Oil Painting

I’m taking a class from the New York Academy of Art called Master Copying Class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Could anyone be a better teacher than a great master, despite, of course, being long dead? Fortunately, I also have a great living teacher, João Brandão, to help me interpret what I am looking at. Copying a painting at the Louvre or any great museum, a tradition going back many centuries, is how most of the great masters learned to paint. The Met’s Copyist program was founded in 1872, two years after the Met first opened, the program has provided countless artists the opportunity to copy the great works that fill the museum’s numerous galleries.
I’m so excited to take this class–in fact, so excited that I am 45 minutes early! Walking up the museum steps today (which I have done many times) felt strangely different. I really think this is going to be a great class. I loved copying the Romney painting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which I did without the benefit of a class. My friend Dr. Hal Shanis and I just decided we wanted to do it. We really didn’t know the ins and outs of what we were supposed to do, but had a terrific time doing the paintings and figuring everything out. This is much more formal and feels more like it might be like the high bureaucracy of the Louvre though I don’t think there are any interviews or other hurdles. In fact, the painting schedule is already set.

The first day the class met with NYAA teacher João Brandão in the Uris Center for Education in a conference room near the copier office at the Met. We talked about the rules of the Met and the schedule. (The Met has strict guidelines for copying not only out of fear of forgeries, which would exclude large and popular paintings, but also for such practical reasons as the traffic in the gallery where the painting is located. For all the guidelines see www.metmuseum.org.) We then took a guided tour of the Thomas J. Watson Research Library, which has one of the most comprehensive collection of books and periodicals on the history of art in the world. The rest of the day was spent combing through paintings that were on the approved list from the curators from the different galleries of the Met. Below are some of the paintings I was hoping to paint but, unfortunately, were either not on the approved gallery list or were not approved by the curator. Sooo frustrating!
 
 

I forgot to mention the best day of our non-painting days. It was to visit the Met’s Drawing and Prints Department. This is where we met brilliant Laurie Murphey, the Met’s education person in charge of the copyists. (Copyists are the students, like us, who copy a master painting.) Our class, of only 4, was shown 4 or 5 drawings at a time, from Leonardo da Vinci to Rembrandt. These original master sketches were pulled out of boxes and put on desk easels in front of us. We each picked one and started sketching. What an off-the-charts fabulous exercise, which the other schools also had an opportunity to do on different days!
To find out more about my experience at the Met, follow me on my blog!

I see the world as big, abstract pieces. This painting and the colors in it are exactly how this backyard scene with a greenhouse looked to me. (Here is a photograph of the same scene).

A little over a week ago I had cataracts removed from my right eye and a lens implant. (I know what you’re thinking… “But you’re so young!” Why yes I am, thank you very much for noticing.) My doctor has known me for over 30 years and has been very curious about my artist’s sight and sense of color. In fact, Dr. Gary Jerkins and I have discussed theories on Monet’s and Degas’ cataracts, something HE had studied and wanted to know my thoughts. When my cataracts very first began developing, I noticed. Seems I’m something of a little Princess actually because I had two different types. My surgeon, Dr. Rebecca Taylor, couldn’t believe I could even tell yet, as the cataracts were hardly developed at all. Most non-artists likely wouldn’t have thought anything was going on for 10 or 15 years more.
Flash forward to my post-op appointment. As soon as my doctor removed the eye patch, I could immediately tell that the left eye needs surgery too. It hadn’t been noticeable before because the right was a bit worse. The second thing I could really measure was the difference in color I could see with my new right eye. Unbelievable. I mean, these were beginning stages cataracts and I could sincerely notice the difference.
It is not uncommon for students in my workshops to challenge me on the colors I use. Oftentimes someone will say something like, “Well that’s a pretty color you used, but it sure isn’t what’s there.” I have even had students actually argue with me that I am just making up colors completely, even though I am not.
The truth, and what I try to teach them, is that we all perceive color differently. I’m not even talking about people with color blindness. I’m talking about people who see color as distinctly as you or I think that we do. What may appear as blue to you could appear green to someone else. It makes sense that this certainly happens easily between colors that are very near one another. Think of it as measuring blue-green and green-blue on the color wheel. Some people will find it difficult to tell which is which. However, many other factors can also play a role in perceived color difference.

