Rob Adams a Painter's Blog painter's progress

November 28, 2016

Rules and Regulations

Filed under: Drawing,Life Drawing,Uncategorized,Watercolour — Tags: , , , , , — Rob Adams @ 12:10 pm

A friend recently commented after seeing a recent show that I place things in the centre of the picture too much. This of course produced an intense wave of paranoia and I went home and nervously checked my paintings! It was with some relief I found that though some did, largely they were free of this cardinal sin. However it did get me to thinking I should write something on the subject. So when considering how to tackle this post I thought I would check on paintings by the greats and see how they manoeuvred around this fearsome “Bermuda Triangle” zone that every canvas inevitably has. I thought I could post some paintings with those criss-crossy lines that art historians draw on paintings to explain the compositional ins and outs of cunning composition. This would have the added advantage of making me look more erudite than a well known epoxy glue as an added bonus.

Well there won’t be any clever diagrams… the giants of painting appear in fact to be very fond of the middle ground. I found so many examples of blatant centre invasion that I had to take a step back and consider the whole thing from scratch. Why do we landscape painters advise each other to be careful not the divide the canvas with the horizon halfway? I have done so to other painters myself, in my best irritatingly patronising manner, quite a few times. In the spirit of due diligence for this post I looked at Constable and Turner, both considered pretty nifty in the landscape department. I have to say I was taken aback, Constable loved the halfway horizon, Turner less so but plenty of examples there too.

By now I was in rat smelling mode. Who had told me of the prohibition? How had I come across the idea that the middle ground was toxic? Riffling through my old “how to paint a masterpiece in ten minutes with no boring learning hard stuff” books, I found they were very fond of raising the dread of the centre. They also were really enamoured of “the rule of thirds”. Back to the masterpieces of yore and it didn’t take long to realise that none of them gave a rat’s fundament to the idea of thirds. In looking I found a fair few criss-cross diagrams by officially clever people. I then took the same painting and did different criss-crossies… rather confusingly my amateur ones seemed to line up just as well as the professional ones! Its rather like ley lines it seems a telling property of ancient sites, but then it was found that similar lines could be drawn through the locations of telephone boxes! Things do line up but the fact isn’t necessarily significant

Another that cropped up frequently was the “Golden Mean” or phi. I had had a previous encounter with this so called magical proportion. Many years ago I had been asked to make a computer 3d model of a Nautilus shell whose spiral is the poster boy for the spiral produced by the golden section. It was to illustrate a TV program on the subject. There was to be a little animation of the spiral flying over and mapping to the shell. However on getting lots of photo ref of the beasty I found the spirals were entirely different! On talking to the producer and he suggested I cheat the shell to fit… I declined to cheat and I never heard more. Baffled I researched the whole thing further and found that the whole damn thing was myth. Irritatingly it was one I was rather fond of and had naively bought into.

I won’t go into it too much but the prime examples just don’t fly. The parthenon does it fit? Well no only with a bit of a stretch, the great pyramid well not quite the angle is a bit off. Both these cultures were superb geometers and would I reckon have got it bang on. Euclid hardly mentions it for heavens sake, if it was so important surely he would have given it more than a line. It does exist in Islamic culture, but they are very keen on Pentagons which is where phi originates. Other cultures, Chinese, Aztec etc never seem to have noticed this all conquering principle. I then found anguished articles by famous mathematicians debunking the whole thing and then getting cross that everyone went on believing the story anyhow! A fate due to be meted out to me over this peroration I feel sure.

Where do these rules come from? The rule of thirds it would seem puts in its first appearance in a book by John Thomas Smith in 1797 called “Remarks on Rural Scenery”.

I quote:

“Rule of thirds”, (if I may be allowed so to call it)…, in a design of landscape, to determine the sky at about two-thirds ; or else at about one-third, so that the material objects might occupy the other two : Again, two thirds of one element, (as of water) to one third of another element (as of land); and then both together to make but one third of the picture, of which the two other thirds should go for the sky and aerial perspectives.”

The person keen on banning “equal division” in a  composition seems to be Joshua Reynolds. Bafflingly he seems to have ignored it for the most part when painting his own pictures!

You will not be surprised to find that the thirds scenario is also somewhat absent in most  well known artist’s paintings… It is easy of course to find things on the thirds or the middles, there after all has to be something there… or not there as the case may be!

So why are we so keen on these so called rules? Well firstly they are easy to remember, and even easier to trot out, as I have not infrequently done myself. Beneath that I think we have a built in yearning for order and underlying meaning to make sense of this confusing world. We love binary choices, this is bad that is good, this black that is white. It allows us to feel we have a handle on this confusing and infinitely gradated existence we share. One thing I became convinced of in researching this trope is that such things only bother artists. Other viewers don’t notice and I what is more I suspect artists only notice because these dodgy rules have crept in to their beliefs without proper examination!

