“It is much easier to paint a sky to suit a landscape than a landscape to suit a sky.” Sir Alfred East, The Art of Landscape Painting in Oil Colour (1915). When should you paint the sky? Should it be the first thing you paint when you begin a landscape painting? The last? All at once? […]
Seeing in Shapes
Learning to see the large shapes in Nature as opposed to all the little details is an essential skill in painting and particularly in landscape painting where Nature presents us with, as John Carlson calls it, “an overloaded property room”. Unless we are able to reduce the visual clutter we see to big simple shapes, […]
Anatomy of an Indirect Painting II
In a previous post, I discussed how an indirect painting was built up in layers of glazes and scumbles. In this post I will do the same, but concentrate on the earliest steps- underpainting and first layers of glazes and scumbles. One of the things I really love about indirect painting as a landscape painter […]
Anatomy of an Indirect Painting
In previous posts, I described the history of indirect painting and also some of the techniques. In this post, I plan to show you how an indirectly painted landscape can mimic the light effects in nature and create both an interesting and varied surface quality and multiple optical effects. Indirect painting using the Venetian tradition […]
Sir Alfred East- Advice on Painting Skies
Sir Alfred Edward East (1844- 1913), was a British landscape painter whose work was influenced by the French Barbizon painters as well as the rich tradition of British landscape painting in the 19th century transmitted by the twin giants of the genre, Constable and Turner. Sir Alfred had a successful career, exhibiting at the Royal […]
Why "Paint What You See" Is Not Good Advice
“In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.” Goethe “Paint what you see.” Has anyone ever told you that? The other day I was reading something online and ran across a discussion where several artists were offering advice to another artist about how to […]