One of those factors is a cataract. A cataract is a clouding of the eye’s naturally clear lens. The lens focuses light rays on the retina (the layer of light-sensing cells lining the back of the eye) to produce a sharp image of what we see. As a cataract develops, the lens will become cloudy. Light rays cannot pass through it as easily and vision is blurred. This cloudiness is particularly yellow. So not only is the image blurry, it is darkened due to less light focusing on the retina, and yellow. You can imagine how this changes what you, as an artist, sees in your scene.
It’s nothing new to imagine how many famous artists through time have developed cataracts. Claude Monet, for example, reportedly developed cataracts around 1912. He had been painting his waterlily works since before the turn of that century. As the cataracts progresses, so too did the colors of his paintings. His works between 1918-1922 show muddier and darker tones, larger brush strokes, and indistinct coloration, particularly the absence of light blues. According to the National Gallery, London, it is widely accepted that he also had a form of cataract removal at age 82. Some researchers believe that Monet simply decided on a stylistic change, but in his own words, he penned, “To think I was getting on so well, more absorbed than I’ve ever been and expecting to achieve something, but I was forced to change my tune and give up a lot of promising beginnings and abandon the rest; and on top of that, my poor eyesight makes me see everything in a complete fog. It’s very beautiful all the same and it’s this which I’d love to have been able to convey. All in all, I am very unhappy.” – August 11, 1922, Giverny. He wrote that “colors no longer had the same intensity for me . . . reds had begun to look muddy . . . my painting was getting more and more darkened.” He felt that he could no longer distinguish or choose colors well and was “on the one hand trusting solely to the labels on the tubes of paint and, on the other, to force of habit.”

Degas, who also developed what is believed to have been macular degeneration. According to the Vision and Aging Lab, by his forties, Degas developed a loss of central vision. Painting became even more difficult, as he was forced to paint around this scotoma. Later on, Degas had problems identifying colors and asked his models to identify the colors of his media. His vision became progressively worse, and by 1891, at age 57, he could no longer read. “I see even worse this winter, I do not even read the newspapers a little; it is Zoé, my maid, who reads to me during lunch. Whereas you, in your rue Sadolet in your solitude, have the joy of having your eyes… Ah! Sight! Sight! Sight!… the difficulty of seeing makes me feel numb.” – Degas in a letter to friend, Evariste de Valernes, Paris, 6 July, 1891.

From 1870 until his death in 1917, Degas sought the advice of a number of different ophthalmologists. Many theories have been put forward regarding the nature of his problem, including retinal disease, hereditary degeneration, corneal scarring and age-related macular degeneration (ARM). He was diagnosed with “chorioretinitis”, a term then used commonly to describe a variety of eye conditions. Degas’ difficulty in distinguishing colours, sensitivity to light, and scotoma all point to some sort of retinal disease. It is not clear whether his retinopathy was acquired or inherited.
Just a tidbit of interesting info regarding how we see color: Cones are one of three types of photoreceptor cells in the human eye. They are responsible for color vision. It is a huge simplification for this particular post, but basically red, green, and blue. Sea creatures can see thousands or millions more colors with many more cones. Roughly 2% of females have an extra color cone. More on that in a later post.

Real confidence only comes from study and practice.—Harley Brown

As I’ve been preparing to paint lately, I’ve been thinking about how great it would be if “Confidence” were just a color I could squeeze out onto my palette. It would mix smoothly with all the other colors, and give each brushstroke the snap and spring that would bring those flat shapes to life, to imbue those colored spots and masses with the energy and authenticity that would ultimately make my painting sing in a frame on the gallery wall.

Alas, I can’t find it on the aisles of the art store. It’s not bottled, boxed, compressed, or container-ed. I have been able to read about it: how it changes lives, impels men and women to the top of Mount Everest and to the bottom of the South Pole. It was inside Amelia Earhart’s leather pilot’s helmet when she flew across the Atlantic in one go, for the first time, and on the shoulders of General George Patton’s short jacket as he out-thought and out-fought German commanders across Europe and Africa. You can see it in Monet’s impressionist markings in the “Water Lilies” series in the Musée De L’Orangerie, and in the economic charcoal drawings of Picasso and Georgia O’Keeffe. Sometimes it seems like it’s everywhere I’m not.
Robert Genn was a prolific writer and artist, a Canadian with a can-do sense of life, and while he was here he wrote about things in life that way. He wrote, “To float like a cloud, you have to go to the trouble of becoming one.” Wow. That’s my goal, to paint like I breathe: easily, effortlessly, and economically. I’ve heard workshop instructors tell their students, “Use the Big Brush! Paint with Confidence, and Boldly! Go Big or Go Home!”

Lots of folks, I believe, would pay real money to go to a weekend workshop that issued “confidence” as one of the tools students would be using from then on to create their paintings. But I think we can agree that one can only be confident in what they do after having a series of experiences that demonstrate to them personally that they know what they are doing. Real confidence only comes from study and practice.
 
