NINETEEN: Informal Perspective; Grids, Angles and Measurements

A formal study of perspective drawing would be useful to understand how it works, but it would take a considerable amount of time and energy, and an informal approach meets the requirements of most artists. I have no immediate recollection of making a sustained study of perspective, so I would be as much a student of the subject as you would be! But if you observe carefully and understand the basics, are able to visualize perspective grids behind your drawing and paintings, perspective becomes a minor worry.

When drawing from the model artists use their pencil to measure the length and width of a part of the anatomy, usually the head, which might be referred to as the 'basic unit'.

The measurements below, called 'sighting' or 'eyeballing', are taken by holding one's arms dead straight and locked at the elbow and using the tip of the pencil on one side of the head and sliding the tip of the thumb down the pencil shaft to mark the the other end. The top right two hand positions show measuring of the length of the head (top to chin) and the width of the head (ear to ear). Keeping the thumb in place and your elbows locked you can now measure the total height of the figure in head heights or the width of the body in head widths. Or vice versa.


All of the remaining hand positions show how you can measure angles on the figure. It is easy to get a sense of an angle by being aware of the perpendicular axis, or plumb line, and then transfer the angle of the pencil, even approximately, to your drawing paper.


Above is an image of a coastal landscape. Can you see the perspective and angles in it? The horizon is clearly visible. We can almost see horizontal lines getting closer together as they proceed to the horizon by looking at the waves and clouds carefully. If we were sketching this onto our paper to paint, there would be a number of important angles to estimate that, if measured correctly, would provide a good sense of optical perspective.


If there is any doubt about those angles, we can use our brush or a pencil to measure them. We might 'know' that the beach way back under the far trees is wavy and angled when we walked on it. But from our distant point of view it appears as horizontal as the horizon, in fact, it merges with it. We can confirm that by measuring it's angle with the brush. There needs to be no guessing about the angles of the beach and waterline as it moves toward us when we draw it in.


'Sighting' or 'eyeballing' is really useful if you find yourself painting or drawing buildings. Whether using a photograph or working on location, if your drawing or painting looks in error you can double check your angles quickly and easily and obtain convincing perspective.


When you are painting at sea level, from a very low point of view, as in the first photographic example, the lines between land and water rapidly become horizontal within a few dozens of metres. But if you are 1000m above the waterline, as in the photograph above, even many kilometres away the shoreline of the lake is not horizontal.

As an aside, lets consider what a landscape basically can be. It can actually just be as simple as drawing one horizontal line on a piece of paper. The horizon line. In fact, if you are looking down at an area of the landscape below the horizon, you won't even have to draw the horizon line. Much of your landscape paintings interest depends on where you decide to draw that first line, that horizon line. If you are looking down at pebbles on a beach and painting them, that horizon won't be in your image. Nor if you just paint a pure skyscape of clouds. You can paint thin strips of sky at the top of your page, or a thin strip of land at the bottom. You can create drama for your subject matter by deciding where you place that horizon line.


Here's the horizon line imagined across the beach reference. Each of the lines moving into the picture plane converge on the horizon at the vanishing point behind the point of land jutting into the ocean. The lines have been deleted perhaps less than thirty metres into the picture because they are already becoming too dense to be discernible.


Here's a sketch of the subject which has a rough grid to help with visualizing the perspective. When drawing the clouds, the few stones and the shore I've tried to keep the imaginary grid in mind. I've tried to imaging the clouds in space in front of and behind each other. The shoreline becomes close to horizontal by the time it reaches the middle of the picture. In the nearby stones you can see their roundness as emerge from the sand; the further ones have become horizontal at the sandline.




Here's a sketch from the photo with the high point of view. The original drawn grid which you can see in the foreground is actually almost 1000m below us, a long way away. So the grid on the land we are standing on would be so huge that we wouldn't actually see it as a grid. Each grid square would be a couple of hundred metres diameter.

Want to have some topographic fun? Maybe you've already been here; but download Google Earth and learn how to scroll your way around the mountains of Vancouver Island. Not all areas of the island are in high resolution, but many are, and it is a remarkable experience. Stop, take note, even sketch little sketches like the above as you move around an object in the landscape.


Here's another sketch of a high point of view showing how the shoreline of some islands might change. If we were to drop lower, the shorelines of those foreground islands would quickly become horizontal like the shorelines of the far islands.

When painting skies, keep perspective in mind. I've tried to imagine perspective at work on the clouds above.


Here's another of Maynard Dixon's paintings. You can easily imagine the horizontal lines of a perspective grid under each of the clouds that compress closer and closer together as they move toward the horizon.

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EIGHTEEN: Formula One, Formula Two... and looking for watercolour in the outside world

Most artists will devote themselves, for periods of time, to working on an image or a series of related images that, from a technical point of view, can be developed similarly. Watercolour is very appropriate for this sort of thing. You have to be careful that formula doesn't become a crutch, but repeating a painting process can become an excellent way to study a subject repeatedly and also generate competent images. 'Keepers', if you will.

One problem with watercolour is that it is very spontaneous, and it is difficult to hide any perceived errors. As a result, if you were to paint exactly the same image 5 times, there would be one or two that might be outstanding. As well, even with the same content, compositions, and colour schemes, the five paintings would probably be strikingly different. Different enough that you might really like one but be less than thrilled with the other four. By painting the same, or a very similar composition several times, you can 'practice' the execution of the painting and increase your success.

In fact, what will usually occur is that your execution of the painting will improve until it becomes a bit too slick to be as good as the earlier versions. Then it's time to move on to study something else.

In the remaining classes, I think that we should concentrate on painting a series of related images, or the same image, and work on that 'formula' in order to be able to achieve a couple of really nice watercolours. You will have to decide what your 'formula' for a good painting will be.

Something else to consider is your subject matter. Not all photos are paint-able. Not all subjects make good painting. Think very carefully about what you would like to paint and discuss it with me in class if you wish. Here is something to consider as you search the world for your watercolour painting subject. Look for something that strikes you as looking like a watercolour. Ask yourself if your subject reminds you of a watercolour painting in some way, or reminds you of a particular watercolour technique that you are interested in.

Below I'm going to show you a few examples of my own paintings grouped according to 'formula', or 'treatment'. This doesn't mean I'm not observing my subject at all, but juggling my attention between observation and technique. Often I let technique, or watercolour effect, take the lead over perception.

Sky, atmospheric hills and water

I've painted this subject matter over and over again. I don't have any examples of exactly the same painting done twice, because if one is weaker than the other I destroy it. However, all these paintings below are formulaicly similar. Wet watercolour technique is obviously very appropriate for painting sky and clouds.


As well, it's great for painting atmospheric hills. Because aerial perspective causes distant hills to be lighter and fainter, it's easy to over-paint the closer hills and make them darker, creating a sense of depth.


If there is low laying fog and cloud among the hills, again, watercolour can suggest the real world remarkably well.


Watercolour also excels in suggesting reflections. I don't just go out and paint anything. I'm looking for a watercolour out there in the real world as much as looking for something interesting to paint.

The more watercolour techniques that you can master, the more subjects will come to hand and you'll be able to look at something and say...'I see that as a watercolour'!


In this painting above the attributes of the watercolour paint are used to suggest sky, cloud, hazy hills, and reflections.

Heres another series of paintings I did, not all at once, but over a number of years, but always returning back to the same treatment or formula. There were some in this group in which I had shafts of light beaming into the forest and illuminating 'burning out' patches of the forest floor, with areas of pure colour around them. But I can't find any images. In these paintings I've not considered any direct light source, but have rather treated the forest as a murky, almost underwater scene with strong hazy aerial perspective that knocks the distant trees back. The use of the cool blue/greyed colours, in addition to the reduced contrast, also helps to push distant trees into the background.

I'd also noticed that the mossy nature of the trees bark somehow suggested a watercolour treatment, and that I might be able to come up with a way of applying the paint that suggested reality.







