The Sentiment of Truth

The "scent" (or in a more sophisticated sense, "sentiment") of truth in art is instinctive and intuitive. Here a brief sketch provides elements of a nautical scene without embellishment with color. The native artists' instinct for truth is alone his or her guide.




"Mt Pisgah"

In this painting, the pastel colors of Fall provide the poetics of seasonal change and the beauty of nature when contemplated spiritually and not thought of in a utilitarian manner. Nature in her grand manner is always deeper than any representation and yet even the cursory oil sketch, if done honestly and directly, will capture some of the depth and profundity of the scene.


"Mt Baldy"

Painting from high above the scene in "veduta" tradition gives emphasis to the vast horizen and distant mountains and we seem to float above the valley below that opens out to a vastness, an expanse that delights the eye.


"Amazon Park sketch"

Sometimes the "sentiment of/for truth" (verismo or il vero) demands complexity of form wherein the scene itself is very complex with overlapping forms and directional lines. Here a large park with its paths and distant hills provides the opportunity. But working "al aperto" (in the open air), one has to work quickly as the changing light first reveals and then conceals forms that exist only for as long as the light that falls upon them.


"Garibaldi"

In portraiture as well, the sentiment for truth demands simplification of form and an economy of work that provides for a statement revealing the personality and the importance of the sitter. This is especially evident from historical figures when working from fixed photos.



"Oregon Evening Veduta"

Sometimes when the sun goes down and color gets eclipsed, one can still reveal the truth of the scene in contrasts in value in the darker areas and also above, in the illuminated sky where forms provide a structure perhaps more important as the source of the diminishing light.

Axiom: Truth must be captured spontaneously in the moment when "everything-is-happening-at-once"

Some corollaries:

1. If the sentiment of truth is realized, a work is "finished" at the moment that tuth is captured, even in sketch mode.
2. Further embellishment, at this point, may actually diminish the truth value of the work although conventional wisdom, often wrongly, insists on covering all areas of the canvas.

The structure of autumn and its chiaroscuro

"Amazon Park"

The canvases discussed in this post were painted yesterday in one marathon session outside in what was a glorious, sunny autumn day.


"Rattlesnake Road"

The countryside in autumn is a special challenge and, at the same time, a delight to be there painting. I chose a variety of locations, vistas really, that provided an element of linear perspective and, well...nature provided the light and the color.

The riot of colors can best be captured, in my opinion, with spots of color set down immediately or as quickly as is possible, assuming, of course, that the linear perspective lines, assumed or explicit, are guidelines that create a great space, an opening as it were, with depth and distance.


"Mt. Baldy"

I prefer to perch high above the scene, like a bird on a mountain branch, to see if I can capture at least the feeling of a great expanse, a distant valley, or the thin slivers of light illuminating the horizon. Sometimes this is a great effort, the nearby tree formations are concealing their true structure, the light changing rapidly, playing hide and seek.

One has to retreat and concentrate on light, always how the light plays over the visual field. Or go back to the darks and state and restate the structure that might not be as strong, in reality, to make this a good picture. The need to exaggerate and punch the darks harder or the need to scrape them away several times until one discovers their true identity.



"Amazon Park"

Sometimes if I concentrate on the larger shapes and their shadows, I get more productive faster. I force myself to begin with a large area of color, the horizen all the way to the bottom of the canvas, and then to try to find, within that dark, the largest shapes, differentiated only by a dab here and there for their cast shadows.




"Amazon Park"


Another consideration is structure that encompasses the entire scene. Take an enormous park view with winding paths and distant hills. Here the structure is very complex and breaks down into many separate zones of color and shape.



"Amazon Park"


Remember that the sky is the primary illumination of a landscape setting its mood and tempo. The sky brightness and its shapes also sets up a beat or synchopation of shapes, a vibration if you will, that carries through the scene.

The colors must remain luminous and expressive despite the overall concern with structure and accuracy. Here the bright sunlight and blue sky give an upbeat appearance and an attempt is made to capture the light of a "glorious day" in the autumn. Poetry takes over from fact and becomes fact, becomes the feeling and the situation, the scene understood in this manner is not something that can be captured in a camera, but only through the lens of the artistic temperment transferred to arm and hand and brush. Even the photograph would still have to be translated again, through paint and interpreted via paint, at least this my way of seeing things.

The painter, setting all of this down as quickly and as spontaneous as possible, is the witness and recorder of natural beauty and in capturing it as it surrounds and encapsulates the viewer, is both at the same time an impossible and a necessary task that can be accomplished by working directly from nature.


"Amazon Park"

Drawing is the Key to Success

Sometimes drawing will be your key to successful plein air painting. Spending time making thumb nail sketches is an important part of the overall process. the idea is to quickly produce a drawing that has compositional strength and structure. If your drawing is too weak or lacking in statement, then just draw another with the goal of simplicity. The simple and direct statement is always preferable to complexity and a lack of simple, large shapes that give the composition anchor points, eye movement, and harmonies.



This shows the relative size of the thumbnail sketch. Here a small 4 x 6 inch bound sketchbook is used.



