Painting the moonlit landscape has challenged artists for centuries. Depictions of night time motifs tend to be as much about the ideas we have about the night as they are about what we actually see. As Thoreau said, “the night is a different country” and the shifts in perception that occur in a dimly lit […]
When to Paint the Sky
“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? […]
What is Tonalism? Part I
In the decade following the Civil War, America came to terms with its great loss–both of a generation of young men, and the feeling of high spirited nationalistic pride and belief in itself as the chosen land and the chosen people of God’s creation. The societal underpinnings of religious faith were likewise shaken. The operatic creations […]
The Art of the Garden
In the late 19th and early 20th century the “Garden Movement” in America was greatly influenced by French Impressionist paintings. The move to the suburbs by the middle classes also encouraged this new interest in gardening, and the “American garden”, not as formal as the English or Italian gardens of the Gilded Age, became popular. […]
Why Should Landscape Painters Study Art History?
It’s surprising how many landscape painters don’t have a working knowledge of the art history of landscape painting. With the prevalence of social media today it’s easy to ‘follow’ contemporary artists whose work you admire, and many of us do. But, a far smaller number make the effort to connect with their artistic heritage as […]
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, […]