Here's three more similarly related paintings below. I had spent a lot of time looking at running water and decided that it was something that suggested watercolour painting. Although these paintings were done years apart, their general approach was the same. Part of that approach involved leaving the pure white of the paper where there is white water, and part of it painting wet brush strokes as ripples.


I had noticed too, how you got lovely dark reflections in pools just before they spilt over into small water falls.


In those reflections you could also see a soft focus view of the pools bottom that was very suggestive of watercolour technique.




Finally, lets take a look at the paintings of my friend and fellow watercolourist up here in the Comox Valley, Ron Morrison. You can see more of Ron's painting by clicking here.

Ron has taken a look at the world and seen the same atmospheric applications that I've discussed above, and you can see, applied in his skies and hills behind his piles of cars. But he's also looked at the rusting hulks of vehicles and seen how much they suggest watercolour technique, or watercolour technique as he has uniquely developed it. His application of the paints that he likes using really does suggest fading, peeling, and oxidizing paint and metal. He has chosen to paint arrangements of cars as a subject matter in the same way someone might choose to paint still life, or figures. Despite what is superficially the same subject matter, his arrangements and experiments within that subject matter are diverse, and the potential possibly endless.








Each of the above paintings is a different version of the same drawn composition. There are minor changes in the content; for example the addition of a tree. But, despite all the similarity of composition and content, each painting is strikingly different as a result of his experiments with the application and combination of paint, as well as experiments with his lighting and atmosphere.

This is a really useful way for you to explore an arrangement or subject repeatedly before moving on to something else when you feel you've exhausted most of your possibilities for the moment.

Thanks to Ron for permission to use some of his stuff an examples of technique.

SEVENTEEN: palettes and palettes

I think that colour is very personal. I will provide you with some information about how I see it, you can take what you find useful, and then develop your own palette and fixations yourself, if you haven't done so already.

I'm not a colourist. I was hoping I'd have the pleasure of telling you that I'd failed 'colour' in my first year at College, but alas, checking my records I discover I passed adequately. It was 'symbol' and '3d design' that I failed. Never took marks particularly seriously, too interested in drawing and painting.

And if you haven't noticed already, I'm far more interested in value, in rendering, or of the effect of various watercolours as they interact, than the science of colour. I don't feel obliged to fully understand colour consciously because I don't think it will necessarily effect what I do significantly. I don't feel obliged to mix colour from pure hues because I can buy something more interesting out of a tube. I treat paint like sampling candy, and when I find something I like or that proves useful I buy more and stick with it.

When I worked painting backgrounds for animation, continuity from scene to scene in a location was very important. If you were working from someone else's colour key, you had to be able to match style and colour explicitly. The 'test' for a job in background painting at numerous studios was to slavishly copy another background; to match it exactly. This is really quite a difficult task to do quickly and efficiently. I'm happy to say that, despite mediocre results at college, I was able to intuitively copy my background test and also match colours on the job accurately. I was surprised that a lot of experienced painters did not do so well. You won't find you need to understand the physics of colour to use it appropriately. Copying the artwork of another artist is a valuable shortcut to intuitively learn how to mix the colours in your palette, as well as learn about technique and composition. In more traditional and practical programs of art training copying was a large part of the learning process.

Here's a quick look at a physical palette and the choice of colour palette that I find useful.




Above is my physical palette, both the tub side and the lid side. Notice the cheap synthetic sable brushes... I originally had my palette arranged as close to the colour wheel in most areas as possible, but adding and removing colours has undermined that a bit. It was also difficult to figure out where to put the earth colours and the less pure hues.

Notice on the lid that I taped on some styrofoam that holds brushes and sits in the mixing area. It prevents crushing of the lid. As well I put duct tape all over the exterior of the lid to reinforce it. This prevents damage when stuffing it in a pack for taking it painting on location.

Here's an exercise that you will do. Make a quick colour wheel with the colours that you have on hand. This is mine below. I've arranged the pigments of purer primary and secondary hues as found on the basic Munsel style colour wheel on the outside and then tried to arrange the earths and greyer hues that I happen to have inside, more or less where they might fit if all the tertiary hues were represented.





And here's the colours that I'm currently using, labelled over the 'wheel'. I'll be curious to see the colours that you use. Keep in mind that I, like you, may select and use a colour not for it's pigment or hue, but also because of other characteristics. Some colours are very transparent, others opaque. Some of the more exotic colours that I use actually have a fair bit of chalky opacity, like the blue grey, the oxide of chromium, and the lilac that I forgot to include here. Some of these colours I won't use in their pure form, but only to mix or add to greys, for their pigmentation qualities, or because they cause a wash to separate, or granulate, to look more interesting on the paper. I don't just use colours for their hue. I'll choose colours, either complementaries on the colour wheel, or impure, greyer hues of red, yellow and blue, to mix greys that will separate, bleed auras, or just lay on the paper in an interesting way.

A good rule of thumb is to have a warmer version of a colour and a cooler version. Warmer colours have (slightly) more pure red or yellow in them, whereas cooler colours have more blue or green in them. This is apparently called temperature of a colour. For example, you can clearly see that Emerald Green on my colour wheel is 'warmer' than the colbalt green beside it, and the Cadmium Red is warmer than the Alizarin beside it.

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SIXTEEN: Glazing colour on a monochromatic painting

Some of you were experimenting, as I was in demos, with glazing warm or cool colours on top of the monochromatic watercolour sketches that we were doing. Building up the thin washes of monochromatic paint was also glazing. Being able to build up tone in thin layers is one of the attractive aspects of watercolour paint. Some watercolourists specialize in glazing of paint, usually executing very sustained work. Others like to apply their watercolour paint 'alla prima', or 'at once', that is mixing the colour immediately and applying it to the paper and letting it dry as is. Most watercolourists will do a bit of both. Your own personal style will partly be established by how much of each of these methods you will use in your painting. We will do some glazing in class to see how it works, so that we know it's something we can use when we wish. This will be the first of a couple of posts on glazing.


Here's that monochromatic study of boxes from a few posts back.


On to it we glaze pure colour. I'm imagining, obviously, that theres a red, yellow, orange and green box. That is, the local colours of those boxes are respectively red, yellow, orange and green. In the painting above we are imitating what we saw with the photographs of the fruit in post number THREE when we applied transparent local colour back on top of the colourless 'plaster cast' pure light and shadow version of the fruit. The two combined to create a reasonable facsimile of the original colour photograph.

Theres a bit of adjusting to do after adding the colour, because the colour has value and adds value, or darkness, to the lights and, because the coloured paint is not completely transparent, it reduces the value of the darkest darks a bit. This noticeably flattens the image.


I've mixed some darks to make the picture a bit punchier. I mixed alizarine and viridian as well as the cadmium red for the dark gradation in the red box. When painting over the dark side of the yellow box I also added a lot of red as the gradation moved toward the red box. This was to suggest the light from the red box is bouncing off it and illuminating the shadow on the yellow box. As well I've imagined orange bounced light illuminating the top of the the yellow box, so added some orange up there.

When you were to compare black and white images of the monochromatic image at the top and the finished colour version at bottom, you'll notice that the monochromatic painting has a greater degree of contrast, and, in my opinion, a superior sense of light

The monochrome painting in b&w:


The colour version in b&w:

Most of the darks have remained more or less the same in the colour version, however the lights have been significantly 'knocked back' in terms of value. The painting had gone from a 'higher key' to a slightly 'lower key'. There is a trade off for adding colour, which as you can see has value, that reduces the sense of dramatic lighting. Neither better nor worse, it's just something to consider.

One way I attempt to counter this problem in my own painting, and notice this done by others, is by 'burning out' the lit areas; 'overexposing' them in film jargon, and leaving them burning white. I try to insinuate the colour in the transition from the light to shadow. It's an attempt to have my cake and eat it too.

I used to use this device in animation backgrounds, for me it was a verbally unarticulated tool to create a convincing looking pool, or spotlight effect. I used to teach background painting once, and was trying to clumsily explain this device to a student while demonstrating it. 'Oh yeah', he said; 'Fade off'. I think thats what he called it. I said: 'What? What? There's a word for it? Where did you find that out?' Like most of these kids, they'd all been meddling with 3d programs and apparently that's what it's called in the 'lighting' tools at your disposal; so I guess you can just dial in the degree of 'fade off' that you want, as well as it's colour. Damned computers...

