The Best of an Emergency

Famously, John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) once remarked that making watercolor paintings was to "Make the best of an emergency!" In the event he was talking about his personal approach to outdoor watercolors, which he did mostly while vacationing. Those works by Mr. Sargent certainly show speed and masterful brushwork, loose and painterly, and his broad command of color. Just looking at one or two of his pieces is a refreshing exercise. In "Bridge of Sighs, Venice," he shows us the 17th century landmark from a gondola on the Rio di Palazzo, giving us dazzling light and beautiful, open shadows. At the time his work was considered startling and not at all conventional. His lights in this particular work were made by reserving whites (as many do) but also by scratching and by using opaque white. The buildings are simply shapes in color, juxtaposed against one another, showing the aspiring painter that minute, detailed drawing is unnecessary.

John Sargent, "Bridge of Sighs," 1903

Below is another well-known watercolor by Mr. Sargent. In Muddy Alligators he again shows us bright light, attention to form and color and less attention to detail. the trees are little more than stripes of color and the alligators are deftly delineated with his dazzling brush.

John Sargent, "Muddy Alligators," 1917

 

Carrying a Sargent-like attitude into plein air work is something to strive for, seems to me. In my more recent oils that's been the idea--shapes and color not lines and details. For one thing, when working outdoors in changing light and unforgiving weather, speed is important. For me that means looking and thinking more and smearing paint less. It sounds paradoxical, the if you spend enough time looking, you don't have to use as many strokes of paint. Furthermore, descending into the rabbit-hole of minute details and "fiddling" are excellent ways to make dull work. Better the bold statements and contrasts of Sargent's watercolors. 

Here is a plein air oil from this week. The bridge is a city bridge over the Des Moines River, painted from the river bank. It was early morning, with the sun slanting across from right to left. Although standing in the middle of the city the sounds on the river were few--a calling bird or two, a nearby splash from a fish--and the scene might as easily have been out in the countryside some place. As I usually do, I toned the panel with burnt sienna and then drew the basic composition with my brush. After laying in lights and darks came broad areas of color, working top to bottom. That is, sky (mostly cerulean and white), then the foliage colors, the river, and lastly the bridge. The idea was to do most of the surroundings before the center of interest. The greens are a mix of sap green, cad lemon, cobalt blue, ivory black and sometimes raw umber). Give how quickly the light was changing, this was finished in about ninety minutes.

'Sixth Avenue Bridge," oil on panel, 9x12

A Saturday Sketch

The Saturday sketch group chose a variety of places to paint this week, about half of us choosing Greenwood Park, which is actually the park that provides the setting for the Des Moines Art center. It has a rose garden, sculptures, an amphitheater, walking paths, and a beautiful lagoon nestled in a mature grove of hardwoods. I sat in the shade of a kind old tree and let the scene carry me away. It was a hot afternoon but in the shade the breeze off the water was pleasant and cool. 

"The Lagoon, Greenwood Park," wc

I used a pale green wash, then established darks and medium values, mixing greens by using cad yellow and sap green with a touch of burnt sienna to mute the green. Dried foliage was painted with ochre and a touch of burnt sienna, and the stand of reeds along the water indicated with sap green darkened with Payne's grey. Masses of smoother color, darker masses washed into lighter greens, indicated reflections. I let each pass of color dry at least a few minutes before adding another layer. Watercolor dries fast in hot weather. When the colors were dry I used a mechanical pen to show foliage, especially tree edges, reeds, and the shore of the lagoon.

Besides my companions there were families with small kids, walkers, at least one fisherman (who hooked a medium-sized one just in front of me), and a few cyclists. Since the pandemic it seems parks get a lot more use. What is certain is that I'll be back here with my oil paints one of these days.

Turpentine vs Other Solvents

Solvents in oil painting have a bad name. That is, many fear that sovents are significantly toxic, harmful, or explosive. For some years there has been a movement of painters who try to avoid or reduce their uses of solvents while painting. But for those who use solvents, here is a list of the various solvents available and a few notes on their usage.

"Upstream, Druid Hill Creek," oil on panel, 2020

Turpentine 

The traditionally used solvent in oil painting is known as "turpentine," but in fact is a product distilled from turpentine, known as "rectified turpentine." Turpentine is actually the resinous sap of a specific kind of tree, many in the Pinus species. The sap is distilled, or rectified, producing a clear to yellow liquid that is used to thin oil paint, make varnishes and mediums for painting, and in various chemical processes. Rectified turpentine is a complex substance with a slightly oily but scanty residue. 

 

Oil of Spike Lavender

A traditional solvent derived from the spike lavender plant (Lavandula spica) and is said to have been used by masters of the past in thinning their oils. It is often listed as an essential oil. Colloquially known as "oil of spike," it's used mostly as a component of various painting mediums along with oil and a resin of one kind or another. Because of scarcity and expense oil of spike is rarely used as a simple solvent.