 

After that it is safer to post an update on life drawing, you can all amuse yourselves looking for golden means and thirds!

 

life drawing, figure

This was a great day where we spent all day working from the model. A real luxury when you are used to life sessions.

life drawing, figure

I find it easier to severely limit the palette on life sketches, it is amazing how the eye fills in the colours that it expects.

 

life drawing, figure drawing

Just two colours here 10 mins I think. Most short poses go into the bin but when by luck they work they are some of my favourite things.

life drawing, figure drawing

I have been trying to do just bits of the figure now and again, I do rather try a little too much to get the whole lot in which doesn’t really matter.

figure drawing, life drawing

One thing I do notice looking through drawings where I have used watercolour is that the ones done with a flat sable work better that those with a round. This probably means I need to do more with the round brush alas!

life drawing, figure drawing

I like to change media, each time you return to a particular medium you seem to see slightly more afresh.

life drawing, figure drawing

Two pastels on a toned paper are almost too seductive in the way you can get a quick précis of the pose and light.

figure drawing, life drawing

Going wild here a whole three pastels! I loved the perspective on this pose. When faced with this sort of problem it is very easy to get the distant body parts too large. It is one of the occasions when I check proportions carefully. Another good trick is to draw the shapes that aren’t body as we have fewer expectations of them.

life drawing, figure drawing

I was only when looking at this one I remembered I had intended to do a few sessions where I just did line. This pose seemed to call for a more definite edge, I must do some just with line as it always does good to reduce your options.

life drawing, figure drawing

Back to the white paper and charcoal pencil. I think my favourite weapon of choice, again for its simplicity.

life drawing, figure drawing

The medium is so good for the quick poses, you can do lines an block in tones very swiftly. I alternate between doing the tones first and then adding lines and visa versa.

life drawing

Usually I like the results of the long poses the least in a session but I was pleased with this one. It is unintuitive but a good idea to allow your toning to cross right over the figures bounds. This sets the figure in space and gives a lost and found unity.

figure drawing, life drawing

Last one and that is the life drawing caught up with. These are always the least popular of my posts but probably my own favourites!

November 15, 2016

Gut Feelings

I was watching a video with a well known artist pondering the ins and outs of painting. There was the usual lone figure wandering the hillsides with sketch book in hand, the piano music swelled as this sensitive soul opened his heart to the underlying whispers of history and usage that imbues our 21st century landscapes. We then followed him to his paint spattered garret where he explained his methods. All well and good, (by the way I happen to like this painters work.) he then explained how he tried to take risks and followed his instincts and gut feelings rather than his head.

At this point my antennae raised, I am sure he is being honest about what he thinks is going on. However we all have to watch that bit of us that self mythologises and tries to woo the world into looking at us with respect and admiration. It was the “gut feeling” comment that set me to thinking. Most artists I know are very keen on “intuitive” painting from the “heart” or the aforementioned “guts”. Indeed it would seem we should paint from everywhere and anywhere but our brains. Firstly even though I know it is obvious we don’t paint by inspiration from any part of our giblets. Our spleens, kidneys and even our sainted pancreases play little part in the process.

Whether you like it or not it is the pathways of the brain that do the business. Yes, yes I know they are just metaphors for instinctual responses. A little look at these responses is maybe called for here. Where did they come from? What was their purpose before we painted or surfed the internet? Also there may be two things being conflated. Firstly there are muscle memory and routines of repeated action that are created by establishing pathways in the brains structure. If you do an action repeatedly, such as drawing then bit by bit certain aspects get automated. Judging angles, distances or tones for example. Just the dexterity needed to wield the brush and lay the paint on the surface. These are bits of your brain that are trained up and can run like a piece of software that does not need conscious control.

The other bit is the function that supplies quick assessment on the fly. There is not time to assess properly many things in life because to do “due diligence” would take too long and an answer is needed now. So our early man didn’t ponder whether that tigerish shaped shadow was actually a tiger he just legged it on receiving the instinctive assessment. We use this method to quickly assess people we meet. We call it first impressions, here we do usually treat them with suspicion and are usually prepared to reassess over time. David Kahneman who got the Nobel prize for his work in this area made several experiments that showed up the flaws in the process.

He sent to two groups of surgeons a description of a patient and asked them to say whether they would operate. The descriptions were identical except for one thing. In the estimate of the likelihood of success one group was told the probability was 30 percent that the patient would die, the other group was told the survival rate was 70 percent. Worryingly the 30 percenters mostly said the operation  should not go ahead and the 70 percenters said that it should. The bit of these eminent men’s brains (or maybe their guts) supplying their assessments was of course the same bit of the brain that our painter was relying on to give his work that extra something!