So here's a couple of my own paintings with 'burnt out' lighting to create a sense of drama, a streetscape and a landscape.


Of course, in reality, the road was not white due to it's local colour, and therefore value. If I had painted the road dark grey tarmac as it appears optically it would not make as dramatic an image. Why let reality interfere with your painting? By being able to initially visualize your subject as if it's made out of plaster and visualize where the light is most intense is valuable in deciding how you are going to plan to light your painting. You can modulate the respective effects of local colour or light and shade according to your wishes.

Don't think for a moment this is all thought through consciously while painting. I'm just painting. But at some level I must be aware of what I'm doing. Maybe. Certainly now when I have to explain myself.


And here's the same device used similarly in a landscape. There's no way those trees would read almost pure white in reality, or in a photograph (without some serious adjusting after it's been taken). Surrounding the intense white with some burning, almost acid pure greens before transitioning into cool grey blues gives a sense of powerful light.

I'm not painting the photograph. I'm painting from it. I'm painting what I want to see.

At this point I'd like to mention a book by Charles Reid which I found extremely useful for summing up these ideas many years ago. Reid has published many books, but I've only ever had the one. Alas I lent it out and as often happens it never came back. Fortunately I'm not a packrat, so I'm not messed up about it. Anyway, the book is 'Painting What You Want To See'. (bold is a link to a description of the book). While Reid's style is marvellous, it's his remarkable understanding of light that is really instructive. He has an incredible and innate understanding of how to translate colour into value. When I initially worked in animation, my first boss in the slave pits of animation, Gabe Csakany, a super illustrator and bg painter, introduced me to the idea of using one of the little 'smoked lenses' that painters once used to look at their paintings and almost translate them into black and white so as to be able to check their value structure and ensure they had a good sense of light and depth. Eventually I stopped using it, but should probably have kept it. Charles Reid would have no use for such a tool. Incredibly prolific, he seems to be able to hit the mark over and over. What he seems to be able to do is take an impressionistic colour sense but make the values read in black and white. He also often enjoys burning out his lights. Worth a good look at his work (google him and check images).

FIFTEEN: A look at composing with light and dark and rating some paintings and images on the sublimity index

It might be nice to do a presentation in class and look at some landscape and consider how we can apply what we see to our own work. But that would waste valuable painting time; much better to post some images on this blog, as most of you seem to be checking it out. This way you can follow this post as far as you like rather than having to suffer the risk of boredom from a slide show when you could be painting. Most of you seem to be getting on to the idea of just using a photograph for reference, and not feeling obliged to copy it. You're beginning to realize that you can do what you like with your picture. Below is a stunning photo that isn't my own, but rather a photo sent to me by another friend who is a mountain guide, Cliff Umpleby. It's a stunning photo from the mainland where he will be guiding ski tours this winter, and I couldn't find anything like this in my own files. I'm using the photo with Cliff's kind permission.


Look at the dramatic lighting in this. The photo is taken from the dark shadow of another mountain behind the camera's point of view. Notice how grey and monotone the colour is outside of the swath of light.


Compare Cliff's photo to this more bucolic image that we have looked at previously as an image of chiaroscuro. Notice how in both cases the foreground is in deep shadow, and the middle ground lit with a swath of light and colour.


I've taken the liberty of painting on Cliff's photo for better or worse. I've darkened the sky behind the peaks, as well as the shadows on the far mountains, and added another swath of light closer to the foreground. It's not a matter of making a better image necessarily, but rather of trying out different ideas. If you were painting in oil you could let a canvas dry and then make adjustments, and re-adjustments on top of them. But we can't do that with watercolour. This is why doing the small watercolours quickly, and experimenting with different arrangements, is so useful. When you find an arrangement that works especially well you can use that for a larger painting.

Lets continue looking at some paintings, maybe make a few observations on use of light and colour and composition, and lets try and guess an image's rating on the sublimity index. Of course, a low rating doesn't indicate a lesser painting, but rather one with a different emphasis. You may rate the painting or image quite differently than me! However, the sublimity index is an interesting, and amusing, template to apply to our observation of landscape and perception of landscape art.


Here's a painting by Maynard Dixon again. It seems as though his early work was heavily influenced by the impressionists, who worked in the hot humid hazy climate of continental Europe. Impressionism worked well there, and Dixon's painting is a lovely piece, but it looks pretty tame compared to his later work below. Despite the raking shadows, the painting seems mainly a pleasing play of colour. It doesn't seem to capture the feeling of desert. Even his figures seem to create a relaxed bucolic sensibility.


Looking at the picture in black an white we can hardly see the shadows! Impressionists made a wonderfully playful game of flattening the values, the black and white aspect of their paintings, but creating some depth with use of warm and cool colours. Much of the sense of depth is lost in black and white. This painting is all about the play of colour and the flattening of values. Beautiful but not overly sublime. I think that it might rate a one on Schopenhauer's sublimity index. How about you?


Compare this painting by Dixon to the impressionist one above it. The homestead might knock back the sublimity a bit, but it would probably rate a 3 without that. As a study of value it is completely different from Dixon's painting above. Not better or worse, but different. Dixon has chosen not to be impressionist with his colour but has given his colour a wide range of value as well.


There is no flattening effect as a result. You can see in black and white the carefully orchestrated values from foreground to background, and the carefully considered compositions of light and shadow. He is playing a very different game in this painting.


Dixon doesn't always do the same tricks in his art. This painting of mountains from the open prairie captures the feel of approaching the foothills of mountains from vast open spaces, with no shadows or distractions. It's not impressionistic but it's fairly flat and graphic. In his painting practice, Maynard Dixon carefully exercises choices, either deliberately or subconsciously. Lovely painting, not high on the sublimity index though.


Here's a painting by Tom Thompson. Beautiful arrangement of colours. Sublimity index score about a one, I'd say.


Heres one by Frank Carmichael. Is light sublime? Schopenhauer thinks light bouncing off stones has some sublimity. But less so off flowers or animate objects. This is probably a one, but I'm tempted to bump it up to a two on the sublimity index because I find the light so ethereal.


Here' s a painting I found in Wikipedia either under Arcadia, Idyll, Pastoral or Bucolic. Nothing really unnerving in this. These sort of images were popular centuries ago among the upper classes who took their classical history seriously. Despite the lusty frivolity there are a couple of philosophical/observer type dudes to add a sense of gravity to the scene, perhaps added to prevent the picture's owner from getting too wrapped up in the drunken orgy that may well be about to unfold. I'd perhaps give this a one on the sublimity index; how about you?


Heres another Maynard Dixon. There are horses and a rider to knock the sublimity index down. If you could ignore them this could well be 'endless desert with no movement. (Pleasure from seeing objects that could not sustain the life of the observer).' But the horses and rider are present, so I'd give it a two.


I think this image by Maynard Dixon painting jumps up to a three on the sublimity index. The long, raking shadows from which the horses are emerging...what are they running from? There is a tangible tension for me. 'Endless desert with no movement' beyond. While looking at this painting, compare it to the two poor quality stills taken from the movie '2001 A Space Odyssey' by Stanley Kubrick that appear below.


Kubrick's movie starts as a series of landscapes designed to establish the location of a group of our hominid ancestors in some rocky hills over a vast plain. The scenes, which are probably initially photographs, gradually close in to become painted backdrops to carefully constructed film stages theatrically lit to accent a waterhole and a cave-like depression in which the hominid group shelter at night. It is all gradually and masterfully filmed, with no voice or narration. Each landscape view revealed from one scene to the next is a wonderfully considered composition of light and shadow. I think the light, and the long raking shadows, have some sublime value. They create a sense of tension and mood. I'd almost give this still above a three on the sublimity index.


