landscape painters we must remember that the sky is not a flat plane in the distance, but a vault which arches up toward and over the viewer’s head. The fact that we are depicting a vault rather than a flat plane affects the perspective we see in the […]
Four Value Studies and Notan
Notan is a Japanese word for light-dark, and consists of a two value arrangement of shapes. It can be used to define and simplify shape and value patterns. Notan (two values) and four value designs are not based on how we actually see the world; they are constructs that we can use to see and […]