Monday Morning Art School: why study art history?

Understanding the major movements in western art will make you a better painter.

Yo Yos, 1963, Wayne Thiebaud, courtesy Albright-Knox Art Museum. This, I think, is the first Thiebaud canvas I ever saw.

Wayne Thiebaud passed away on Christmas Day at the age of 101. Thiebaud is best known for his pop-art still lives of everyday objects, but should be equally remembered for his superlatively-drawn landscapes. He worked right into his centenary year, and that in itself should be a lesson to us all.

I regularly haul him out in class as an example of paint application, controlling edges, simplification and draftsmanship. Now he has crossed over from being a working artist to being an Old Dead Master, but his voice as a painter and teacher is not stilled.

Girl with the red hat, Johannes Vermeer, c. 1665-7, courtesy National Gallery of Art. No painting better demonstrates how to intentionally control the viewer’s eyeballs.

I had the fortune of growing up near a good art gallery which, moreover, was free. There were gaps in its collection, of course, because Seymour Knox was monomaniacal about abstract-expressionism. However, Paul Gauguin’s Yellow Christ, James Tissot’s trophy wife, the Buffalo newsboy, the little Charles Burchfield watercolors and huge Clyfford Stillabstractions are all imprinted in my memory, stroke by stroke. I’m sure they’ve influenced my painting.

There is no substitute for time spent in art galleries, but there is—equally—no substitute for time spent understanding the major movements in western art. It will make you a better painter.

I think of this every time I meet a new student stuck in indirect painting. It’s how I learned, since a small mania for Rembrandt had blossomed in mid-century (and continues to throw up shoots here and there).

Portrait of George Washington (The Athenaeum Portrait), 1796, Gilbert Stuart, courtesy Museum of Fine Arts

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with indirect painting, but in 2021, it’s a nod to the past. Perhaps some great genius will come along and divert the course of art history back to glazing (as, in a way, Andrew Wyeth did for realism). Or, more plausibly, an advance will be made in paint technology that drives a style change.

But right now, you may as well lecture in Attic Greek for all the influence you’ll have if you pursue indirect technique. We’re in an age of alla prima, bravura brushwork and brilliant color. One may be contrarian and reject that, but it’s at least helpful to know where you stand.

I vividly remember my first class with Cornelia Foss. She set me the task of drawing and painting an orange. When I was finished, she said, “If this was 1950, I’d say, ‘brava’, but it’s not,” the implication being that I needed to get with the times.

Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne, 1806, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, courtesy MusĂ©e de l’ArmĂ©e

There’s probably not a lot that hasn’t been tried with oil paint. Tonalism involved a lot of dabbling, including glazing with experimental substances. Many canvases by Albert Pinkham Ryderand Ralph Blakelock have deteriorated beyond recognition. Knowing this would save a lot of anguish going forward.

Equally, there are brilliant technical skills that can be best mastered from looking at Old Masters. Nothing demonstrates edge control better than Vermeer’s Girl with a Red Hat, for example. Some of my students are currently on an Edgar Payne journey. They’ll learn more from studying his canvases than I can teach with all my bloviating.

But, beyond that, art can teach social history as well as any lecture. Think of Gilbert Stuart’s unfinished portrait of George Washington, the one which became our one-dollar bill. Compare its austerity with its contemporary, Ingres’ Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne and you have all the difference between the French and American Revolutions in a nutshell. I don’t know what any teacher could say that would improve on that.

Monday Morning Art School: controlling edges

Creating hard and soft edges is largely a matter of practice.

In Breaking Storm, the soft edges in the clouds were done by overbrushing with a dry brush. The hard edges in the sails and rigging were done with a flat brush on its side.

The lost-and-found edge is an important design principle, one that every painter should be familiar with. To do it successfully, one must feel confident painting not just shapes but lines. That requires understanding how your brush lays down paint. Edges are one area in which watercolors and oils behave very differently.

A softened edge creates a natural blurring, and it happens often in human perception. We just ignore the edges we’re not interested in. In painting, a soft edge can be achieved by keeping value, hue and saturation close between two shapes, but it’s most often achieved through brushwork.