This image is also from the beginning of 2001 also looks very much like a Maynard Dixon painting. I hope that you will all enhance your appreciation of landscape painting by taking a closer look at film. There are fantastic examples of landscape art as back drops to unfolding dramas. The hominid bones on the film stage in front of this backdrop definitely make this a four for me; 'Sublime: turbulent Nature. (Pleasure from perceiving objects that threaten to hurt or destroy observer).' The bones are evidence that we are looking on a landscape that may well threaten our lives.


Back to lighting. Here's an Edward Hopper, with a wonderful twist on landscape. We are looking in a window at a man in an office looking out a window on a landscape that is a cityscape. He's transfixed on the horizon, beyond the picture frame, which is where the light is streaming from, and beyond the city which, in it's dark shadows is somewhat menacing. Not a huge sense of menace or terror here, but definitely a hint of the sublime; I'd give it a two, how about you?


Here's a Lawren Harris. The landscape is abstracted to look lifeless. 'Light bouncing off stones'. Even the sky is stone-like and with a cool, almost ghostly light. The clouds might be parting either to save us or destroy us. I'd give this a two.


Here's a painting by the Victorian watercolourist Henry Moore; that's not the 20th Century sculptor, of course. The subject matter is lethally sublime. These are seracs, or ice pinnacles caused by massive crevassing on a glacier as it drops over what is called an ice fall. They are inherently unstable, and and can collapse any time. They create a jagged threatening landscape of stunning beauty. Definitely sublime in my books; that's a full number four on the sublimity index.


The sea, the sea... Here's an early Winslow Homer watercolour. I rarely put figures in the landscape, because for me it creates a distracting possibility of narrative. But I'm always appreciative of the lone figure standing braced against the forces of nature and the power of the sublime. The sea is definitely sublime; a restless topography of waves that is infinite because of constant change and stretching far beyond the horizon. It's surface is known to us to be a concealing canopy over a submerged terrain. Tides and wave action make the shore neither land nor sea, a thin strip of uncertainty. In a storm of this magnitude there is beauty and terror, for the fisherman's wife, and her partner who is presumably out there somewhere. I'd pretty much give this a four for sure. 'Sublime: turbulent Nature. (Pleasure from perceiving objects that threaten to hurt or destroy observer).' How about you?


Here's a wonderful Turner watercolour of The Great Falls of the Richenbach. Monumental torrents of water plunge down and their impact is obscured by a haze of spray. The torrent threatens the bucolic pasture with idyllic pastoralists in the middle ground. It's like one angry part of the painting is about to devour another placid part, and the foreground trees also look battered and splayed by destruction as well. In fact, the slanting bucolic pasture seems under siege. I'd rate this sublime, a full four on the sublimity index!


Here's an image by the American artist Mark Tansey, who, interestingly, has worked in monochrome, or grisaille. I don't know a lot about him, but his work is very conceptual, ironic, and makes many references to previous art; art commenting on art. As well, this painting seems to make an effort to explore perception of the sublime. Think of the idea that we've explored previously in which people assume a perilous vantage point in order to aquire a glimpse of the sublime. Climbing a mountain, or creeping close to a cliff, the raging ocean, or, as in the Turner, at the base of an overwhelming torrent of water, a waterfalls. Violent waterfalls seem to often be a standard feature observed in much sublime Romantic landscape art of the 19th century in Europe and America. Tansey has put a boat load of observers right on the brink of the sublime. We can't see exactly what they see...in what is possibly their last moments of existence...but we have a sublime experience watching their supremely sublime experience of going over the waterfalls (Do you think the obsession with going over Niagara Galls in a barrel is an obsession with the sublime?). The film equipment draws attention to the fact that they are aware of what they are about to experience and are even trying to capture it somehow. I think observing observers observing as they go headlong over the brink into what they are observing is pretty well a five on the sublimity index, don't you?


Well, we'll springboard off of that camera equipment in the last post and go to what I think is a stunning and sublime piece of film and music. It's 1963, it's England, I'm about 4 or 5 years old. I'm in the gloomy sitting room of my grandparents who have a television, something I have seen very little of, and along comes this opening to a television program. It is my first experience with the sublime. I am sucked into the cathode ray tube by the introduction to the television series Dr. Who, a similar experience, perhaps, to going over the brink. The music and the clip haunts me to this day and still causes the hair on the back of my neck to stand up. The visuals with the music are mesmerizing, mysterious, with a hint of terror and anxiety appropriate for a protagonist constantly threatened by the Daleks, the Cybermen, and Abominable Snowmen . If you would like to watch the clip click on the image above to go to YouTube. The visuals were novel special effects for the time. Incidentally the music was created before synthesizers by a Delia Derbyshire who used loops of tape to create the haunting sound, a monumental task, and she was far ahead of her time technically and aesthetically. Definitely a sublime five for me, and maybe a six because I now know the Daleks are lurking in some of those early episodes.


A few years later, Kubrick came out with 2001, and used a special effects sequence very similar to the opening of Dr. Who to convey going over the brink on a sublime 'journey' for his protagonist, Astronaut David Bowman, as he enters the monolithic 'stargate'. Both the Dr. Who and the 2001 sequences are usually perceived very much as landscapes into which the viewer is plunging at speed. I think this is most appropriate considering the long tradition of landscape painting as an attempt to capture a feeling of a portal into the sublime.


In the Kubrick film, the long plunge into the sublime through the 'stargate' is occasionally broken up by shots of Bowman's face in various states of awe and terror at what is being revealed to him. Its a spectacular juxtaposition of actually seeing the imagery that represents the sublime experience he is having, and seeing the shocking effect it has on him emotionally. This fits right into some of those definitions of sublime that we've discussed.


At the end of the experience, Astronaut David Bowman is a changed man. (Life's a bit like that isn't it...?) I'd give the 2001 'stargate' sequence between a 5 and a 6 on the sublimity index!


If you get extremely close to the sublime you can expect to be left deeply affected. The vision quests of native peoples might be considered to be searches for the sublime that will provide insight later in life. If you survive. Always at risk of being destroyed by what you see, the closer you get, the greater the risk. Like staring into the face of God in the old Testament, or staring into the melting core of the Chernobyl reactor in the real world. These experiences are so sublime they are almost certainly lethal. The picture above is of another of those mythic, unnervingly sublime observations; a Gustave Dore engraving of Sodom and Gomorrah being destroyed, and Lot's wife, turning back to look, turning into a pillar of salt as a result of what she sees. Oh heck, I'd give the scenario a six on the sublimity scale, but the engraving just a four.


The idea of something awe inspiring emerging over the horizon is profoundly sublime for me. The forces of the atom, of nature, unleashed some kilometres away at ground zero in this case. A similar scenario to the Gustav Dore engraving, except that the flash of fission that would have blinded these men has already passed and they are far enough away to not be burned into pillars of ash by the searing heat. I'll give this a five, how about you?




These stunning and strange landscape images are something no man or woman could ever see and if they could perceive them, they would be first struck blind and then vapourized a few hundredths of a second later . Possibly taken by high speed film they are photos of atomic explosions just fractions of seconds into their respective detonations. Strange, looming apparitions, lethal, terrifying and sublime.

I'm sure you've all heard the quotes from the Bhagavad Gita that Robert Oppenhiemer, one of the midwives to the atomic bomb, used to describe his sublime experience witnessing the Trinity test. 'If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendour of the mighty one...' and, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'

This is getting very closer to six out of six for me than to five, although a full 6 on the sublimity index might simply be unfathomable:

6/Fullest Feeling of Sublime - Immensity of Universe's extent or duration. (Pleasure from knowledge of observer's nothingness and oneness with Nature)."

When you encounter this degree of the sublime, all ego, all sense of self, indeed, all of you may be demolished.



We're not in Kansas anymore, and a long long way from watercolour landscape painting, even of the sublimest kind.

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FOURTEEN: A sample of aerial perspective by Maynard Dixon

Maynard Dixon was an American artist working in the US southwest earlier in the 20th century.



