Session Sei (6)

ATTENZIONE! CHANGE IN PLANS: DUE TO OPENING OF MAYOR'S ART SHOW i HAVE TO BE DOWNTOWN AT 5:30 pm and so will NOT be at the Sunset Hills site this Thursday but plan to be there the following week (9/18). Sorry for this but you are of course welcome to go there and paint anyway or join me at the Hult Center.

Again, thank you for your participation in this class.

Topic for Last Session: Eye Movement and Linear Perspective in Relation to Concept of Verism

Lets start with a blank canvas:



We will use an underpainting in sienna utilizing gesture brushwork. I notice that most beginners establish their "macchia" exclusively in line. You see here that mass is used and also some line but the idea is to paint at the onset, not as an afterthought. This is in the true spirit of the I Macchiaioli, our "spiritual" forebearers:



The focal point for eye movement will be the small house and the main, central tree. But we are also attracyted to the road which winds down the hill.



Use of expressive brushwork in the folliage of the tree will provide resting places for the eye as it moves throughout the composition.



This is an oil sketch, so we must remember to keep it as such. Too many beginning students insist on a "finished" painting and they ruin the sketch by making it such. The oil sketch in the tradition of the I Macchiaioli and Constable is closer to the modern spirit of the abstract expressionists and keeps the painting fresh and spontaneous. Develop a taste for these oil sketches and begin to collect them.



Every painting needs a logical focus, a place where your eyes can land in the pictoral space but it is also important, perhaps more important, to supercharge the entire visual scene with verism (an sense of unadorned realism) as is probvided in the work of Giovanni Fattori, as one example:

http://www.italica.rai.it/index.php?categoria=art&scheda=fattori_epopea_vero

For example, in the following set of images, I am trying to show the progress made using this approach: beginning with a rooftop view intended to move the eye into the center of the picture (focal point the near rooftop) and then provide two alternative routes for the viewer to travel. The first goes out and up into the distant sea and mountains, the other goes to the right into the adjacent houses.













To be continued...