Bottom line, Rick, sorry, guy, you’re only going to paint with confidence after you paint miles of canvas. There is no other way. I guess I should say, “Go Hard or Go Home.”
That’s why artists, or anyone who wants to do their work confidently, has got to love what they are doing, and possess a driving passion to do it. That way, mistakes and failures won’t sink the ship: they’ll just be more coal that you can feed the boilers to keep going full speed ahead.
Okay, then, back to work so-I can Paint with Confidence!
To see more of my work, go to delantyfineart.com

I have a ‘might be salvageable’ cupboard where I keep a stack of paintings that didn’t work for one reason or another. I like to play about with them when I have an odd hour here or there. Sometimes adjustments to the colour or values is all that is needed or the brushwork can be cleaned up or the painting is too tight and some bolder brush or knife work might liven it up. Or, at the time, I didn’t have a clear idea how to handle a new subject but later I can see my through it. Of course there are those pictures that just shouldn’t have been started in the first place – the ones where I scratch my head and wonder what ever was I thinking!
The painting below was done from some reference I gathered when visiting with a friend on his boat at a marina in Sidney, a town not too far from my studio. It started life as a 24×18 with a fairly faithful representation of the boats in the background, a lot of rocks and water in the foreground and some geese in the middle bit. It didn’t work. It was boring and it ended up in the reject cupboard. A few months ago, I hauled it out and tackled it again.
I’ll post the new version first followed by the ‘reject’.I invite you to play ‘spot the difference’.

What did I do?

I sorted through my reference files and found another group of boats with the same lighting and, without planning or drawing anything, I started on the right and worked across to the left. First I broke up that dull wall of green with some sky and a suggestion of buildings and added some rocks and beach and then the boats and reflections.
I decided that the large rock, upon which the two geese are standing, was too large and dominated the space so I flattened it. And the row of sleeping geese, which I had once thought made an interesting shape, seemed contrived and had to go. I started replacing them with water and reflections and some more mud but stopped before eliminating all of them. I probably went to make a cup of tea. I’m glad I did because I quite like the two that remain.
I then tried a number of approaches to the bottom third but nothing worked so I stuck a piece of masking tape across it at the 18″ mark. Better. I took out most of the rocks and mud I had painted and went back to a larger area of water to lead into the painting. This time I kept it simpler allowing the top third to draw the eye.Better still.
I think this one can stay out of the cupboard……..

There’s always something lost when viewing a painting on a computer screen. There’s nothing quite like the luminance of a well-executed physical painting under a bright light. A sculptural impasto work can seem particularly flat without walking by it on the wall to see the light reflect off the high points and cast textural shadows. 

Yet, there are some things we can do to improve the experience of viewing our paintings as screen images. Lighting can make immense changes to a physical painting and my feeling is that a screen should, as much as possible, represent a work in ideal lighting conditions. Of course, a screen image should be accurate, but if the image is accurate to the painting by candlelight, it probably won’t look as good as it could have. A viewer would then likely be surprised when seeing the physical work in better light. There are many ways for a screen image to be accurate, so choosing the best lighting condition for your painting will improve the experience for your viewer and help them understand what the work truly looks like in person.


Even light, or multiple lights from opposite directions will cancel out textural shadows and emphasize the true color mixtures of the pigments on the surface. This is great for paintings whose surface is already fairly smooth, like realist works where texture can distract from carefully painted lighting effects or rendered forms. But a richly impastoed painting will lose all of it’s sculptural qualities in this light.
Raking light, or lighting from one direction, closer to the plane of the painting surface, will cast shadows from the thick strokes and surface textures, allowing a screen viewer to experience some of a work’s three-dimensional qualities. Depending on the brightness and distance of the light source, as well as the size of the painting, exposure may need to be adjusted on one side of the image to even out the brightness. But for a thick, impasto painting, the result will be a better representation of the physical artwork. However, textural shadows in the lightest areas of a painting (often painted as thick, opaque, lights) can be problematic for experiencing the glow of a well-captured effect of strong light. A deep canvas texture can also be distracting from a work that would better viewed in even light, both in person and on screen.

In person, a painting can be seen from different angles or in multiple lighting conditions. In even lighting, three-dimensional textures can still be discerned by moving around a work. Some works are both textural and depict luminous lighting effects. So, to help a viewer more fully understand the reality of a painting, I sometimes supply images in both of these lighting conditions.

Glare is another pitfall of photographing oil paintings, particularly textural ones. A tiny bit of glare can help show texture without being too much of a nuisance, but I prefer to let raking light shadows fill this role and remove glare entirely. In person, we have the ability to remove glare by changing our vantage point relative to the lighting, but it doesn’t matter where you move your head in front of a screen, the image won’t change. To control glare, I use linear polarizing gels, or filters, over my lights and a polarizing filter on my camera lens. With these filters oriented (rotated) properly, virtually all glare can be easily eliminated from photographs of your paintings. The lighting gels on their own cut down on glare significantly so I leave them on my lights while I paint in the studio too. Polarizing film can be purchased by the foot from polarization.com significantly less expensively than you can buy individual gels from a photography equipment supplier, though you’ll probably want to purchase a camera filter from one of these suppliers.

Screen representations will always have their limits, but with the right lighting we can give our viewers the best possible, and most accurate experience.
Rob Rey OPA