Here's a lovely sample of both light and shadow on form, and also of aerial perspective by Maynard Dixon. Ok, it's oil, not watercolour, but it's the idea of the thing we want to have a look at. Firstly, note how he's used the common device of throwing the whole foreground into shadow upon which the darkest darks (but no lightest lights in this case) can be found. This devise is commonly used in film. Leaving out the lights in this case allows your eyes to comfortably establish that the foreground is indeed in the foreground, but with no high contrast lights to prevent your eye from moving into the middle ground and horizon. You can see how, in Dixon's mind's eye, he has first been able to divide his whole painting into light and shadow, which reveals the relief found in the landscape, similar to how we have been starting our watercolour studies. He has seen the landscape as though it was a plaster cast. But he has chosen to not reveal detail through bounced light in the shadows or local colour in the shadows. There is some evidence of it in the light areas in the foreground, that is, different colours and values in the lit areas...perhaps foliage vs. rock as in the Castlecrag mountain view below. You can see how he has clearly and methodically reduced the contrast of his light and dark as you recede into the picture from one ridge of peaks to the next. And then, breaking the 'rules' of aerial perspective he's added a very bright glow and gradation to dark from the horizon into the sky, giving the dark silhouette of the horizon and aura or glow, a sense of mystery that, combined with receding terrain and the precipitous location of point of view, is quite possibly...sublime...how about a three on the sublimity index?

THIRTEEN: Landscape and the sublime: part one

This is a reflective and personal post. It's not necessary to read it, except out of curiosity or interest. I've often thought watercolour landscape painting might be considered to be wishy washy or lightweight, lacking profoundity. I don't feel that personally, but putting this course together has made me think about some of the motivational factors for painting landscape.

For years I've bandied about the idea of painting landscapes that are sublime. Not the painting itself, but the subject matter, or possibly feeling, that the painting is trying to capture. I kind of knew what sublime meant, but had never really looked into it. I kind of knew what it was when I saw it, or more tellingly, experienced it. I've heard it applied most frequently to landscapes of the nineteenth century, the Romantic tradition, right in the heart of when watercolour was considered a serious medium, particularly in Britain. It was time when artists accompanied expeditions of discovery to the ends of the earth. A time when fearsome new vistas and natural wonders were being revealed. And that drama and revelation comes through in a lot of the art and practice of that period. Turner lashing himself to the mast of a ship in the midst of a storm and witnessing what few or no sensible men or woman would normally witness. But what exactly is the sublime? I know I'm 'spellbound' and 'transfixed' by what I imagine it is, and, like many others, I seem to know what it means, but can't really explain what it is. I also knew that, living on Vancouver Island in what is elementally similar to a nineteenth century landscape painting, that my fascination and fear of mountain terrain, experientially and as a painter, had something to do with confronting, in nature, the sublime.

I consulted the Oxford Canadian English Dictionary. There are three definitions that suggest something 'exalted', 'noble', and of high 'spiritual', 'intellectual', 'moral' level; also of 'awe', 'reverence' and 'high emotion' by reason of great beauty, 'vastness' or 'grandeur'; also 'lofty', 'dignified', 'proud' or 'arrogant' of bearing. The meanings are valid within respective spheres of study or thought, such as literature or of nature and art. And at the end of the definition: ' a quality in art or nature arousing or inspiring awe, reverence, terror or high emotion in the person experiencing it'. Paydirt; thats starting to hit the nail on the head of my previously blurry understanding of the sublime.

A visit to Wickipedia clears things up a bit more by putting 'sublime' into various realms of philosophy and having it describe 'greatness to which nothing can be compared'. It seems to be a number of things, but, as in the dictionary definition, it's the application to art, and especially landscape art, that I find most compelling and closest to my blurry understanding of the concept.

One of the illustrations used to accompany the portion on the sublime in nineteenth century Romantic artists is this painting by Kaspar David Friedrich.


'Wanderer above the Sea of Fog', Kasper David Friedrich
'Romantic artists during the 19th century used the epic of nature as an expression of the sublime' -Wickipedia.

The picture must have been quite unusual and compelling when first painted although today it definitely looks a bit corny.



I found, among my own photos from a guided climb up Mount Colonel Foster, the image above which is remarkably similar to the painting above it. In both painting and photo there is a sense of the epic of nature; a sense of something about to be revealed or witnessed by mountain guide Jan Neuspiel and client Dale Combs as they move over the summit; there is hint of danger, something that can provoke terror, as a result of being able to witness this view. (OK, this isn't Everest, but if it was a view coming up to the summit of that mountain it would definitely magnify the feeling of the sublime a few orders of magnitude). I would say that, if neither painting or photo are actually sublime in and of themselves (how can mere paintings or photos be so?) they are certainly in response to some kind of brush with the sublime.


Here's guide Jan surveying a the route down off the mountain. Mountain guides have a real sense of the sublime, I believe. Guides spend a lot of time in the mountains at personal risk that is controlled and reduced by the amount of training and experience they have. Despite the amount of time they spend out there they never cease to be in awe of the sublime views that they experience.



Mountains are new to me, having just moved to the island five years ago, and in my earliest encounters, I'm ashamed to say, I have experienced profound terror just being on them, a sense of being over my head, about to be smitten, of overwhelming dread, vertigo, disorientation, loss of a sense of self, drowning in vastness. It has left me prone on the rock gasping like a fish out of water. So, I've taken mountaineering courses, taken up climbing, and regularly hiked, scrambled and climbed ridges and peaks in Strathcona Park. Under control now, exactly where it needs to be, a sense of sublime terror and awe for the natural landscape is nevertheless only barely suppressed.


I should point out that Jan the guide isn't prostrating himself with terror in the face of the epic of nature in the picture above, but desperately trying to find cracks in the rock to insert nuts or cams that will offer protection to roped up clients Dale and yours truly in the event that we took a tumble. However, the comparison between this actual photograph of a figure in the sublime, and the watercolour rendering of a figure in the sublime, below, is notable.


'Natural Bridge, Nassau', Winslow Homer

In this watercolour painting by Winslow Homer the Officer is laying prone to look into the chasm below, at the unseen (by us) rocks and surf which would destroy him if he were to fall. Beyond is the ocean and horizon, whose distance is difficult to estimate; somewhere between far off and infinite. The Officer lays prone to confront his view of the epic of nature revealed below and beyond. This painting definitely refers to the sublime as I'm coming to understand it.

If the sublime itself is constant, it should be fairly obvious that there can be various degrees of sublimity. The German Philosopher Schopenhauer apparently created degrees of the sublime, applicable to pure observation and also, I think, to landscape painting and painting in general. I've quoted the descriptions from Wikipedia but for future reference I've numbered them 1-6 on the sublimity scale.

"1/ Feeling of Beauty - Light is reflected off a flower. (Pleasure from a mere perception of an object that cannot hurt observer).

2/Weakest Feeling of Sublime - Light reflected off stones. (Pleasure from beholding objects that pose no threat, yet themselves are devoid of life).

3/Weaker Feeling of Sublime - Endless desert with no movement. (Pleasure from seeing objects that could not sustain the life of the observer).

4/Sublime - Turbulent Nature. (Pleasure from perceiving objects that threaten to hurt or destroy observer).

5/Full Feeling of Sublime - Overpowering turbulent Nature. (Pleasure from beholding very violent, destructive objects).

6/Fullest Feeling of Sublime - Immensity of Universe's extent or duration. (Pleasure from knowledge of observer's nothingness and oneness with Nature)."

Six degrees of sublime pleasure in a mind numbing, self destroying perception, or painting (which wouldn't match the couch either) isn't better than a single degree. There can be beauty and intrigue in both. But exploring the sublime to an extent that you feel safe with can sometimes be rewarding for a painter of landscape. A mountain or a thunderhead creeping over the horizon; even a couple or three degrees on the sublimity scale, can provide drama, tension, intrigue, and revelation: evidence that landscape painters in watercolour can dabble and daub with weighty and profound existential issues.