Mineral Spirits

Mineral spirits are solvents derived from crude oil. Sometimes called "white spirit," especially in Britain, mineral spirits come in smelly and odorless forms. The odorless form is sold by several companies under various brand names but in general comprises straight-chain hydrocarbons (C7-C13), while the smellier variety contains "aromatics" or ring compounds too. These solvents have many industrial applications as well as finding use in oil painting. (Brand names include Gamsol, Turpenoid, and others.)

"Downstream, Druid Hill Creek," oil on panel, 2020

Suggestions for using solvents:

• Buy high quality solvents. Typical hardware store turpentine is not suitable for artwork. Odorless mineral spirits are similar to one another regardless of brand names but artist-grade spirits are more likely to be high quality.
  
• Ventilate your studio well. Solvents evaporate but will remain in still studio air. An open window is the minimum ventilation but an exhaust fan is optimum. Keep your solvent container covered unless it's a very small cup.
• Use the least solvent necessary. Overuse of solvent can result in paint with less oil binder per unit volume so that the resultant paint film will be more fragile or "underbound." Using the least solvent also releases less into the atmosphere.
• Dispose of used solvent (brush washing jars, etc) responsibly. Mineral spirits are polluting. 
• In general, citrus-based solvents are only useful for cleaning brushes.
  

On the River

As the routine of drawing and painting has settled down from my jaunt to the Adirondacks I've managed a number of trips to one of my favorite spots along the right bank of the Raccoon River. The spot is in a huge parkland of meadows and woods with the river meandering through. It's full of silty runoff from farms upstream and filled beyond limits with nitrates used on corn and soybeans, so the water is often a murky green/brown that reflects the blue-grey sky. When you look away from the sun the water is darker and smooth.

"Raccoon Bend, July 2021," oil on panel, 9x12

This painting is from a session this week. The sun was low above the eastern horizon, slanting into the distant trees. At this point the river flows in a big bend, coming from the right (west) and curving around to run almost directly toward my painting spot before bending again toward the north. That is, my position faced southwest. I toned a small panel with a very thin wash of burnt sienna, except the sky, which I left white. Next I sketched in the major shapes of the trees and river banks, then established darker and lighter values. The thin underpainting dries very quickly if you thin your paint with turpentine. Once satisfied with general values and shapes I quickly sketched the sky using cerulean blue and white. The darkest darks and darkest greens came next, then middle values of greens in warm mixes with cad lemon and various greens and blues, then cooler greens made by mixing white and cad lemon with darker greens. The distant river bank is actually a dull yellow ochre, but I let the red underpainting show through and underlined it with a very dark red that fades into very dark green at the extreme of the river bend (right). The entire study took about 90 minutes.

The Chinese Pavilion

Working outdoors this week was fun but occasionally frustrating. The first few days were fine and sunny but the last ones cloudy, rainy and a lot less convenient. Monday and Tuesday were good days painting at the Asian Garden near the Botanical Center. The Chinese pavilion is a traditional building with curving rooflines, each successively smaller. It has a set of marble railings and decorations that were damaged some years ago by a deranged man with a hammer, but has been undergoing restoration of the rails and of the gardens. I painted from the southern side of the pagoda, trying to catch the effect of early morning sun on the dark reds.

"The Chinese Pavilion,' oil on panel, 14x11

With the Saturday Sketch Group

Last Saturday, I joined a half dozen fellow painters who sketch together at various locations around the city. We meet in one of the parking lots at the Des Moines Art Center, agree on a location for painting and off we go. This time we went to the Des Moines Botanical Center, which comprises a delightful set of indoor and outdoor gardens ranging from a dome that houses tropicals like palms and orchids, to extensive formal outdoor pavilions and gardens--even a huge lily pond complete with frogs. The setting provides any number of opportunities to sketch plants, trees, and so on. And if you're bored with that, the Des Moines River is a stone's throw away.

This time I set up near the entrance to the dome, where perennials, bulbs, and temperate zone annuals are in profuse flower. Several of the group did the same, so that I was able to include one of us in my offering that day. The sky was dark and cloudy, at least part of the time, threatening rain. At one point several enormous drops rattled down but then nothing followed. We were spared a soaking and I even had enough time to add a few details.

At the Botanical Center, watercolor,

Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer, ca 1880. Source: National Gallery website

A couple of posts back, in writing about outdoor painting, Winslow Homer's work was one of the examples. Winslow Homer (1836-1910) is justly considered one of the great American painters. Born in Boston, he was apprenticed to a lithographer at age 19 but by 1857 Homer struck out on his own as an illustrator. The work appealed to him and he was good at it. During the Civil War he spent time with units of the Army of the Potomac and produced hundreds of drawings and sketches of camp life, individual soldiers, and battles.

"Snap the Whip," 1872

Mr. Homer seems to have been a very self-assured young man who later commented that once he left his apprenticeship he never had another master. And indeed, with the exception of that apprenticeship he seems to have been mostly self-taught, although he did learn the basics of painting from another artist and briefly attended the National Academy of Design. He clearly understood composition and drawing and assimilated the tenets of painting very quickly. After the Civil War he turned to domestic subjects--women, childhood ("Snap the Whip," above, for example), and a sense of home and nostalgia, and by 1875 had completely abandoned illustration for a career as a painter. 

