Drawing and Painting on Location E-Book

Kevin Scully

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Working en plein-air is a French term that means literally 'in the open air' and, although artists have been doing just that for centuries, the concept is experiencing a resurgence today. Sketchers and painters alike are leaving their studios and heading out into the open air. This book encourages you to join them. Full of in-depth advice and practical instruction, it explains how to make the most of painting outside and how to capture the very essence of a scene with a far greater authenticity than can be achieved when working from a second-hand image. It covers an array of mediums including pencils, pastels, pens, watercolours, oils and acrylics and advises on the best materials and accessories, from sketchbooks to easels. Also suggests suitable locations and subject matter including landscapes, seascapes and people, explaining the importance of good composition, colour harmony, tonal values and perspective. It further encourages the exploration of new ideas by examining other artists' work, and the development of personal style. Beautifully illustrated with 213 colour images.

Leseprobe

Drawing and Paintingon Location

A guide to en plein-air

Kevin Scully

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2016 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2017

© Kevin Scully 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 241 0

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1Subject Matter and Locations

Chapter 2What to Take and What to Leave Behind

Chapter 3Getting Start ed

Chapter 4Different Mediums and Materials

Chapter 5Locations

Chapter 6Drawing and Painting Techniques

Chapter 7Opportunities for Drawing and Painting

Chapter 8Practicalities

Acknowledgements

Further Information

Index

Introduction

Everything that is painted directly and on the spot has always a strength, a power, a vivacity of touch which one cannot recover in the studio… three strokes of a brush in front of nature are worth more than two days of work at the easel.

EUGENE BOUDIN

That Yellow Time of Year, Kevin Scully (oil on board). Detail of a painting highlighting the amazing colour produced by fields of rape in flower, on The Ridgeway in early spring. The composition leads the viewer’s eye along the meandering track and into the landscape beyond.

A Brief History

For both the amateur and professional artist, drawing and painting are totally enjoyable and absorbing pastimes. You can become completely immersed in your subject matter, spurred on by that initial sensation that inspired you to want to capture a particular scene at a certain moment. To the exclusion of all else, your entire focus is on re-creating a three-dimensional image on paper or canvas in two dimensions. This in itself is a challenge, and sometimes the results can be frustrating and even disappointing, even though the process has been pleasurable. However, when you have created something that you’re pleased with, the sense of fulfillment that you experience more than makes up for all the unsatisfactory results. There is nothing more important than practice, and the more you draw and paint, the more confident you become in making the right decisions about subject matter, composition, and the manner in which you go about your work.

Ships Riding on the Seine at Rouen, Claude Monet (oil on canvas). Monet created many paintings near the Seine, and this picture is an example of an earlier work that displays his interest in the effects that light has on colour, and how he attempted to evaluate how he perceived this, by painting from direct observation. (Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington)

For obvious practical reasons, most people are in their comfort zone when working from home or in their studio. This can often mean working from photographs, sketches, memory, imagination, or a combination of all four. This is fine, but sometimes work produced in this way can lack integrity, particularly if it’s obvious that it has been created almost directly from a photograph. When you are drawing or painting something from life, you automatically study things in greater detail, and you notice things that you wouldn’t see or give a second thought to if you were taking a multitude of shots with a digital camera. A photograph is useful if you want to refer to a particular detail at a later stage, but unless you are a professional photographer, your photographic image will not capture the true colours or depth of perspective that you see in front of you.

Not that you necessarily have to copy precisely what you see when painting from life – after all, it’s your picture and you can interpret it as you wish. Your own personal reaction to a scene will always lead you to emphasize certain areas, whilst other parts may receive less attention. What you should be aiming for is to capture successfully the essence of what you see in front of you, whether it’s a landscape, seascape, buildings or people. Painting directly from life is all about what you saw and experienced at a particular time on that particular day. The memory of it will always be much more intense than if you had simply photographed it.

There is a movement afoot at present that suggests there should be a self-imposed limit on the amount of time in which a painting should be produced. The reasoning behind this is to resist the temptation of fiddling with, and over complicating a painting. This is something you might like to try, and you may find that this suits your style of painting – but there is no reason why you should restrict yourself in this way.

Drawing or painting from life, particularly in the open air, can be an exhilarating experience. Not only are you seeing things in three dimensions, but you are also absorbing atmosphere, sound, smells and climate, with all of its variations. By simply recording that which you see, whether it’s with a spontaneous quick sketch or a more detailed painting, you are making a visual note of the sensation of your encounter with the real world with a far greater authenticity than can be achieved when working from a secondhand image.

How you record this response to what you have chosen to draw or paint is entirely up to you. If you are happy just to make rapid drawings in a sketchbook you will need very little equipment, but the chances are that you will soon become hooked on working ‘en plein air’, and the temptation to take up the paintbrush will be irresistible.

Beginnings

Without colours in tubes, there would be no Cézanne, no Monet, no Pizarro, and no Impressionism.

PIERRE AUGUSTE RENOIR

It is often mistakenly believed that the Impressionists were the first artists to pick up their paints and wander off optimistically into the countryside in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Although they were certainly the first movement of painters who more or less wholeheartedly abandoned the notion of the established method of classical, studio-based painting, there were others before them who felt the need to paint from life, rather than the generally accepted way of painting landscapes in the studio.

The ‘Romantic’ landscape painters were considered to be the pioneers of working ‘en plein air’, although much of their output consisted of sketches made outdoors with the finished paintings completed in the studio. Among these artists in England were John Constable and J.M.W. Turner, and in France, Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Géricault.

Painters of the ‘Barbizon’ school in France were greatly influenced by the ‘Romantics’, and developed a distinctive naturalism in their plein-air painting.

The group was led by Théodore Rousseau, and included Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet and Charles-François Daubigny. This school of artists is considered to be the precursor of the French Impressionists, the most famous of the plein-air painters. What is thought to be quite unremarkable today, was received by the establishment of the art world in the late 1800s as quite revolutionary.

In the middle of the 1840s, a young French painter called Eugène Boudin, who ran a stationery and picture framing shop in Le Havre, came into contact with the Dutch painter Johan Jongkind. Jongkind had already made a name for himself as an artist in Paris, and persuaded Boudin that the way forwards was for him to paint outside. In 1859 Boudin met Gustave Courbet, an established artist who introduced him to Charles Baudelaire, the art critic who recognized his talents when he exhibited at the Paris Salon Exhibition in the same year.

Boudin had already met and become friends with the young Claude Monet, who was living with his family in Le Havre, and earning a meagre living drawing caricatures. Boudin persuaded him to abandon his caricatures and take up landscape and seascape painting instead. His influence on Monet was profound, and the two remained lifelong friends. Boudin encouraged Monet to use bright colours, and to concern himself with light and form rather than realism; this is particularly evident in much of his later work depicting the play of light on water.

The Towpath, Johan Barthold Jongkind (oil on canvas). This painting is probably an example of the way in which Jongkind preferred to work. He would produce a preliminary watercolour painting en plein-air, and then would re-create the scene in oils back in his studio. The composition is typical of the artist, who often favoured a low horizon, giving the sky a far greater dominance. (Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington)

Salisbury Cathedral from Lower Marsh Close, John Constable (oil on canvas). Alongside J.M.W. Turner, Constable is considered one of England’s greatest landscape painters, influencing the Barbizon School and the French Romantic movement. Unlike his other contemporaries, he preferred to paint more humble, country scenes depicting the beauty of nature. (Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington)

Impressionists’ Camp, Charles Conder (oil on paper mounted on cardboard, 13.9x24cm). The interior of an old weatherboard homestead, where the artists Conder, Streeton and Roberts set up their Impressionists’ Camp. The painting shows Roberts seated and Streeton standing. (National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Gift of Mr and Mrs Fred Williams and family 1979)

Monet moved to Paris, where he was influenced by the painters of the ‘Barbizon’ school, and attended classes at the Académie Suisse. During this period he met Camille Pissarro, and a little later Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille and Johan Jongkind. These artists, together with others – including Berthe Morisot, Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro and Edouard Manet – were to be the cornerstone of the Impressionist movement that championed a style of painting depicting light and its ever-changing qualities, using brighter hues applied with lighter brushstrokes. Rather than becoming a passing trend, this movement gave birth to a completely new approach to painting, and extolled the virtues of working outside.

Work at the same time on sky, water, branches, ground, keeping everything going on an equal basis… Don’t be afraid of putting on colour… Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression.

CAMILLE PISSARRO

There were, of course, other movements in other countries that adopted this new concept of painting en plein air, many of their artists having travelled to France to be influenced by the Impressionists. From the St Petersburg Academy in Russia, a group of artists known as ‘The Itinerants’ was travelling around the countryside painting rural scenes, and the idea of painting outside had already been established in Russia by the landscape artist Ivan Shishkin.

In Australia, the first real movement of painting in the open air to be founded had at its helm Tom Roberts: he assembled a group of like-minded artists who painted at ‘Artist Camps’, where they pitched their tents or occupied deserted farmsteads and set about painting the unexplored landscape. There was great comradeship in these camps, and they brought together a colourful and disparate collection of artists whose styles, though varied, were united in their love of outdoor painting. This group of artists became known as the ‘Heidelberg School’, Heidelberg being an area close to Melbourne where the camps were set up. They also painted at locations in Victoria and in New South Wales. As well as Tom Roberts, the group included Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder and Fred McCubbin.

The Japanese Footbridge, Claude Monet (oil on canvas). Monet transformed his garden into an oasis of cool greens and tranquil water, which inspired him to set up his easel at the edge of the water-lily pond where he produced a series of paintings that he worked on over several sessions. (Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington)

A groundbreaking exhibition of 1889 entitled ‘9 × 5 Impression Exhibition’ took place in Buxton’s Saleroom in Melbourne, where 183 paintings of about 9 × 5in were displayed, mostly painted on the cedarwood lids of cigar boxes of roughly that size. They were on the receiving end of scathing criticism by the press, but were enthusiastically greeted by a partly perplexed general public. The cover of the catalogue, designed by Charles Conder, included the quote by Jean-Leone Gerome: ‘When you draw, form is the important thing, in painting the first thing to look for is the impression of colour.’

With its long history of emigration, many artists from Ireland travelled to the continent to study painting in either Antwerp or Paris. Some spent time in Brittany, including Augustus Nicholas Burke, Aloysius O’Kelly, and some time later Roderic O’Conor. They were certainly influenced by the Impressionist movement in France, and it was here that many developed an interest in landscape painting outdoors. Stanhope Alexander Forbes was a Dublin-born painter whose father was English and his mother French. He, too, travelled to Brittany, and spent time studying the Impressionist style of landscape painting whilst staying at St Malo, Pont-Aven and Quimperle. Here he was in the company of other Irish pleinair artists, including Nathaniel Hill and Norman Garstin.

When Impressionism and the concept of painting outside reached the United States through artists who had studied painting in France, it was a revelation to many, how attractive a picture painted in natural light could be. This notion of painting outdoors was embraced by many, and several artists’ colonies and art schools were established in areas where the diverse effects of light were perfect for painting. Several American artists who were attracted to the idea of working in the open air made frequent trips to Europe, as well as spending time painting on home soil. William Merritt Chase embraced the plein-air method of painting, and when he opened The Shinnecock Hills Summer School on eastern Long Island, New York, he often taught his students outdoors. Childe Hassam painted several New York scenes, and managed to capture the mood and colour of that city with its hustle and bustle and ever-changing skyline. He also painted the landscapes of the East Coast and California, as well as making drawings of colonial churches in Charleston, South Carolina.

But perhaps the person who had one of the greatest influences on all of these artists who took their brushes and paints out into the big wide world was a resourceful American portrait painter living in London in 1841, named John Goffe Rand. Up until this time, the conventional way of storing paint was either in jars or glass syringes, or in a lightweight pig’s bladder. As the jars were rather heavy to carry around and the syringes too fragile, it was the pig’s bladder that was normally used when painting outside. It was tied with string to stop the colours drying out, and when the paint was needed the bladder was punctured with a tack and the paint squeezed out on to the palette. Thedifficulty then was how to stop the paint from leaking out once it had been resealed with the tack.

Flood at Port-Marly, Alfred Sisley (oil on canvas). Painted quickly in situ, probably in one single session, Sisley used a muted palette in a wide range of colours, applying them in thin layers to describe the individual elements in the scene. Rather than creating a dramatic or picturesque painting, his interest was purely in the visual effects of rain-laden clouds and water-covered streets. The tranquility of the painting and the directness and simplicity of Sisley’s observation are reminiscent of the work of Corot, whom Sisley had met during the 1860s. (Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington)

An Early Taste for Literature, Charles Conder (oil on canvas on paperboard). Although some of this painting was created outside, it seems that certain elements were added back in the studio. Conder often added figures to his landscapes at a later stage, and it seems more than likely that neither the woman nor the cow were painted in situ. (Collection: Art Gallery of Ballarat)

The Ramparts at Aigues-Mortes, Frederic Bazille (oil on canvas). One of Bazille’s surviving sketchbooks reveals that he made many sketches of this view from different vantage points, before settling down in this position. Great care has been taken with deciding upon the composition, and then the painting has been executed with effortless and fluid brushstrokes. The bright blue sky and warm colours of the ramparts and riverbank, suggest the heat and intense light of Provence in the South of France. (Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington)

Houses in Provence: The Riaux Valley near L’Estaque, Paul Cezanne (oil on canvas). Under the guidance of Pissarro, Cezanne created many paintings directly from nature, and exhibited with the Impressionists in 1874 and 1877. However, his work came under heavy fire from the critics, and he began to drift away from the movement in order to pursue a path that eventually led to him painting in his own particularly individual style. (Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington)

Rand’s ingenious solution to this dilemma was to produce a squeezable tube made from tin that could be sealed with a screw cap. The invention was slow to catch on at first, as this increased the cost of the paint and made it unaffordable to many a starving artist. It did, of course, eventually become popular, and for the first time allowed the artist to complete an oil painting outdoors without having to go back to the studio to finish it.

Rouen Cathedral, West Façade, Claude Monet (oil on canvas). One of the thirty or so paintings that the artist produced during his time spent in rented rooms opposite the cathedral. These paintings were extensively reworked back in the studio. It was during this period in his career that he was quoted as saying: ‘To me the motif itself is an insignificant factor. What I want to reproduce is what exists between the motif and me.’ (Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington)

Industrial chemists had also produced new, vibrant pigments during the nineteenth century, and these colours, now in portable tubes, allowed the Impressionists to pull out all the stops in creating light-filled, atmospheric paintings. Up until this time, the pigments available to artists had remained virtually unchanged for about two hundred years.

Contemporary Plein-air Painting

Whilst there have always been artists drawing and painting in the open air, and certainly more so in the last couple of centuries, there is at present a more highly visible movement of painters who encourage others to leave the studio and to take their sketchbooks and paints outside. This has perhaps been more evident in the United States, but more recently, groups of plein-air painters have been established in many countries, particularly in Europe. The groups provide mutual support and camaraderie for those who regard drawing and painting outside as a way of life.

Barley Field, Roy Connelly (oil on stretched canvas). Painted in one session on a very pleasant evening in late May. The towering cloud caught the artist’s eye and he worked fast to capture it. He painted the sky first, and by the time he had finished the rest of the painting, there wasn’t a cloud to be seen anywhere.

There are also several groups of ‘urban sketchers’ who meet up regularly in cities and towns and set off looking for subjects to draw. They may meet up at the end of the day to compare their work, or just simply display their drawings on one of the many websites that have been set up.

Recent years have also witnessed the emergence of ‘paint-outs’. These events are competitions that attract both amateur and professional artists where the entrants have to complete a painting ‘en plein air’ within a certain time frame. There are often monetary prizes up for grabs, so competition can be quite fierce!

On a gentler note, there are those artists who just enjoy drawing and painting outside simply for the pleasure of it. They may be individuals who wander off on their own looking for just that right composition, or they may be those who prefer the more social side of working that can be provided by workshops, courses or painting holidays.

CHAPTER 1

Subject Matter and Locations

Painting en plein air presents the artist with a unique set of challenges. Light changes constantly, altering the subject hour by hour, minute by minute. Clouds can plunge a scene into darkness. Sunlight throws a figure into sharp relief. Tides rise and fall. People come and go. The plein-air painter must seize upon these moments – distilling from this evolving scene a permanent record of time and place.