fbpx

Tag: subject

Posted on

Monday Morning Art School: what we can learn from JMW Turner

The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838, J. M. W. Turner, courtesy National Gallery

We’ve just marked the 250th birthday of Britain’s great Romantic artist, Joseph Mallord William Turner. As with so many great painters, Turner really didn’t become Turner (the prefigurer of modern painting) until he was closing in on old age. While there are many lessons to be learned from his work, here are two that stand out to me:

The Fighting Temeraire

The Fighting Temeraire was once voted Britain’s favorite painting. It’s featured on the £20 banknote, which also includes the Turner quote, “Light is therefore colour.”

The painting shows the 98-gun HMS Temeraire being towed up the Thames by a paddle-wheel steam tug, to be broken up for scrap. The Temeraire was one of the last second-rate ships of the line left from the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Her role had been pivotal in the deadly sea battle between the British Royal Navy and the fleets of Spain and France. Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson was killed when his flagship, HMS Victory, was battered by the French ship Redoutable. In response, Temeraire surged forward, raking Redoutable with grapeshot, causing her to strike her colors. The victory confirmed British naval supremacy and prevented Napoleon from ever again considering invading England.

The Fighting Temeraire is generally taken as an elegy for faded national glory. But modern interpretations focus on Turner’s admiration for newness, as epitomized in Rain, Steam and Speed—the Great Western Railway. In that view, Turner was actually painting the steamship and arguing for leaving the past behind.

The Slave Ship, 1840, J. M. W. Turner, courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The focal point is not always the subject

Yes, the main focal point of The Fighting Temeraire is inarguably the steamship; it’s the passage with the greatest contrast. (It, and the amorphous shape in the foreground right and the sun on the horizon are the three focal points, forming a strong triangular composition.) But that doesn’t make it the subject of the painting. Turner explicitly tells us otherwise with his title and the careful prep work he did for the painting. The moonlight, the wrecker’s flag (not the Union Jack) and the detail on the Temeraire tell us we’re to read this all of a piece, together. Long before anyone talked about focal points and subject, he was playing them against each other to make a complex statement.

Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway, 1844, J. M. W. Turner, courtesy National Gallery

Making the jump from linear to painterly

Painterly vs. linear is not a quality distinction, but rather a stylistic distinction.

A painting is linear when it uses skillful drawing, shading and contour to create the illusion of dimensionality. Painterly means there are visible brushstrokes, less control, and more impulsive color. While there have always been artists on the painterly side of the divide, the real historic divide is with the Impressionists, who slewed off into painterliness in the latter half of the 19th century. We have, for the most part, stayed on that side ever since.

Like his peers, Turner was a linear painter until sometime in the mid-1830s, when suddenly he wasn’t anymore. The mature Turner stopped painting line and became a painter of mass, tone and light. He treated land, air, and water, as if they were all one. “Indistinctness is my forte”, he said. This being the onset of Victorian England, with its rising tide of realism and of sentimental Landseers and Pre-Raphaelites, it’s hard to imagine how he struck out in such a unique direction.

Turner when he was linear: Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet Boat in the Evening, c 1826, J. M. W. Turner, courtesy The Frick Collection

Did Turner wake up one morning and decide to make soft miasmas of color? No; you can see hints of this in earlier paintings. Somehow, by poking at it, day in and day out, he came up with something new to himself and everyone else. We can learn a lot about painterliness from studying his paintings, but ultimately we have to do the studio time, too.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

Posted on

Monday Morning Art School: what is a focal point in art?

All Flesh is as Grass, oil on linen, 30X40, $5072 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

A focal point in art is the area of a composition that draws the viewer’s eye and holds his or her attention. It’s the visual center of interest.

Artists create focal points primarily with contrast in value, hue and chroma, but other elements of design also support focal points. These include lines that guide the viewer’s eye, textural changes, and placement. Detail and complexity will naturally draw the viewer, as will isolation (which is usually also an exercise in contrast). And everything else being equal, a large object will dominate.

Why do focal points matter?

A good visual composer, just like a good musician, guides his or her viewer through the composition. Focal points engage the viewer, and lead them through the space in a calculated way.

Saskatchewan Grain Elevators, oil on archival canvasboard, 8X10, $522 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Should a work of art have just one focal point?

Generally, most paintings have more than one focal point, although occasionally an artist will let just one section of the canvas dominate. Good examples are Rembrandt van Rijn’s self-portraits, where humanity, as expressed through his face, is everything.

