I use photographic references for my paintings. While there are always interesting elements that draw me to the photos initially, the compositions are not always strong, and often need some adjustment. 

One tool to help clarify the elements within a composition is the use of a Notan drawing. Notan is a Japanese word that means “light-dark balance.”  A notan reduces a scene to the basic black and white shapes and patterns that serve as the foundation of a composition. Notan recognizes not only the balance of positive and negative space, but also the relationship of a specific shape to its background. It can also help eliminate extraneous elements in a photo, more easily simplifying a composition.

John Carlson refers to "decorative composition", meaning the arrangement of value-masses into a design, almost as a poster designer would proceed.

The notan below is of the original photograph. After adjusting the balance, unity, movement, proportion, and emphasis–"BUMPE"– I arrived at a much better composition, indicated by the notan in the middle. The finished painting is on the right.

The first thing that the viewer of your artwork sees is the pattern of light, middle and dark values. If you get that right, they will look more closely at the colors and the detail.

My third book, on the fundamentals of drawing and painting, is in the final editing phase and hopefully will be in print this summer.  Chapters include drawing, composition, color, perspective, angle and planes, elements of landscape and procedures for painting.

​If you are one of my students, or have read my first two books, or just follow my blog, you know that I refer to "Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting" often. It is one of the books on the required reading list for all my students.

Spring is finally here in the midwest, the trees are budding, so, as a landscape artist, I thought it relevant to touch on one of the favorite elements of landscape paintings–trees. One of the chapters in Carlson's book is devoted to trees. 

" Know your trees, their nature, their growth, their movement; understand that they are conscious, living things, with tribulations and desires not wholly disassociated from your own."

I've simplified the thought process by making it one of the 42 rules in the new book: Rule 32- "Tree branches are curved using straight line segments."  What does that mean? In the northern climate, trees go dormant in the winter. In the spring they will start to grow at a slightly different angle from where they ended. This "starting and stopping" continues throughout the growing season, and over the years.

​At first glance, branches all appear to curve. Looking closely at its branches, you will see that a tree grows each year in relatively straight segments that form a curved appearance.

​If you attempt to paint the tree and its branches with curved lines, it will look "rubbery" and unnatural. Study even the tiniest twig and you will see the history of a tree's growth.

​Observe also, that trees in nature seldom grow perfectly vertical. Carlson says: "A tree seldom or never encroaches upon the liberty of another tree, if it can be avoided."

Depending on weather, or terrain, you will see the interesting variations  in the growth of trees.
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It's important to understand that all objects will be influenced by your light source. You need to know the color, temperature, intensity and direction of your light source, which is not always evident when using a photographic reference.  

The portion of the object that is not in light is in shadow. The value and color will be affected by reflected light on the shadow side of the object.
What is commonly called the cast shadow is actually the absence of light on another object.

​Reflected light is light that bounces off other objects onto the shadow side of an object. The amount of reflected light is dependent on the intensity of the light source, the angle of reflection, and the surface quality of the reflecting object.

​This old abandoned house is in shadow. The light is behind the house and just left of center. Looking at the roof, notice that one side is receiving light and the other side is in shadow. There is a slight cast shadow from the roof that is in shadow on the roof that is receiving light. Trace the line of that cast shadow backwards and it points to the light source.
The upper front of the building is receiving reflected light from the sky and is slightly bluer in color. The portion on that side under the porch roof is receiving reflected light from the ground which is grass and is lighter with the color of the grass.
The "cast shadow" on the grass is transparent. Cast shadows are never black as they appear in many photographs.

​Remember, all objects will have a highlight, a light side, a shadow side, reflected light, and will also cast a shadow. 

Back in February, 2014, I first discussed what I call, the "dreaded P word" –Perspective. I am not a perspective nerd, but because perspective is so important to understand, I wrote a book about it, hoping to simplify the process, and take away some of the confusion. Let's look at this important aspect of perspective.

​Part of the problem in dealing with perspective often comes from the photographic references artists use for their paintings. Below is an image that I took using a simple point and shoot camera. As you can see, the camera distorts the image. By working directly from the reference, you are simply copying the distorted image. 

The problem is the same when drawing from life. The concept of perspective depends on the viewer standing still and looking straight ahead–not up or down, or right to left. Drawing something large, as a city scene requires us to look up at tall buildings, therefore distorting the image.

​Understanding the basic rule of perspective will solve most of the problem. "All parallel lines will recede to a vanishing point."