A hard edge is an area that demands our attention. It should be related to the focal point of a painting. It can be achieved by separating hue, saturation and value, but it’s also a place where effective brushwork is important.

In oil painting, you can lay down a line and fiddle endlessly with its edge, but in watercolor you get only one shot at it (although you can tidy things up a bit after the fact). This is not permission to overpaint endlessly in oils. In either medium, constant tinkering is a sure-fire way to deaden your work.

In either medium, the smaller the brush, the harder the edge. That’s one reason your teachers harp on you to use a bigger brush.

The angle at which you hold your watercolor brush will determine how broken the line is.

In watercolor, the hardness of the edge must be considered in advance.

A truly hard edge is made by working an upright brush slowly across the work, allowing the pigment to flow onto the paper. The more slanted the brush and the less pigment and water, the more broken scumbling will result. This is a beautiful effect, worth practicing.

If you want to soften or blend an edge, you can’t wait until later. Your options are to:

  1. Lay down a line and immediately run clean water along the edge you want to soften;
  2. Work into a prewetted area, letting the paint bleed down along the edge you want to soften;
  3. Create the illusion of softness by unifying passages with an underwash.
Top sample, painted into damp paper with a dry edge at the top. Middle, painted into wet paper with a dry edge at the top. Bottom, edge wetted after painted onto dry paper. 

In the first two techniques, working too slowly will give you bloom (caused by rewetting a partially-dry area) or a hard edge where you don’t want it. A line or shape can have both a hard and a soft edge—just don’t soften the edge on that side of the paper.

A simple exercise in hard and soft edges in watercolor. Yes, kids, try this at home!

In alla prima oil painting, edges need to be married. That means making a shape or silhouette, and then pushing the background color against it. Not doing this will result in anemic shapes. After this is done, the edge can be softened by:

Using a dry brush to manually blur edges;

Introducing the background color into the foreground and vice-versa.

Three Machines, 1963, Wayne Thiebaud, courtesy De Young Museum. Note that he leaves the edges in the background as part of the design.

At times this will produce a halo around the object. I was taught to eliminate that halo. Recently in class, we were looking at paintings by Wayne Thiebaud, and I noticed how often he left that halo as part of his design. Whether or not you elect to brush the halo out, Thiebaud’s paintings vividly demonstrate how to marry the background to the foreground in oil paints.

The hardest, most precise line in alla prima oil painting can be made by using a flat brush on its side. If you’re painting onto a dry surface, you can get a hard, tight line with a rigger or fine brush as well.

She’s Not There (yet)

Extreme old age seems liberating for many artists, who are finally able to take risks they couldn’t contemplate when they were younger.