TWELVE: Aeriel Perspective in six easy steps

Aerial perspective is the optical effect of atmosphere over distance, and particularly applies to the landscape. Basically, the atmosphere is not clear. It contains particles of dust, smoke and vapour. These have an effect on what you are seeing the further away it is. The effect is to reduce the saturation of the local colour and reduce the perception of contrast.

Objects will take on the ambient colour that is associated with atmosphere (usually blue on our planet, but with exceptions...at sunset for instance...and in movies). As well contrast is reduced and lights become darker and darks become lighter on an object the further away it gets. These lights and darks, which reveal the surface relief of the object or it's different local colours, gradually 'merge' and turn into a middle tone silhouette.

An easy way to imagine this effect is to imagine veils of semi opaque, that is translucent, coloured wash, of tone, being pulled down over objects as they recede away from us.


Here's a real view of Castlecrag Mountain. You can see several 'layers' of the landscape receding toward the horizon behind it, and you can clearly see how in each of these layers contrast has been reduced and the local colour has been made bluer.


Lets take Castlecrag Mountain, pump it up a bit, and lay it down on an imagined landscape. There is the 'horizon' down at the bottom, so we are actually looking up at the mountain a bit. There is no evidence of atmosphere in this image. The horizon is as unaffected by aerial perspective as the mountain itself. On the mountain we can see the local colour of the trees and the rock, and if we were to turn this local colour into black and white we would notice that the local value of the trees is darker than the value of the rock. As well we can see the effect of light and shadow on the mountain. If we imagined that the trees and rock were the same colour, the colour of white or grey plaster say, we can see clearly the effect of direct sunlight causing shadows.

We can see that there is lots going on in the shadows and lit areas as well, as the light strikes facets of rock more or less directly, and in the shadows, as ambient refracted light shines down from the blue sky, or direct light is bounced from other pillars and cliffs back at the shadow side.


In this version I've put a gradation of blue translucent atmospheric coloured tone over the lower part of the mountain. You know that the sky, on a clear day, gets lighter the nearer the horizon you go. And it gets darker the closer you get to looking straight up. The atmosphere is actually thicker the lower you get. As well, if you look straight up you are looking through significantly less atmosphere straight out into deep dark space. The lower you look through the atmosphere toward the horizon the more atmosphere you look through and that atmosphere is actually thicker and contains more particles to create aerial perspective. These two phenomenon combine to create the effect of haze laying in valleys, which is why it helps to reduce the contrast on mountains in a painting the further down it's slopes that you go. That is the effect that the above gradation has achieved.


Lets duplicate our mountain, put it behind the first, and pull down a veil of atmosphere over it. We can see that the contrast between the lights and darks of both local colour and light and shadow has been reduced, and that the mountain has become slightly bluer overall. It looks further away already.


And another mountain is added, and another veil of the atmosphere to reduce contrast and make it bluer. We can see detail, the relief, subtle effects of light and shadow in the light and shade have disappeared, and we can no longer distinguish between what is a tree and what is a shadow.

Mountain number three already looks far off in the distance.

We haven't adjusted the mountains size (actual perspective) at all; just allowed it to be overlapped by the other two and be effected by aerial perspective.


Another mountain is added, and another veil is pulled down across it. Almost a silhouette now.


And finally one more. Once far enough away to be just a silhouette more distant mountains will just become lighter and lighter silhouettes until as they recede and finally, given enough distance merge with the ambient colour and value of the sky and become invisible.

We could perform this little exercise almost exactly in goauche paint, that is opaque (actually semi-opaque, or translucent) watercolour. However transparent watercolour won't quite do it this way, as our washes cannot lighten our darks as easily; only darken our lights. That is why we have to preserve our lights from the very beginning of the painting. That is why the exercise of dividing our painting into strong light and dark is often a good way to start a more sustained painting.

However, because we can use washes as well as brush strokes, watercolour is an excellent medium for quickly achieving the effects of distance hills reduced to silhouette, or near silhouette, and if you don't already use it for this you will certainly do lots of this in the remainder of the class and your future painting.

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ELEVEN: The Greys


an artist's impression of a Grey from Wikipedia

Did you know that polling data suggests that 90 percent of alleged alien encounters in Canada are with The Greys? As well, the majority of Canadians spell grey 'grey', and not 'gray' which is a spelling found only in parts of the United States. There are not a lot of gray areas north of the border; it really does seem to be, as I suspected, a grey world after all.

I love grey. Overall, it's a blue planet, but down here they are smokey grey blues for the most part. I appreciate colour and colourists, but grey is the middle ground where most optical interaction takes place. There are only three primary colours, fewer bright pure colours, but an infinite number of greys. In watercolour the mixing of colour to create grey, is particularly important in my opinion because of the nature of the pigments and how they tend to separate from each other and interact with the paper. There is an aesthetic in watercolour that exists just around the effect of mixtures of paint on paper. A watercolourist will actually choose a colour specifically because of the way it mixes with other colours and the paper instead of, or in addition to, it property as an optical colour.

Painting monochrome studies, as well as being valuable time spent studying light and shade on form, is also extremely valuable for studying mixtures of colour, of greys. In the posts below where I've put my own examples of figure, still life and landscape monochrome studies, you can see that they are different in overall colour. Some of the overall colour is warm, and some cool. In all of them, believe it or not, I started out with the idea of creating a neutral grey by mixing either two complementary or three primary colours, but swung way way or another as I mixed away and thought, hmmm, that looks nice warm, or cool, or very warm. (In the remote circumstance that some of you don't know what primary colour, complimentary colour, and warm/cool colours are, we'll quickly discuss them in the next class or two.) When you are doing these little studies, in class, at home, warming up for a sustained and serious painting session, or just gathering information in the field, do experiment with mixing grey tones by trying different colours. Don't just mix pure primaries. Try some that are already greyed down. Rather than a pure red, yellow and blue, pick three murkier versions; Alizarin; Ochre; Cobalt. Complementaries; try a violet and a viridian green. Consult a colour wheel if you need to actually see what colours compliment each other.

You might have already guessed that I'm a big fan of the British Columbian watercolourist, the late Toni Onley. If you go to his website here you can enter the site and view a lovely slide show of just a small amount of his watercolour work. You'll see that, although he has strategically placed areas of pure colour, much of his work consists of marvellous greys. If you take a few minutes and proceed through the whole slide show you'll come to the final page in which you can click on a sentence to move to another page where he will give a comprehensive description of the brushes, paper, and the paints that he likes to use. And most interesting of all he actually lists many of the mixtures that he uses to create his grey and muted colours.

Thanks Toni.



Notice how various colours separate in watercolour when you mix them. Click to enlarge.


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TEN: A note on exercises: practice makes perfect.
(A brief reminder that posts are ordered in reverse from top to bottom. Scroll down to see earlier posts. You can also click on most images to enlarge them.)

We are starting these classes with lots of exercises. They will hopefully train our eyes, hands and minds to come up with stronger images, better landscape paintings, in later classes.

But even after the classes, I hope that you will make exercises, small sketches and renderings, a part of your visual art activity. I like metaphor, and think that painting can be likened to some other activities...

Such as building physical strength. If you want to lift heavy weights you must train for many hours, practice exercises, to be able to do the big lift.

I'm a keen athlete myself and occasionally like to do a race event; a foot race, a cross country ski race, a mountain bike race. I know how to do these activities competently and have all sorts of game plans and strategies, but there is no way that I could simply show up for an event every few months and hope to do well at it. I need to keep active between events, and put in a lot of hours maintaining fitness and specific conditioning so that technique for skiing, for example, is kept fluid and efficient.

The military have for centuries practised exercises. Very little of a soldiers time is spent in combat (fortunately) but vast amounts of it are spent re-iterating combat skills over and over and over so that they come to hand without a great deal of conscious thought.

Musicians as well spend countless hours, thousands of hours, practising to become masterful at an instrument.