All of these lines that are horizontal will converge to a point on the horizon line. The last example shows a plane, the roof of a house that is inclined, not horizontal. It will converge to a point, in this case above the horizon line.

There is an exception to this basic rule. That is when the parallel lines are parallel or perpendicular to the viewer as seen in the painting below.

Hungry for more fun with perspective? My book, ​"Put Your Paintings in Perspective"is available here on my website. 

Each week in both my watercolor classes at the Palette and Chisel Academy in Chicago, and in Kaneville, I do a step-by-step demonstration of a landscape. After selecting a photograph of a subject, I make adjustments and corrections using photo editing software.  The painting is explained to the students step by step.
Each subject is a lesson in either composition, color, perspective, techniques or materials.

The ability to teach, answer questions, and paint at the same time presents unique challenges, but the reward is that I get to paint in every class. Reflecting back on the past year, I realize I did over 100 demonstraton paintings -some turned out well -and some not so good. Hopefully though, each one imparted something helpful to the students -a better undersanding of how to begin a painting, through to a more confident, satisfying completion of a painting. 

I am posting a few here that may help you as you go forward in this new year. In the following four examples, you can see the fundamental steps: the original photograph, the adustments to the photograph, the pattern of the composition and step 1, 2 and the final. In some cases, a few additional steps are added as finishing touches.

Happy painting in 2017!
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From Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting:.
"In many foregrounds in nature there is little to get hold of for the purposes of perspective construction, but there are always some things, such as groups of grasses, flowers, stones, depressions, cloud shadows, tree shadows, paths, roads, etc. If any of these 'materials' exist, use them to your purpose-but sparingly. Remember that the less material you use to carry conviction in a picture the better the picture will be."

​Often the challenge is in exactly what to leave in, and what is extraneous. 

The photograph on the left was taken just a few miles west of our home. Portions of the barn had collapsed at the time this was taken. Sadly the whole thing finally fell, and now a new "modern" barn has replaced it. Eliminating the non-essential telephone pole and street sign was an easy decision. The tree helps create depth, but in this case, I felt it was not necessary, so it too was eliminated. Left with a lot of flat negative space in the sky and ground, I added some interesting clouds from another photograph. The foreground was painted implementing some salt to create texture which, by adding interest in the foreground, gives the painting the depth needed.

Dealing with the foreground is always tricky. The tree in the foreground will immediately create a sense of depth, but it's right in the middle of the  composition. I could have moved it to the left or right, but decided to eliminate it, and the remains of an old windmill. And I just use the grasses to achieve the depth.

The original photograph of this forest scene has a few elements in the foreground, such as grasses and rocks that I chose to include. Accentuating the frozen water also helps to give it depth.

Always remember that it is often more important to leave elements out of a painting to make your statement, than to try to include too much, which can often weaken a painting.

From Carlsons Guide to landscape painting:
"I strongly urge that the beginner work in oil for a year, or until he has mastered the rudimentary difficulties of landscape painting. Once these principles of landscape are mastered, through much experimenting ( in the more malleable medium of oil ) , the several other mediums of expression, such as water color, pastel or tempera will be found easier to handle."

After my first year of required classes, Fundamentals and figure drawing, I decided to study watercolor painting under the direction of Mr. Irving Shapiro. The forest scene is one of his paintings. For the next 20 years I painted primarily in watercolor. Several years ago I decided to try painting in oils. Even though it required me to think "backwords" i.e. dark to light, as opposed to light to dark in watercolor, I found that the procedures that were required in watercolor helped me to paint successfully in oils.

​Studying watercolor before oils teaches you very quickly, that if you don't plan very thorougly in advance, your painting will fail. It is very difficult to make corrections. For example, in general, you can go darker, but can't go lighter in an area. If you gray a color too much at the beginning of a painting, it is difficult to make it more intense.  In oil painting, while you can make corrections fairly easily, painting directly (putting down the correct colors, right values, right form, etc. from the start) will result in a fresher painting. All of the scraping and correcting tends to weaken and  "muddy" up the painting. So the disciplines learned in watercolor are valuable assets when painting in oils.

While it is the common thought that you should learn oil painting first, you tend to fall back on the notion that you can always make changes or correct mistakes later, which can result in a painting that is overworked. The critical skills in planning that you learn very quickly in watercolor painting result in learning other medium, such as tempera and gouache with more assurance.