A single focal point creates a clear, strong emphasis, but the downside is that there’s no path forward into the painting. Multiple focal points create movement and tension, leading the viewer’s eye through the composition. The longer a person looks at an artwork, the more they engage with it.

Early Morning at Moon Lake, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

How to prioritize focal points

You, the artist, are the boss here. You should ponder the hierarchy of focal points before you ever pick up a brush. (That’s one reason for a good value sketch.) What is the strongest focal point? What is its spatial relationship to the others? One focal point should lead the band, the others should follow merrily along.

Make sure none of your focal points are at the edge of your canvas or leading off the page. Think of your focal points as elements that are connected compositionally, connected by color harmonies, lines, and value.

Are focal point and subject the same?

While focal point and subject often overlap, they are not always the same thing.

The subject is what the artwork is about—the main idea or theme. The focal point is where the viewer’s eye is drawn first.

In many situations, they might be identical; for example, a black dog running in the snow would be both the focal point and the subject. But in Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Red Hat, the subject is the girl and her stupendous hat, but the focal points are the side of her face, her lace fichu, and the flash of red at the far right of her hat. The focal points are masterfully drawn down the canvas by a single line of light. Rembrandt’s The Night Watch is a portrait of the militia of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch but none of the supporting militiamen are focal points at all.

Athabasca River Confluence, 9X12, $696 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

How do you apply this?

In your next painting or drawing, make a conscious effort to set out and emphasize focal points, using value, hue, chroma and line. Can you articulate where they are and how you want the viewer to read them?

This spring’s painting classes

Zoom Class: Advance your painting skills (whoops, the link was wrong in last week’s posts)

Mondays, 6 PM – 9 PM EST
April 28 to June 9

Advance your skills in oils, watercolor, gouache, acrylics and pastels with guided exercises in design, composition and execution.

This Zoom class not only has tailored instruction, it provides a supportive community where students share work and get positive feedback in an encouraging and collaborative space. 

Zoom class: Signature series

Tuesdays, 6 PM – 9 PM EST
April 29-June 10

This is a combination painting/critique class where students will take deep dives into finding their unique voices as artists, in an encouraging and collaborative space. The goal is to develop a nucleus of work as a springboard for further development.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

Posted on

Monday Morning Art School: What sells?

Hall’s Market, 16×20 oil on linen, Björn Runquist

I have a tome somewhere that ‘proves’ that blue landscapes are the buying public’s favorite. Apparently, they weren’t the only social scientists who addressed the question. “Some Russian consortium declared after ‘much study’ that a 12×16 with a water view, a dog and something red will outsell all others,” Björn Runquist told me. “How’s that for precision?”

Natalia Andreeva read the exact opposite thing. “When I was a student and read way more books, one of them said that people do not like blue paintings; green or red are the colors to go with. Most importantly the work should carry a positive cheerful message. Any grim or highly-edgy subject is good for being noticed but not for selling.”

In Light, 14X18, oil on linen, Natalia Andreeva

I asked ChatGPT, which told me that neutrals and earth tones are popular. That’s so last year. So, I moved on and asked a group of professional artists what, in their experience, sells. I’ve edited their responses for length.

Day’s End in a New Season, 24×36, oil on canvas, Colin Page

Colin Page: Some galleries tell me rules for what subjects they think don’t sell: snow scenes, boats out of the water, paintings with too much yellow. I suppose landscapes/seascapes have the broadest appeal, but I don’t find it matters for sales potential if the painting is good enough.

Churchy, 6X6, oil on canvas, Bobbi Heath

Bobbi Heath: It must have meaning for them. Thus, the popularity of pet portraits. Since I mostly sell landscapes, and usually the sun shines in my paintings, I buy the hypothesis about blue. But maybe it’s really about sky and water. My most popular paintings are of boats. But boats are close to my heart, so perhaps I paint them with more feeling.

Sage, 12X16, multimedia, Ryan Kohler

Ryan Kohler: I have subjects to paint that are in my wheelhouse, almost like bread-and-butter images: boots, boats, NYC, landscape, architecture, and critters. But then there are my ‘fun’ categories too that don’t really sell well (or at all) but I still love doing.