I think it's the same for visual artists. All the theoretic understanding of visual concepts in the world won't help you paint or draw better unless you put them to practice, over and over, and integrate them into unconscious thought and process. There is the idea floating around out there about the 'Ten Thousand Hour' mark. Apparently it takes ten thousand to become masterful at something. I like this idea. I suppose you need a certain amount of aptitude as well but..the more you practice; the more you put into it, the more you'll get out of it. It's like luck. To paraphrase Stephen Leacock, the funny thing about good luck is that the harder you work the more you have of it. I like the ten thousand hour idea because it gives an idea of just how much effort and time you need to put into something to really excel at it.

One of the nice things about these exercises is that they don't take a lot of time. If you have an hour here, and a half hour there, you can trickle-feed hours into your accumulated practice time. Sketchbooks and scraps of paper are fantastic items. You can put in time honing your visual skills and also generate a vocabulary of ideas for more serious painting.

If you're out on the land and have a bit of time and a sketchbook or some scraps of paper, you can paint some of these exercises quickly and both get practice and ideas for future painting.

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NINE: Monochromatic Figure Studies

In light of...no pun intended...the last post, I thought I would post a few watercolour studies from life drawing sessions. Landscape, still life, figure...they are all topography, relief, and form over which light can play. But the nude human figure can be the most satisfying to work with. Apart from hair and pupils, as discussed in a post below, skin colour is remarkably consistent and is perfect for studying the effect of light and shadow. You have a weekly life drawing session in Qualicum on Friday mornings, and you might want to consider bringing some old scraps of paper and your paints and brushes to it sometime and doing some small watercolour studies yourself. Or, as is the case with some of these below, you can do a quick line drawing at the session and then practice painting the figure in washes that will gradually reveal the form, in exactly the same way we did in the exercise in class, when you get home. If you do go, bring in some of your work to class; I'd love to take a look!

Notice that in all of these images below I have had the time to lay down multiple washes, to build the form up to dark core values and have often begun to suggest bounced light.

Now, in our weekly sessions up here we put a light on the model, but it's pretty faint. There is a lot of distracting ambient light from fluorescent bulbs. Whether you actually have a strong light source or not, you are going to have to exaggerate and even create the strong lighting for your paintings of form. Observation will only take you so far. And sometimes you will have to completely make it all up!

This will be especially true when painting the landscape. You should be observing the landscape constantly, watching for light effects and schemes and make a note of them, in your sketchbooks or in the back of your mind, to refer back to when you want to do a painting. Driving is a good time to watch for landscape effects. But keep your eye on the road too...











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EIGHT: Spraypaint/photon metaphor

A lot of us in the first class had trouble with the concept of isolating the effect of light on form. This was partly due to my own ineffectual explanation and partly because you were presented with a blabbering deluge of other information as well. But I often have to struggle with the concept myself in a practical way when actually painting. This is partly because the concept of light playing on form, despite being so simple, is so camouflaged by the presence of local colour and multiple light sources out in the real world. We need to simplify what we perceive out there, especially when painting landscape. Here's three images that will illustrate the simple effect of light playing over form.

Lets imagine we are in a very very dimly lit room. We have a sheet of black paper in front of us. Here's the sheet of black paper below...



We take the sheet of black paper, and we scrunch it up into a ball, creasing it mightily, and then we more or less flatten it out again. Of course, we can't make it flat. We can't see it very well, but feeling it in the dim room, we can tell that it now has relief, it has creases, parts coming towards us, parts receding. If we could see it clearly, it might actually look like the surface of the moon or a mountainous landscape viewed from high above. But, as you can see below, we can hardly see a thing...



We need a way of revealing, or imaging (as opposed to imagining) the topography, the relief, of the paper to make it visible. Lets imagine we have a can of white spray paint. We take it and spray it, left to right, at a low angle almost parallel to the bumpy surface of the paper. We spray and spray and the surface is revealed, even in the dim light of the room we are in...



And it really does look like the surface of a planet viewed from The Mother Ship. There is no bounced light, but the multifaceted surface has many many planes facing in many many directions, a bit like a cut diamond or a disco ball but much more random. Depending on how they face, they catch the paint more or less directly. Any plane that catches the spraypaint more directly catches more paint and is therefore lighter. Planes that catch the light, ooops, I mean spraypaint, less directly receive less of it and are therefore darker. Planes completely hidden from the spray of paint, in the shadow of extreme relief, in the lee of the mountains, so to speak, receive no light...I mean paint... at all and are left pure black. If that spraypaint were photons (hmmm....waves or particles, has that been established since I was in High School?) it would be behaving in very much the same way as light itself on an alien landscape.

Speaking of Alien Landscapes...







Beam me up, Scotty.


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SEVEN: creating light, shade and depth on a face

Heres a demo parallel to the one below on the boxes, but this time applying the same concepts to a face.

To start with, I'm imagining that the head has absolutely no local colour, and since we are working in monochrome, no local value. It is as though painting a plaster cast. Thinking of your subject matter in this way allows you to think purely about light passing over it's surface and creating light and shade and therefore form. In this first stage you can see there is just one middle tone laid over everything that I don't want light, that is, is in some degree of shade. There is some actual observation going on, but some creative decisions as well; thats to say that I don't paint exactly what I see in the mirror. I exaggerate and dramatize the light/dark a bit.

This first stage above is what we initially were painting in our first class; dividing our image dramatically into light and dark.


Similar to the exercise below I'm adding washes, tones of colour to gradually build up the form.


And more washes and modelling to build up form. Notice how soul-less the eyes look. Yup, that's me alright, but at least I can still see my reflection... But seriously, that plaster cast look, with no concession to local colour looks very soul-less, and it's in the eyes, which of course lack an iris and pupil because they are visible only because they have local colour. As well, a plaster cast doesn't have the bright fleck of reflection, the sparkle, that livens real eyes. So I'm making a small concession to local value and reality and giving the portrait some life by adjusting the eyes, the nose, lips and hair just a bit in the final render to be a bit darker as a result of their darker pigmentation, or local colour, which reads as local value in this monochrome painting.


Final. In the same way as with the cardboard boxes I have a subtle gradation on each side of the face. On the lit side the lights gradate to darker as you move to the back of the head, and on the dark side the darks gradate to lighter as you move to the back of the head...back into the picture frame. The further we move back the less contrast we have; the basic idea of the aerial perspective that we so often see in landscape on a hazy day.

SIX: wash application demo started in class and finished at home

Here's the cardboard box exercise in three instalments...


One single middle (or middle-light) tone wash is applied over everything that we don't want light. We have to preserve our lights in watercolour (unlike an opaque painting where we would apply the tone evenly over the whole picture and then darken darks, lighten lights, darken darks again, and finally apply highlights as a finishing touch).


A second wash is applied. Notice that I'm actually doing a bit of gradation on the shaded side of the boxes facing us. I'm shading the gradation darkest on the light side of the box. That will put the darkest part of the box right up against the light on the lit side of the box, creating contrast and making that edge come forward.


In the final version I've done some more washes and gradations...this time the gradations are on the lit side of the boxes; now I've got the lightest part of the lit side of the box right up against the darkest side of the shaded plane. Contrast! As you go further back into the picture plane, down each side of the front boxes, the darks are getting lighter on the one side and the lights are getting darker on the other. The intense contrast on the leading edge where the two planes meet brings it forward to our eyes.

I could sit around painting light on cardboard boxes for weeks and have never a dull moment. This isn't a reflection of life up in Cumberland. It's simply that by using these simple still life items I can study all the concepts of painting that apply the outside world. Apparently Edward Hopper , well known for his urban landscapes(click his name for a link; you can read about the artist and then scroll down to click on titles and view 32 of his paintings), would actually create models for his urban scenes which he would then rake with light and paint studies from. If you want to see the relevance (to me) of the above exercise to painting urban landscapes, here are a few of my own paintings of Cumberland. I try and get my reference images during periods of dramatic lighting early and late in the day or in the winter, well before or after High Noon when the gunslingers and rustlers take over the streets and the Sheriff and his Deputy are taking cover behind the jail.

FIVE: Some watercolour painting online by two artists

Click on these names to see some watercolour painting by a couple of contemporary artists in watercolour who use very little colour but instead focus on the matter of light and dark.

