Painting with a loose brush

"View from Spring Boulevard"

Sorry, if you were looking at this page a few days agao. Blogger had closed down for "maintenance" for one hour which because one day, then the page completely disappeared. As time allows, I will recreate some of the writing I did on "loose brush" which was posted here before.



"View from Owen's Trail, Eugene"

Oil sketching involves making quick paintings in full color but just capturing structure, leaving out details and finish. the idea is to capture the composition and to use loose brushwork doing that. Work quickly and sketch out the painting in any size, preferably small, and then move on to the next location.



"Loiano, Italy"

Pay attention to value when you are sketching. The goal is to achieve an interesting "macchia" or pattern of darks and lights. A misconception of making the "macchia" is that it has to be a strong 2-value (black/white) or at most 4-value pattern. It can be that but perhaps in the most ideal form it should be more complex with all sorts of gradations of value. The criterion for a good macchia is somewhat indefinable but might be described as subtle complexity with strength as values tend to form patterms that move the eye in and out of various locations. Macchias cannot be discussed intelligently without simultaneously talking about eye movements.

Why most landscape painting go bad

Students have always remarked on how difficult landscape painting is to accomplish. Things can go very bad quickly. Often the result is not satisfying. The problem usually comes from trying to paint at "high noon" when the values go flat and it is almost impossible to see contrasts. A very common problem is that the range of values is too simplistic and/or not interesting enough to keep the eyes moving around the composition.



This sketch might be borderline but you will have to be the judge. As long as eye movement can be brought into the canvas and then move laterally and then takeoff into another direction, it might work out.



Sometimes the result is dictated by the location. In this painting (above) the eye moves along a nearby diagonal and then shoots out to the horizon and then the sky. There is enough of interest in the sky with lazy soft clouds and a variety of values in the blues that keep the attention there for a moment and then the eyes can slide back to the ground.

How Sketchy Can You Get

Exercise: see if you can get really minimalist in your oil sketching. Just put down the barest getsure to create a mark, an object represented by that mark on the canvas. In this sketch made today at an Alpaca farm, see if you find the animal with no legs, just the body indicated?