On top of trying to navigate those murky waters, I also have the added non-benefit of switching mediums regularly. I’ve sold plenty of paintings throughout all phases. I don’t think that many folks walk into a gallery looking for an acrylic painting, or a watercolor, or a linocut print. I think they head into a gallery looking for work that speaks to them. It’s probably more about wonder and excitement than boring stuff like media and price.

New Developments, 12X9, oil on cradled birch, Casey Cheuvront

Casey Cheuvront: Out here in AZ, paintings of cactus will outsell sailboats. A painting of an iconic Prescott bar will sell in Prescott. Paintings of the yuppie barrio buildings will sell in Tucson. My friend Jan, who lives in northern CA, sells mostly seascapes.

In the past year I have sold landscapes, animal and still life, many plein air pieces, several studio works, a number of small paintings, and large paintings. Most of these were oil paintings, some were watercolor/ink. They’ve been various size ratios.

I find myself constantly surprised by what sells and what doesn’t. But good work sells, eventually. Of course, price has something to do with it. Another painter once told me “The perfect price is the intersection of what your collectors are willing to pay and what you are willing to take to let it go.”

Adjusting the Lines, 12X16, oil on panel, Poppy Balser

Poppy Balser: Looking through my paintings that have sold over the last year, they’ve been mostly boats, beach scenes, harbour scenes and a few landscapes.  But that is also what I paint the most of, because these are the subjects I most enjoy painting.

In Camden, boats sell well. In the gallery in our main agricultural region (the Annapolis valley in Nova Scotia) landscapes, farming scenes, and Bay of Fundy coastal scenes do well. In Florida beach scenes do well.

Often the ones that sell quickly and directly are often the ones I have best managed to tell a bit of a story about. And a lot of mine that sell are predominantly blue, because, well, ocean.

Natalia Andreeva: People buy what speaks to them. They may see something in your work that you did not even intend, so painting what speaks to me makes more sense than chasing mirages. There is no point to guessing; just keep working and keep looking for new venues (easier to say then do, but it’s the right way to do it).

The Storm #1, 2X8, oil on multimedia board, Mary Byrom

Mary Byrom: My big rule of thumb is I sell everything I show that is $600 and under. I sell all the small paintings that I show. All of them are landscapes, seascapes, or townscapes. Any and all landscape subjects. Oil, gouache, acrylic and watercolor.  Plein air, memory, imagination, all types.

I sell some large paintings directly to collectors. I used to sell them in one gallery that closed due to health problems. I have not found another relationship like that gallery.  I was in 13 galleries. I cut back steadily to two galleries and my studio.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

Posted on

Monday Morning Art School: narrative, subject and meaning

The Blind Leading the Blind, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1568, 33.8 x 60.6 in., courtesy Museo di Capodimonte

Narrative painting is more difficult than painting a simple still-life-one needs to be able to tell a story with one’s brush.

What is a narrative painting?

Stories have a beginning, middle, or end, but a painting is by design a portrait of a moment in time. That requires sleight of hand. We either must tell a story with which everyone is familiar, as in Leonardo  da Vinci’s The Last Supper, or one in which the story can be reasoned out, like Ford Madox Brown‘s The Last of England.

The genre paintings of Pieter Brueghel the Elder illustrate moral truths. These aren’t portraits, although they might have used known models. The figures are meant to be generic. This kind of painting reached its peak with social realism in the 19th century, with paintings like Ilya Repin‘s Barge Haulers on the Volga.

Barge Haulers on the Volga, Ilya Repin, 1870, 51.7 x 110.6 inches, courtesy the Russian Museum

Narrative is an elastic category. I think everything Caspar David Friedrich ever painted could be classified as narrative. Others might see just Romantic landscapes.

When Gustave Courbet painted everyday scenes on large canvases, the scale itself was part of the story. He was saying that the common man was of equal importance to the elite, setting the traditional hierarchy of genres on its head.

However, some implied action is necessary. I wouldn’t classify my own Wreck of the SS Ethie as a narrative painting, even though it depicts the result of an historic storm. On the other hand, I’d say my Breaking Storm is. It’s taking you out of danger and into the light.

Human figures are not necessary in narrative painting. A cell phone abandoned next to a half-eaten meal might tell a story. Likewise, landscape tells stories. Melting snow, for example, has the before-and-after elements of story.

The Last of England, Ford Madox Brown, 1852/1855, 750×825 mm, courtesy Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

How does narrative differ from subject?