Wendy Artin 's watercolour landscapes use the rich sepia tones found in some of of the earlier examples of watercolour art in the first posts, and her decision to paint sculpture, which would be similar to painting plaster casts, forces her hand at concentrating on the play of light and shadow on form.

Jose Antonio Villarrubia 's landscapes seem to have the dreamy atmospheric effect of some film sets or animation backgrounds, as well as creating a sense of nostalgia around the ancient buildings he portrays. He limits his pallet, and in the landscapes, figures and still life paintings on his blog he very carefully selects the areas he intends to continue modelling after an initial dramatic division of his painting into light and dark.

FOUR: Studies of light and dark in small sketches

In our first exercises we will do small studies, from fabricated landscapes, landscape reference on hand, of cardboard box still life, of your classmates...whatever would interest you. You will try and create easy to read compositions with pretty much one consistent tone of one value. Try mixing up 'grays' or tones that are warm, or cool. Mix complimentary colours, or versions of red, yellow and blue. That way you can discover how some of these colours mix and interact while you do the exercise. You can soften edges with the brush a bit. Natural variation of values will occur, but we'll try and make the washes fairly simple. Although this is an 'exercise', it's something you might find yourself doing in future as a study for a larger and more complex painting. It's important to be able to simplify complex subject matter to make it read easily to the eye, and not appear confusing.


study of light and dark in a fabricated landscape


study of light and dark in a landscape


study of light and dark in a landscape


study of light and dark on a building


study of light and dark on a figure


study of light and dark on a figure


study of light and dark on a figure

THREE: Understanding light and shade, local colour, local value, and how they interact

To model form with paint we first need to be able to discriminate between the types of visual information we perceive when seeing. This series of photographs might prove helpful if you are not fully familiar with how to breakdown what we are seeing in the painting exercises we will be doing.

photo one: optical reality, as we see things

In this photograph above we see the arranged fruit as they literally appear to us. What we are seeing here is a combination of the actual colour of the fruit, the local colour (and it's local value, or the intensity of the colour translated into grey and black and white tone) in combination with the effect of light and shad0w on their form. There is a lot going on in there. The concepts are at once simple but difficult to grasp.

photo two: optical reality without colour, as we see things in black and white

Drawing or painting without colour could be just a matter of translating what we see in colour above to black and white, as in the desaturated version of the fruit arrangement above. It is a bit more complicated than that.

It is essential for an artist to be able to separate the effect of local colour (in painting) or value (in drawing or monochromatic painting) from the effect of light and shadow on form. So we need to further break down what it is we are actually seeing. This will help us with our understanding of painting.

photo three: local colour, as we see things in the absence of light and shadow

Lets imagine we are not able to see the effect of light on objects. We are only able to see the actual colour, the local colour, of objects. What we would see of our fruit arrangement would look something like the picture above. There are faintly lighter and darker areas of the fruit, but they are where the pigmentation of the fruit surface is more concentrated, or where it has been altered as a result of ripeness, the start of rot, or being a different anatomical part, such as a green or brown stem. They have nothing to do with the effect of light on the fruit which is non
existent in this view.

photo four: local value, as we see things without colour in the absence of light and shade

We don't use colour in drawing or monochromatic painting, so local colour doesn't concern us, but it's desaturated equivalent which is called local value does. It is very important for painters to be able to understand the value of colour, to know exactly where a colour, translated into grey tone, lays between black and white. It takes a lot of practice to judge the value of colour.

Lets imagine that as well as not being able to see the effect of light and shadow on objects, that we are also unable to see the actual colour of things. We can only see in black and white, and also cannot perceive the effect of light and shadow on form. What we would see of our arrangement of fruit would look something similar to this image above.

photo five: light and shadow, as we see things in the absence of local colour

One final way of perceiving: If we could not see colour at all, could only perceive the effect of light and shadow playing over form, we would see our fruit arrangement very much like in the image above. It would be as if the whole world were made of plaster casts. And this is precisely how you should initially think when modelling form in your painting. Ignore local colour.

Rendering form with light and shadow is a question of priority. You must, in your mind's eye, first see form unaffected by local colour and value and understand how light plays on it's surface to reveal it's nature. This is especially the case in the simple painting exercises that we will be doing in the first few classes. We'll actually be imagining that our subject matter is made out of plaster and lacks colour. We need to be able to experiment with pure light and shadow before considering local colour.

Being able to separate what we see into constituent the parts, described above, is invaluable for the artist, as it allows the modulation of those parts for the purpose of expression. Painting is not automatic like the click of a camera shutter, but interpretive and expressive.

photo six, re-combining the parts

In this final image I've tried to digitally recreate the first photo by 'glazing' a saturated transparency of the local colour from photo three on top of photo five. The effect is not quite the same as in photograph one, however, it's getting into the same ball park. It has the effect of early photo lithographic reproduction with less subtle colour separations. This photographic re-combination also mimics the 'glazing' of local colour on top of an underpainting as done with traditional oil painting technique.

TWO: A look at Grisaille and Chiaroscuro.

We will be working mono chromatically and dealing purely with the play of light and shade on form and the creation of depth, so these examples of Grisaille and Chiaroscuro are of interest.


Andrea Del Sarto
Above, an example of grisaille. Grisaille is monochromatic painting and exists somewhere between a drawing or painting made from a plaster cast that is lacking in local value or colour and a fully rendered painting. Sometimes grisaille will incorporate hints of colour. It existed in the form of studies, as under paintings upon which colour will be glazed, but also as a tradition in and of itself within the western art tradition. Monochromatic treatments are also used extensively in animated film, as well as in live action film. We'll be studying light and dark in our landscapes by painting monochromatic watercolours.

Below are some examples of dramatic chiaroscuro in various subject matters. What isn't chiaroscuro? It could be argued, I guess, that wherever there is light and shadow it exists. I will show some examples in my own work later where it has been minimized, and will show samples in class by other artists where it is very limited. But it is often very pronounced in earlier art traditions, contemporary traditional painting, and in animated and live action film making. Pronounced chiaroscuro is used in design by separating an image into dramatic lights and darks. In some of our early painting exercises we are going to make a great effort to divide our image into pure light and dark, so the images below may be of interest.


Jan Both
Chiaroscuro in a landscape.


Domenico Beccafumi
Chiaroscuro in an interior.


Diego Valazques
Chiaroscuro in a portrait.

ONE: A look at some early watercolour landscape

We will be studying light and shade and depth in the first few classes and therefore painting very monochromatic landscapes. Here we can see a few examples of early use of monochromatic schemes in watercolour.


Luca Cambiaso, pen, brown ink and wash
One of the first uses for watercolour painting was to use washes of ink or paint to create studies of light and dark, or chiaroscuro, over line drawings.


James Deacon
Early in the watercolour painting tradition, monochromatic colour studies were done for reference but also, sometimes, as finished work in themselves. This type of monochromatic study applied to traditional painting had earlier become a painting tradition known as grisaille.


Francis Town
Another example of wash painting used to create dramatic lights and darks in a landscape and to support a drawing.


Alexander Cozens
You can clearly see how the artist artist has created depth in this piece.


-Probably some of the earliest uses for watercolour technique was to use washes to apply tone in layers and develop schemes of light and shade for large works in a more substantial medium. These 'watercolour drawings' are mainly drawings supported by watercolour painting.

-Artists might also use these watercolour drawings to make outdoor studies, or studies from their travels. These would be used as reference or collected in albums by well to do who would would dig out the albums when discussing antiquities or travel or art with learned friends and acquaintances. This use of watercolour was small scale, private and intimate.

-In the later 18th century, watercolour as a serious medium, for appreciation by the public at large was initially an almost uniquely British phenomenon which emerged parallel to the more private appreciation described above.

-The largest use of watercolour was for the portrayal of landscapes.

-In the late 18th century the first significant use of watercolour as a transparent medium, shunning use of body colour and other additives began.
*sources: The Great Age of British Watercolours, 1750-1880, Wilton and Lyles.