Drunkenness of Noah, 1515, Giovanni Bellini (then 85)
The Duke of Edinburgh recently announced that he will be retiring soon after his 96th birthday. Either he has remarkable genes or his expectations are radically different from the gaffers I know. Most people are anxious to quit working as soon as they can. 
On the other hand, artists, like royalty, are bound by noblesse oblige. In other words, we must act in a way that conforms to our position and reputation. But how long can we keep it up?
Last night I toddled over to Northampton, MA to see the final show of the 1960s British rock band, the Zombies. They played their 1968 album Odessey and Oracle from start to finish one last time, after which they’re all moving on to something else.
Toward Another Light, 1985, Marc Chagall (then 97)
This was not a PBS special reunion band, where they prop up one aging member of a long-gone band and pad him with a backing orchestra. All four surviving players were present. Of these, Rod Argent, Hugh Grundy and Colin Blunstone turn 72 this year. Chris White is 74. Jim Rodford, who plays with them now, is 76.
They continue to play to the highest standard of musicianship, a standard that most young artists will never achieve, let alone maintain.
On the day before he died at the age of 97, Marc Chagall produced his last work, a lithograph entitled Toward Another Light. A portrait of his younger self with his late wife Bella is handing him a bouquet, while the Angel of Death waits to receive him. That’s what you might call a strong finish.
Cover of Jazz, 1947, by Henri Matisse, 1947. Matisse was bedridden after abdominal cancer at age 72. He turned to cutting colored paper. Jazz was completed when he was 74.
A striking number of artists have been highly productive late into old age, including Giovanni Bellini (who died at 86), Michelangelo (89), Titian (86 or 88), Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, (86), Claude Monet(86), Henri Matisse (84), Joan Miró (90), Pablo Picasso (91), and Georgia O’Keeffe (98).
Faith Ringgold, who is now 86, drew the connection between visual arts and musicianship in an ArtNews interviewin 2013. â€œYou’ve got to do just like the musicians do, you’ve got to practice every day,” she said. “I plan to do that for the rest of my life, practice every day.”
Google’s 12th Birthday, 2010 Wayne Thiebaud (then 89)
Wayne Thiebaud, who will be an eye-watering 97 this year, pointed out the relationship between physical well-being and creative control.  â€œThe plumb line in the body gives us a sense of things like grace or awkwardness or tension.”
Extreme old age seems liberating for many artists, who are finally able to take risks they couldn’t contemplate when they were younger.
“Working becomes your own little Eden,” Thiebaud said. “You make this little spot for yourself. You don’t have to succeed. You don’t have to be famous. You don’t have to be obligated to anything except that development of the self.”

The Open Road

Evening Train, Trans Canada Highway, by Robin Weiss
I have always been interested in paintings of expressways, which is helpful when I’m driving as much as I have been since July. This week’s road follies were not intentional, being precipitated by a set of personal crises on either end of New York State. I saw a lot of Interstate 90 this week, and repeatedly.
Study for Freeway,1978, by Wayne Thiebaud
To the artist, painting is more about the play of color, shape and texture than it is about subject, but I’ve noticed that viewers don’t generally feel that way. They select paintings based on a personal, emotional, call and response.
Lost Highway, by Peter Harris
The open road is neutral, although to many of us, it’s the thing that stands in the way of getting where we’re going. In their own gangly way, our expressways are beautiful.  Like me, the Interstate Highway System itself is a prime example of mid-century modern. Authorized in 1956, the first sections were completed that same year (although in some states, including New York, previous highways were incorporated into the system).

Untitled by Rodgers Naylor
Message me if you want information about next year’s workshops.

Amazing new diet plan! Take up drawing!

Watermelon & Cherries, by Brad Marshall, oil on canvas board, 11×14. Executing this luscious painting probably elevated Brad’s mood by 22%, but who can tell when he’s already so darn cheerful? It’s for Rye Art Center’s annual Painters on Location in September, and I imagine it will elevate the mood of some lucky collector too.
A report in the Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science suggests that drawing pictures of so-called comfort food can also have positive effects on mood, reportedthe Wall Street Journal.
It’s hard to imagine drawing Texas-style comfort food like King Ranch Chicken Casserole or Frito Pie, since they basically look like lumpy stew. So it’s a good thing this research was done at St. Bonaventure University (here in upstate New York) where “comfort food” means pizza and cupcakes.
Wayne Thiebaud, Four cupcakes, 1971. Oil on canvas, 27,9 x 48,3 cm. Is Thiebaud a very happy man? He certainly should be; he painted enough cakes.
Drawing pizzas improved the subjects’ mood by 28%, while depicting cupcakes and strawberries boosted spirits by 27% and 22%, respectively. Drawing peppers improved moods only by 1%.

Peppers, 6X8, oil on canvasboard, by little ol’ me. They made me more than 1% happier to paint, I swear.
 
Maybe it’s because they made the poor test subjects do their drawings on empty stomachs, but I find it hard to imagine that drawing anything would fail to elevate one’s mood. Especially peppers.

I know one thing that’s going to make me very happy: my July workshop in mid-coast Maine. Nothing is happier-making than painting with great friends in a brilliant place. There’s one more residential slot left in July; I’m dying to know who is going to fill it. August and September are sold out , but there are openings in October! Check here for more information.