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"West of Kaneville"
   Egg Tempera

My "bible" for art is Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting. I recommend it to all of my students with one caveat-it can be difficult to read! Reading and studying one or two pages at a time is the best way to understand all that Mr. Carlson has to teach. In Chapter 5, he discusses "Transitions in Value and Color." 

"One of the most important truths bearing upon receding color out-of-doors is this: it is the yellow that fades out of a landscape as it recedes from the foreground. This means not only yellow itself, but the yellow in all mixtures, such as brown, warm red, orange, etc. Our green for example, will range from a sappy yellow-green in the foreground to quite a cool green in the middle distance and gradually diminish in its yellowness as it goes further back, until it turns to a faint emerald in the distance; and this emerald will become a faint greenish-blue at the horizon. Again, it is
​the yellow that fades out of receding planes. As the yellow fades out, the violets and blues seem to increase in intensity."

These examples of his paintings illustrate the concept. 

Once you understand that you have to eliminate the yellow as you paint into the background, you then have to understand the pigments that you use. In my March blog I experimented with the Zorn palette which incorporates  a red, yellow, blue and black. Using this palette makes your choices easy. Just stop using the yellow as you paint into the background.

If you use a more typical palette of colors, your choices become more complex. Above are the colors that I use. Some of the colors are obvious, such as Cadmium yellow light, Cadmium yellow medium, and Raw Sienna. And some are not. For example, while Cadmium Red Light is a red,
​it also contains some yellow. Cerulean Blue is a blue that also contains yellow. You have to know your color composition before you can use this concept effectively. 

​To further clarify, as you look at the traditional 12 segment color wheel below, you can see the colors that have yellow in them are below the red line, and the colors that do not contain yellow are above the red line.

Below is one of my recent watercolor paintings-"Maple Hollow Summer", showing this concept.
​You can see the cooler blues and greens in the background, and the yellows and greens in the foreground. 

"Good composition is always determined by good selection. Fine painting is a matter of proper taste and judgement in choosing the motive, accepting some parts, discarding others, and making changes or alterations throughout the procedure. Selection, like all factors in art, is difficult to define or separate from the composite process in painting. Judgement varies according to the subject, type of composition, and the viewpoint of the painter. Selection is never the same in two instances; a choice in one case would not do in another. Therefore, in order to develop good taste and judgement in selecting, it is necessary to develop the feeling of artistic unity. If we can fully appreciate harmony in pictorial design, we more easily select the parts and judge the measure of influences that create it."  ~Composition of Outdoor Painting by Edgar Payne

The original photo on the left was taken by one of my current students, Debbie Freerksen. The composition is good to begin with. 
​Cropping out the large tree mass on the left and warming the trees and grasses made it stronger, as shown in the adjusted image in the middle. On the right is the demo painting I created from that image.

Another photo taken by one of my current students, Karen Dodson, is interesting but has limited values, and the grasses and the field are too horizontal. I cropped much of the foreground and then angled the grasses slightly to give the comp more depth, drawing the viewer into the picture.. ​Changing the sky and the temperature makes the composition more interesting.

It was a slightly overcast day when I took this photo.  All of the values were similar, and the predominance of green was not too exciting. I added some clouds and again changed the temperature and intensity of the greens, and cropped some of the foreground.

This photo is from Imp Lake in Wisconsin. Similar to the previous one, the greens and the sky are are a bit bland. Adding clouds in the sky and keeping it cooler, and then changing the temperature of the greens and cropping the foreground resulted in a more dynamic composition.

In this photo taken in northern Wisconsin, I warmed the rocks in the foreground, but the difference between the warm rocks and the cool greens in the background created a conflict. Adding some warmer color to the background, and simplifying the background elements created a more cohesive composition.
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With some thought and understanding of the elements of composition, even a good photograph can be improved upon, remembering that "good composition is always determined by good selection."

So, what was so different about the Moulin Du Roy paper? Canson's description cites that: "internal and surface sizing permit the lifting of dried colour and the opportunity to refine and rework the watercolour..." However, when I applied the first wash, it was absorbed immediately into the paper, which would indicate that it did not have a surface size. And, to my horror, fifty percent of the intensity of the color was lost. On the other hand, when I tried to lift pigment in an area, it lifted very easily, which would indicate that, in fact, it did have a surface size. Sadly, the demo was a disaster on the first wash, and it was almost impossible to recover from that point on. (I am grateful for my very compassionate students!) 

Here is the studio painting in progress from which I drew the reference for the demo. Without laying down a strong first wash, you will not get the intensity of color upon which the rest of the painting is built.

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