My suspicion of this auto assessment feature of the mind has been with me for a while. Although is is the bit that tells you something might not be quite right, it is also the bit that tells you your drawing is all right or even good when it isn’t. A quick look at a drawing in the mirror will often show this tendency up. When in everyday life the quick response feature lets us down we cheerfully confess to being mistaken, so we do understand its flaws. So why do artists elevate the automatic reaction process to a touchstone of expressiveness and sensitivity?

The answer I fear is superstition and the belief in magic. We still, despite all the evidence to the contrary,  believe we have souls. Some higher part of our being that is pure and responds to the inner rightness of things. The important thing of this extra bit of us is that it is incorporeal and thus stands a chance of surviving extinction. An idea we for obvious reasons are quite keen to believe and reluctant to question. We have decided, it would seem, that this higher self is also responsible for imbuing our paintings with extra spirit too, in some mystical, druidical “art mojo” transfer process.

We spend quite a bit of time exhorting each other to log on to this aetheric wi-fi network in order to express ourselves, tap into underlying energies and be spiritually intuitive. To be free, unrestrained by mere logic and sense etc as if our learning and more considered thinking processes were some kind of ball and chain around our creative ankles. I think this idea comes from confusing the two parts of instinctive or intuitive actions. For our hardwired dexterity and spatial assessment functions the conscious mind can put a spanner in the works as any musician will tell you. When we paint or do anything that occupies our grey matter to the exclusion of all else self awareness is often the first casualty. This is why the hours fly by when we are very involved. This does not however mean that our actions are then being directed by any “higher” consciousness we are actually using previous learnt actions and prior experiences to carry out the picture making process.

To return to our lonely painter on the hillside. Why, if he is trying to “take risks”, and follow “gut feeling”, do his paintings all turn out much the same? Could it be like the rest of us he is following well worn and hard learnt pathways? We have all pondered why, however we experiment and push the boat out, our paintings still are recognisably “ours”. At some point we have most of us decided to tear up the rulebook and do it differently this time only to find that the finished article could hang in perfect harmony next to any other examples of our oeuvre.

A bit of a mish-mash of work this time, I decided I had been rather ignoring the watercolours. For most of these paintings my liver was in charge… and kidneys of course, kidneys are very good for watercolours.

 

Bulbarrow, Dorset, oil painting, road

I think this was Okeford Hill in the background, I had been driving round the lanes on a damp day looking for a subject and thought this was interesting. However after 15min when I had only blocked in the basics the day decided to mutate into a glorious sunset. Not having any more boards with me I debated wiping off and redoing but took it home and fiddled with it in the end. I tried to go back a few days later only to discover I couldn’t remember which road I was on! I must mark scenes on the map, you always believe you will recall where good scenes are but in reality you just don’t. 16in by 7.5in oils.

 

moreton, Dorset, oil painting, ford, puddle

This is the ford at Moreton in Dorset. It doesn’t quite work and is rather like a stage set awaiting the actors, I am debating whether just to wipe it or try a rescue operation. In such situations where a painting is not particularly bad but doesn’t quite cut the mustard either I scan it in and mess with it in Photoshop rather than working in paint. This was the second larger 20in by 16in I have tried plein air and neither painting has really worked. Oils

 

rejig, moreton

Here is my idea, I am now considering whether to do it in paint! The couple came past as I was painting and I snapped them, there were horses too but they didn’t seem to work as well.

 

Dorset, Roads, oil painting, plein air

Last one of the day, I only had 20 or so minutes to get this done. Needs to be redone to a wider format but I was pleased with the mood. 14in by 10in Oils.

 

Self Portrait, Rob Adams, oil painting

It has been awhile since I did one of these. Yes folks it is me, self portraits are great fun but hard. You are never quite sure if the result looks like you which is both an advantage and disadvantage. On the one hand you just have to try and be accurate and observe methodically, but on the other the result can be lifeless. I had intended to just paint for an hour, but went on for an extra half in the end. I will try a double mirror one maybe, then you don’t end up gurning at the viewer. 10in by 16in Oils.

 

Twyford, Shaftesbury, Dorset, watercolour

This is the road to Twyford from Shaftesbury, a great view and one I will be returning to. It did somewhat try my patience with the drying so I resorted to the cars heater blower! 9in by 6in watercolour.

 

Shaftesbury, Dorset, watercolour

This is Shaftesbury, the town is quite high so we are actually in a cloud! I just drew this out in pencil and moved on, washes would never have dried in an age. It was actually great fun to watercolour later allowing bits I couldn’t remember to fade into murk and just trying to remember the atmosphere. 9in by 6in Watercolour.

 

Bedchester, tree, lane, Dorset, pen and ink, Drawing

Here I am planning another lino cut. The view is a lane near Bedchester. I am finding the pen and ink drawings very good for planning prints. I must however get some actually printed. I have two sets of blocks ready to go so need to get printing!

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