Sunday 11 April 2010






Research point: Working in series in the landscape



Many artists have worked in series in the landscape, among them Cezanne with his repeated painting of Mount Saint-Victoire and the Bay of Marseille, and Monet, with his haystacks and his paintings of the cathedral at Rouen. I recently read of a painter who produced 365 paintings of a pond near his home, one on each day of the year, and I know a painter who has painted at the same spot on the Savannah River for at least ten years. The problems of series paintings of landscapes are those of en plein aire painting: light changes so rapidly that one can only paint for an hour or two, and must then return on another day, hoping for similar light (or start a new painting in different lighting). Changing weather conditions are likewise a problem. I would imagine that finding something new to say about a view seen repeatedly might be a challenge as well. One big advantage: you don’t have to get up in the morning and wonder what you are going to paint that day.





Course work: Returned to my drawing site of yesterday at mid-day, and drew a view of part of the driveway looking west (from a viewpoint very near that used for one drawing on the sketchbook walk), then moved about twenty feet east and drew a view of the entrance of the barnyard, facing south.

Reading:



Rose-Marie & Ranier Hagen What Great Paintings Say (Vol. 1)

Taschen, Köln, 2005

Pp 272-283



Edgar Loy Fankbonner (Translator…no author listed) Art of Drawing Landscapes

Sterling Publishing Company, New York, 2005





Personal sketchbook work: A hasty and incomplete sketch through a window of a deer alertly grazing near the house.

Weekly reflections on learning experience: Transitioned from Assignment Three to Assignment Four this week. Although landscape is a major interest of mine, virtually all my experience is in painting it, not in drawing it, and I am rather disappointed with my drawings so far. They appear to be satisfactory as drawings for planning a painting, but nothing more. I am also disappointed that I seem to have lost a good bit of skill during the period that I was ill, and now have difficulty getting the pencil to go where I want it to go. I suppose this means I should increase my effort and draw more. The number of “Research Points,” which consume a great deal of “off-the-books” time, has proved annoying.



Total time: 1 hour 16 minutes