A figurative painting must have a subject but can have no narrative at all. In fact, most paintings fall into this category, even when the subject has deep meaning, as in Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres‘s incredible Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne. The subject can be a person, place, or object, with or without symbolic significance, historical context, or cultural references.

There’s nothing wrong with paintings without these deep layers. Although Édouard Manet is famous for meaning- and narrative-drenched large canvases of social and political importance, some of his finest works are the tiny still lives he did from his sick bed at the end of his life.

Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1806, 101.9 x 63.7 inches, courtesy Musée de l’Armée

How does symbolism fit in?

Symbols and visual metaphors convey meaning. Some of them are almost universal, such as blue restroom signs. But much symbolism is culturally-specific, like those ‘language of flowers’ messages of the 19th century. Still, a thoughtful artist can think up symbols that transcend time and place. These may not be blindingly obvious, but if they arise in the context of mapping out your painting, they’re bound to have more staying power. Ultimately, symbols should express emotion, thought and intention.

The meaning of meaning

The meaning in a painting is a close dance between the artist’s intention and the viewer’s perception. Essentially, it’s what boils down in the stew of narrative, subject and symbolism. Meaning is contextual; how we read Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne today is far different from when Ingres painted him at the height of his power.

Above all, each viewer brings their own experiences, perspectives, and emotions to a painting. In addition to Ingres’ technical mastery, I see the deep frivolity of wrapping a deeply-flawed man in the symbols of Christ’s earthly reign. Others, from a different background, will see different things.

Meaning is not always straightforward or easily decipherable, nor should it be. Great art leaves room for interpretation and invite viewers to engage with their work in a personal and subjective manner. The beauty of art lies in its ability to provoke thought and emotion and spark meaningful conversations, allowing each of us to find our own messages within.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

Posted on

Monday Morning Art School: Subject vs. focal point

The People’s Census at Bethlehem, 1566, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, courtesy Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

The number one question you must ask about your painting is: is it boring? If your painting is boring, nobody is going to engage with it.

One way to do keep things interesting is to manipulate where you put the subject of your painting. You don’t need to plop the subject in the center of your canvas and the subject does not necessarily have to be the focal point.

Consider Pieter Brueghel the Elder‘s masterpiece, The Census of Bethlehem, above. It’s unlikely that Brueghel consulted a text about composition, because those things didn’t exist back in the 16th century. He came up with this visual trick on his own and used it over and over.

The Procession to Calvary, 1564, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, courtesy Kunsthistorisches Museum. This is a veritable “Where’s Waldo” of a painting.

The subject is not in the middle of the canvas. Nor is it the focal point. In fact, the subject will only be clear to you if you know the Bible story about Mary and Joseph traveling to be counted in Bethlehem. Because of the overall energy of the canvas, you’re engaged enough to hunt for them, and to realize that Mary and Joseph are at the very bottom of the canvas, heading towards the census-taker at the bottom left.

That’s different from the focal points, which are within the swirl of activity that made up the daily life of a medieval village.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, c. 1558, either Pieter Brueghel the Elder or a close copy thereafter, courtesy Royal Museums of Fine Arts

Brueghel often made the subjects of his painting seem like almost an afterthought to the big scene. Another great example of this is Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, about which William Carlos Williams wrote:

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning.

In that short poem, Williams says everything about Brueghel’s compositional technique.

The Peasant Wedding, 1566-69, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, courtesy Kunsthistorisches Museum. Brueghel also painted many genre paintings, meant to illustrate a known story or moral argument.

So, what’s the difference?

The focal point is a visual engagement, whereas the subject is what the painting is about. The subject of a painting can be a story or fable, as were Brueghel’s paintings. It can be an object or person. Or, in the case of abstraction, it can be nothing at all.

Focal points are something quite different. They are the points that your eye rests on at it moves through a painting.

What draws the human eye to a specific passage in a painting?

  • Contrast in value, hue and chroma, with value being the biggest driver of the three. If you have a dark shape next to a light shape, the eye tends to look at that place.
  • Detail. Assuming the whole painting is not overloaded with detail, if there’s a lot of detail in a passage, that is where the eye will go first.
  • Line. Lines within the composition act like arrows, drawing your eye to the focal points.

Is there just one focal point in the painting?

I sure hope not, because your job as the composer is to get the human eye to dance its way through the composition, to engage the viewer for as long as you can keep them interested. The longer they spend looking at your picture, the more involved they become with it.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025: