Merry Christmas from Art and Influence.

I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I also want to thank everyone for their support and encouragement. This blog is a labor of love for me and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.


I specifically want to thank Jim Gurney, Matthew Innis, Stapleton Kearns and Frank Ordaz, who according to my stats, send me the bulk of my readers; I am truly humbled by their generosity.

I also want to thank my lovely partner Diane who has supported all my artistic endeavors all these years; I couldn't do it without her help.

Best,

Armand

Painting the Sky Color in a Landscape

by Armand Cabrera

By their very nature landscape paintings generally contain mostly land in the division of space in the painting. Usually less than a third of the canvas area is reserved for the sky. This seems to confuse most people when they start painting and they ignore what they see and paint what they think they know. What they think they know is the sky is blue and so it has to be a deep saturated blue in my painting.

This causes problems for the rest of your painting, because the sky, more than anything else is the key to how the light in the painting is behaving. Get the sky color wrong and you ruin the sense of light in the painting. If we examine the area of sky that is actually in the painting we will find for the most part it is made up very little blue if any. The blues that are there tend to be very high key, with lower saturation than at the skies zenith. So what is going on here?

Well, if you measure the relative size of visible sky included in your painting you will find it is barely above the horizon line. All of that blue sky you are looking at has no place in your painting if this is the case. The sky just above the horizon is affected by dust and clouds and rarely presents the deep blue of the zenith. At the lower levels toward the horizon the sky leans toward a greenish blue depending on the meteorological conditions. This is especially true in the summer when the air is warmer and the angle of the sun higher. In winter the lower sun angle and cooler air offer more opportunities for a clear blue sky.

Painting outdoors offers the artist a unique chance to observe these affects firsthand. When painting from nature it is important to leave your preconceived ideas at home and be open to the experience. This is especially true when including skies in your painting.

Painting Snow

by Armand Cabrera

Since the first snow storms are here I thought I would throw in some observations for those artists willing to get out and paint in winter weather. Painting snow presents a unique challenge compared to other subjects. The relative brightness of the landscape can hurt your eyes even when the sun is not out, the extreme temperatures can affect more than your comfort and actually harm you if you aren’t smart or careful, and conditions can have an adverse affect on your materials.

Being aware of all these things, you may question why someone would want to paint outdoors in the snow in the first place. For me it is to capture the wonder and beauty the frozen landscape has to offer. Snow is almost impossible to photograph effectively so your only real alternative is to paint it from life. Colors must be organized for maximum effect, compositions carefully thought out and value ranges keyed for each picture.

There are some things about snow you should look for when painting; some of these things are observable but others must use constructive techniques express them in an image. Practice outdoors and trial and error are your best tools for these decisions.

There is always a slight bit of subsurface scattering going on in snow, even on overcast days, this softens transitions between light and shadow and gives the snow a tinge of the hue from whatever local color is affecting it. Where the sunlight hits snow, it spreads out in almost in a prismatic effect, the shadow areas pick up the light of the sky color and reflections from sunlit areas. Because of all of these effects snow is never pure white except where you have a direct highlight from the sun. When you are in a position to actually see the highlights, you quickly realize how much relatively darker the rest of the snow is even in the lit areas.

Different types of snow affect these properties in different ways. Snow that has been melted and refrozen looks and behaves differently than freshly fallen powder. Snow patches appear more contrasted because there is no snow around them. When there is snow everywhere, that snow has a tendency to lighten everything around it with reflected and ambient light lessening the contrast and raising the key of the painting over all. These things are observable and paintable if you are willing to get out, experience it and see it first hand for yourself.

Paintings in this article are, from top to bottom Aldro T. Hibbard,
Fritz Thaulow, Birge harrison, Isaac Levitan, Edward Redfield

John Duncan

by
Armand Cabrera

John Duncan was born in Dundee, Scotland in 1866. At 11 years old he attended the Dundee school of art. In two years he began illustrating for local paper in Dundee. These assignments gave him an opportunity to go to London and work as a book illustrator. After three years in London Duncan felt he needed more training and wanted to leave illustration to pursue painting. He studied drawing and painting at the Antwerp School of Art in Belgium. After his instruction in Belgium Duncan toured France and Italy and viewed the great artists of the past. It was in Italy that he was most inspired by the Italian painters Botticelli and Fra Angelico.

Returning to Scotland Duncan met Patrick Geddes a biologist and educator. Geddes hired Duncan to paint his home and offered him a teaching position at a new art school Geddes was starting. When the school eventually closed Geddes secured a position in America for Duncan at the Chicago Institute starting in 1900 and lasting three years.

Duncan returned to Edinburgh and opened a studio and began working to create a unique voice with his work. He decided to incorporate Celtic themes and strive for better color and handling. He struggled to have his canvases reflect the images he saw in his mind. He disliked oil paints, which led him to experiment with other media. By 1910 he thought he had found his medium with tempera. His first large work with tempera was The Riders of the Sidhe, 45 x 69 inches.

Duncan was elected to the Scottish Royal Academy and began exhibiting in their annual shows. His studio became a gathering place for artists, writers and other Celtic Revivalists. In 1912 he married Christine Allen and the couple had two children.

At the outbreak of WW1 created financial difficulties for the artist and his family as his commissions dried up and Duncan struggled to make ends meet. His financial problems never recovered after the war and had a debilitating effect on his marriage and in 1925 his wife took his two children and left.

Duncan continued to struggle with his process and was never satisfied with the work he was producing. At times he would think his earlier work better and would go off and change his methods, only to be disappointed again.

Sales and commissions were few and his large tempera paintings were labor intensive and took him many months to complete. Geddes still gave him commissions and he still received some mural work for religious subjects but his popularity dwindled. In the 1930’s he worked with stained glass as well as his painting. In 1941 the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh put on a retrospective of his work; a first for a living artist. John Duncan died in his home at the age of 79 in 1945.

Bibliography
The paintings of John Duncan A Scottish Symbolist

John Kemplay

Pomegranate Art Books 1994

Quote

I often Despair, because my work does not improve. What I gain in one way I lose in another. Does one grow wiser with time or do some doors close as others open?

~John Duncan