Note that simpler is better. Try to be as minimalist as possible. Pay attention to the pressure of the pencil on the paper to vary the values.










Paint Directly From the Sketch: Here is a tip. Since the sketch has helped you "discover" your composition and value rangle, why not paint directly from the sketch? You can rely on memory, photographs, or, if you are sketching on location with paints ready, when you start to paint, lay down your composition by copying the sketch! You can glance at the scene but try to gtet the gesture of the sketch onto your canvas first!











Try to keep the sketches calligraphic and poetic. Be lyrical and try to convey both mass and line in your macchia sketch.

now for some laughs:





Plan for "American Verismo" T-shirt. Might have to make the Cinghiale look more fierce and fonts much nicer. But this is an idea waiting for instantiation.

Issues from the Workshop

One thing we didn't have enought time to discuss (more deeply) was "Sir Joshua Reynold's Riddle" which posed the contradiction between the particular and the universal in landscape painting.

One way to "resolve" the riddle is by bring the universal elements into one's painting -- what can be called "the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" or what th Chinese call Tao. You can see this, at least in part, in this work:



Several things to note: The "macchia" in this painting is very simple:



The 2-value pattern consists in a small light area at the top and a bigger, dark area below. Capturing this simplifies 2-value macchia is the critical first step. But beyond that, only the simplest depiction of light areas from flower blossoms inside of the dark area creates an "aesthetic atmosphere" wherein the focus is the aesthetic field or continuum itself, not any particular object or objects.

The Workshop emphaized ideas in landscape painting: macchia, 2-value studies, 4-value studies, color and line macchie, and "grand theory" in the British tradition. We linked to Japanese and Chinese ideas about landscapes, especially via Zen and Taoism and we did some T'ai Chi, QiGong, and "pushing hands."

Saturday was "tree day" and we studies approaches to painting trees. starting with the 2-value macchia:



Then adding darks:



Elaborating:



Adding color:





Then the all important "scrape out" stage:



Note: trees-as-a-mass are treated as one large shape. Also abstract elements are not sacrificed. Trees remain gestural and still reveal their individual personalities, a bit.

Seeing the Macchia

Both art and science is about pattern recognition and discovery.



Seeing or "discovering" patterns in nature is the most fundamental practice in the visual arts, especially painting, that seeks to combine nature with one's imagination.



In this Madonna by Raphael, the macchia is meant to convey the essence of the madonna and child, in the foreground, mostly through gesture, but also the landscape elements in the background.

Perhaps there is no better place to practice the art of seeing macchie (pl) than the ocean. The rapidly changing circumstances of sea and rocks provides ample opportunity for new compositions each second.



A landscape:



This exemplifies "Reynold's Riddle" in that "how far can a landscape painter move towards generalization, when the depiction requires representation of the particular location and scene." -- or something to that effect.

As Buddhism states, mostly in its Ch'an manifestation (Zen) as noted in the Platform Sutra, emptiness is the realm of the Dharma. The macchia must have the element of emptiness and spontaneity. That is its conjunction with abstract expressionism as well:



This Eastern point of view combines with Western European ideas of macchia, the notion that grand manner history painting showing individuals and social relationships in the context of landscape:



This very European notion of pastoral beauty and the ideas of Jonathan Richardson the elder regarding composition are important to landscape painters. But the "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" is the more powerful idea, more deeply articulated in the East by Buddhists and Taoists and picked up by the impressionists, that provides the big idea behind paintings that sing of light, life, and natural surroundings.



Perhaps as one gets older one wants to pull more into this "emptiness" of the Dharma and "pure realm" in the Taoist sense, that is into the vast realms of the poetics of nature. The Tao is always depicted as dark and feminine and mysterious in the East:



While in the West, this is usually flip flopped with scenes of light-filled warmth symbolizing the goodness and sensuous aspects of nature:



This is the "valley spirit" of the Taoists but with the lights turned on. The floating clouds symbolize impermenance and the valley and its warm grasses are the feminine aspect of things, the receptive.

Preparing for Workshop

Doing a little painting at Angels Flight to get ready for the upcoming workshop.




Note use of a large brush (painting over an old canvas in this case) to establish the "macchia" with attention to chiaroscuro from the very beginning.




Adding more darks, still working with the same (largest) brush available.



Now paying attention to the sky, working in large areas of light, indicating some cloud formations.



Almost done now, establishing distant blue and mauve areas of mountains. Adding in some line to define the horizen.



Defining shapes of trees better, enhancing darks with thalo green and raw umber combo to deepen dark greens.

Note that painting doesn't "pop" into existence until this last step because without deep enough darks and more work on expressive brushstroikes the overall effect remains weak.

painting trees and a distant vista

Registrations for Annual workshop now in progress:




Painting today on a hill overlooking the city

1. begin with macchia in sienna establishing chiaroscuro
2. add color right into wet sienna underpainting



3. looking for distinct shapes in painting's objects, establishing composition
4. establishing movement of light throughout scene using macchia strokes



5. establish foreground and shadows on road, grass
6. weather conditions suddenly change
7. postpone additional work until later (in studio or back to site)