Elements of Painting

I think man’s impulse to capture and reproduce what he sees is as old as mankind itself. I was recently looking at some of the cave paintings in France that date 15,000 years and older. There is something breathtaking and magical about them for everyone. Though the purpose of the paintings is still being debated, I as an artist was particularly struck by the elegance and power of the drawings themselves. These weren’t crude likenesses or one-off renderings. They were created by someone selected for their skills; someone that spent significant time developing a visual language that was also beautiful. Painting as we know it is really about 500 years old and is a skill that technology really hasn’t made much easier. If we were somehow transported to Leonardo’s studio we would recognize the familiar brushes, paint, canvas, paper and red chalk that artist use today. It is a skill of heart, head and hand. Painting well is one of the most difficult things you’ll attempt. Indeed, if it were easy everyone could do it. What’s so frustrating sometimes is how really little you need to understand to do it. John Carlson’s book Guide to Landscape Painting is less than an inch thick (and large print too) yet contains most of what we need to know to become competent. The process of painting is like a lot of manual skills, it requires practice. If we were to open the symbolic artist toolbox and look in it would only contain four elements: Drawing, values, color and edges. These elements are discussed here in a very cursory manner. The intent is to make you familiar with the terminology and basic concepts. You will be a student of each of them for the rest of your life.

Composition (or drawing or shapes)

I’m combining these under composition because they all involve seeing things as shapes and successfully organizing them into a visually interesting painting. Drawing is the foundation of painting. Without a good foundation the most brilliant brushwork or wonderful color will not be enough. Even a broad discussion of drawing is beyond the scope of this class. Suffice to say you need to practice drawing every day. This means a sketchbook and pencil. Even twenty minutes a day of thoughtful drawing from life will yield tremendous dividends in the ability to accurately draw what you see. I emphasize from life because it does you no good to make things up. What you are practicing is the ability to look at something, abstract it into shapes and render things as you see them. These are some basic tips that have helped people greatly improve their drawing ability:

• When trying to draw a complex subject try first to break it into simple ball, cone, or sphere shapes. Go from simple to complex.
• Drawing is measuring! Compare new shapes with known shapes. Compare angles of shapes you’re seeing to lines you are making.
• Constantly compare one shape against another. Measure, measure, measure.

Composition is shapes that are organized with some intent. The success of a painting depends in large part on the arrangement and value relationships of the large masses. There are several decent books on composition. Among them is Edgar Payne’s Composition of Outdoor Painting. Though a little difficult to read, it is a highly regarded by many fine artists.

Values
Values are the relative lightness or darkness of a tone sometimes referred to as a “shade”. I’ve read that we can discern about eighty distinct values but in pigment, we can practically see about eight plus white and black. Seeing them in black and white is pretty easy but for some reason seeing accurate values in color is very difficult. So much so I’ve been told that about 90% of problems encountered in painting are value related. This might be a good time to introduce Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting, in which respected author John F. Carlson presents his Theory of Angles. He writes: “The prime cause of the large light and dark relations in a landscape is the angle which the masses present to the sky.”
Carlson explains that the value of the land, mountains and trees is determined by their angle in relation to the light from the sky. He theorizes that there are four basic landscape values:

• The sky, which contains the source of the light, thus the lightest plane
• The medium-light of the flat plane of the land.
• The medium-dark of the angled plane of the mountains.
• The dark of the upright plane of the trees.

Below is a diagram:

This is a simple way to view value of large masses in a landscape that is lit from above. Be aware that there are exceptions i.e. man-made objects like white buildings.

• Try to look at value first then the local color.
• Learn to squint. Gradually (and this takes practice) squint until detail is lost and what you see is the “mass value” of objects.

Color

Color is like space, it’s the final frontier. You’ll spend a lifetime exploring color. We tend to think that color is the most important thing in painting when really drawing and values are much more important. You will develop a color sense of your own as you study. I’ve been working with a three color palette for several years now with good result. I’ve also used a more expanded palette with good result. With fewer colors you will get to color harmony sooner and gain a lot of experience in mixing color but it’s initially frustrating because you’ll start out mixing a lot of grayed dull color. The three color method is good for study because:

• Students tend not to mix enough color to cover and end up re-mixing (and re-mixing) to try to match the initial tone. With three colors you only have three choices so getting back to mixtures is a little simpler.
• Since most mixtures has a little of each color you end up with a natural harmony.
• When working with three primaries only you really learn how to mix color.

Edges

Edges are primarily used to create “space” and to direct interest in a painting. Generally speaking:

• The edges of similar values are soft.
• Where there is a juxtaposition of widely different then you have a sharp edge.
• Your eye is directed to and held by sharp edges (and high contrasted values.) It’s very effective to have your sharpest edge near the center of interest and likewise never have a sharp edge away from the center of interest.
• There are few sharp edges in nature so use them carefully.