"Breezing Up (A Fair Wind)," 1873-76

In his maturity Mr. Homer first lived in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he had customarily spent summers, becoming enraptured by the sea, those who made their living on it. His subject matter changed too, reflecting that interest. He began exhibiting pictures like "Breezing Up" (above), which was very popular when first shown and later was the subject of a U.S. postage stamp. Later, settling in Prouts Neck, Maine, where he produced a number of important paintings of marine subjects. 

"The Herring Net," 1885

"The Life Line," 1884

Besides oil paintings Mr. Homer also produced brilliantly executed watercolors either as stand alone artworks or as preliminary studies for oils. Although his marine paintings were praised, they seem to have been a hard sell, but his watercolors provided him with both opportunities to work and a reasonable amount of income. He spent winters in warmer places like Key West, the Bahamas, and Cuba, and made many watercolors during those visits, as well. 

"Salt Kettle, Bermuda," watercolor, 1899

 

 

"Key West, Hauling Anchor," watercolor, 1903

"The Homosassa River," watercolor, 1904

Today, at least to my eyes, his watercolors are still fresh and timely. Mr. Homer may have been mostly self-taught, but he remains one of the finest painters ever produced in North America.

Art and Emotion

"If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint," at least according to Edward Hopper, the famous American painter. Sometimes "you" is substituted for the first person singular, but usually it is clear that Mr. Hopper was talking about himself rather than the rest of the world. Regardless, many visual artists, whether painters, sculptors, photographers or others recognize the truth in his words. For most of us, the reason to make art is in the emotion--to evoke a wordless but deeply-felt experience in the viewer. 

Francisco Goya, "The Third of May, 1808," oil, 1814

All of the above is not to say that people these days always produce evocative artwork. There is a legion who make pretty things that people enjoy having in their public and private spaces. The world is a better and more livable place because of that. Nonetheless, visual artists quite commonly have a personal need to connect with the viewer on a gut level, not an intellectual one. Artists like Rembrandt speak to us by showing the world-weariness and seamed faces of the Dutch bourgeoisie, while his contemporary Adriaen Brouwer showed us the good humor and foolishness of the common folk. Two centuries on, Francisco Goya gave us "The Third of May, 1808," (above), sometimes considered as one of the first modern paintings in the sense that it depicts the horrors of war, in this case the Spanish resistance to Napoleon's occupation. Hundreds were summarily executed at several locations in Madrid on the date in the title, in reprisal for rising against the occupation. Goya may or may not have witnessed these events but his revulsion and horror are palpable in the painting. 

Kathe Kollwitz, "Frau mit totem kind (Woman with Dead Child)," 1903

In our own time, painting underwent enormous change, yet the idea of evoking an emotional response has remained. In a century of war and depression, artists like Kathe Kollwitz faced its horrors with stubborn resolve. Others chose abstraction as a way to make the viewer experience emotion--Abstract Expressionism, for example. In large scale works, painters exemplified by Jackson Pollock avoided representative forms, substituting actions like dripping or pouring paint. Other abstract expressionists chose to use fields of color as a visual trigger.

Jackson Pollock, "Number 1, Lavender Mist," 1950

Whatever the image, representative or otherwise, the most serious intent in visual art is emotion.

 

En Plein Air

The phrase en plein air is French meaning outdoors--literally something like "in the open (or full) air"--and is commonly used these days when talking about painting outdoors. Painting outside is much different than painting in a studio or indoors.The term is more than two hundred years old, coined by a French painter Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes who painted from nature and advocated what he called a "landscape portrait," a painting of the landscape done from within it and striving to capture the actual color, value and other attributes of the scene. A few decades into the 19th century painters of the Barbizon School who worked outside Paris near a village by that name. Painters like Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and Jean-Francois Millet painted in the open air and worked hard to produce the landscape portrait. 

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, "Fontainebleau: Oak Trees at Bas-Breau," oil, 1832 or 33

An excellent example is Mr. Corot's "Fontainebleau: Oak Trees at Bas-Breau," (above) executed in about 1832. The trees are rendered in an exceptionally lifelike manner, their masses of foliage given shape and substance. For an outdoor painter, the work is as fresh and exhilarating as it was when new. As we do today, he often used these outdoor (en plein air) works to inform his larger and more ambitious studio works. 

Joaquin Sorolla, "Pescadora Valenciana," oil, 1916

Later artists with access to newer, brighter pigments painted en plein air in various European countries during the latter 19th century. The Macchiaioli in Italy, the Impressionists in France, among others became quite famous for their finished outdoor works, going beyond the sketchwork studies of their predecssors in the Barbizon movement to make ambitious works entirely on location. From their example, painters as diverse as Joaquin Sorolla and Winslow Homer also moved into the great outdoors. 

Winslow Homer, "Artists Sketching in the White Mountains," oil, 1868

 

Today painting en plein air (I still mostly just say "outdoors") continues with same commitment and work ethic. World over, people paint outside. A well-known advocate for outdoor painting has claimed a goal of a million plein air painters. My guess is we're already there, worldwide.