Artists who reference only photographs are missing out on a lot. As useful as photos are, they typically capture only a fraction of what the eye can see.
This is especially true with forest interiors. In a typical photo, the camera interprets the green as a single monochromatic color. The tree trunks sink to black.
In this detail of the photo above, the layers of leaves compress into a jumble of shapes. The blue sky bleaches to white and burns out the openings of the leaves.
Such a scene would look different to an observer. With with our stereoscopic vision, rapid depth focusing, and incredible tolerance of brightness differences, our eyes interpret the scene with far more nuance. Let's see what we can learn by looking at painters who specialized in this very challenging subject.
Here's a painting by William Trost Richards called "Woodland Glade" from 1860. At first glance, the staging of the scene, with the plants festooned around the foreground, may seem a little contrived or conventional. It's an idealized view, but it was painted entirely outdoors from observation. He probably carried his easel around to several locations to create the composite scene.
Although he paints every leaf in the foreground, the distant spaces are filled with variety of colors and edges. Some of the leaves are suggested with a stipple technique, made with a splayed brush. Softness is alternated with crispness throughout. The branches do not go to black, but retain some of their local color.
Here's Ivan Shishkin again, the fellow who painted the weed study in the opening post of the series. This time he's interpreting a coni
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Just gorgeous. I soooo appreciate anyone who can paint forests. Even though they are my favorite subject, I've always been rather colorblind for greens and it's exasperating when I want to paint such scenes.
It's quite amazing how real these paintings feel. The photos are so bland by comparison. Makes me want to go for a walk in the woods.
I Really love your series of discussion of nature painting it's so interesting.. also all the artists reference that you gave us as a teacher.
I've partecipated at your's Lucca Comic's workshop and i've early also follow your's always interesting blog ;).
Thanks James ;)
Its funny. When you think forest, you think green. But from what I've seen its usually yellow, sometimes blue or blue/green. When there is green its usually very desaturated and fairly dark. Especially in old paintings. I don't know if its a rare pigment in paint or what...
You can see it in Bouguereau's "Nymphs and Sartyr". All that luscious greenery, its all a dark yellow. At least it is for me when I put it at full saturation and flat value. Once I realized the amount of hue shift in greenery my foliage started to look less alien :) Still a long ways to go though. This series is invaluable.
really great , tks for sharing, very inspiring...
Great paintings!
I would like to recommend having a look at
Ludwig Richter. Another one who quite successfully tackled the difficult subject of painting a forest.
And if you happen to pass by at the Zurich Kunsthaus in Switzerland, have a look at Robert Zuend there. A stunning oak-forest on the wall, 3 x 4 meters in size!
I need to get into the woods for a weekend and bring some paint. Thank you for the inspiration.
Theres a typo in the third paragraph, second sentence:
"With with our stereoscopic vision, rapid depth... "
Thanks for the wonderful post!
This is the best series yet!
Painting forests in watercolor is a real challenge. James Thomas Watts was the master of it, and I would love to know how he did it. His work is astounding. But so much of that glorious 19th Century watercolor tradition has been lost, giving way to the "fast and loose" crowd of the 20th Century. Perhaps in the UK there are still pockets of resistance!
What a great lesson to see! I paint in watercolor but this is very helpful.
This series of posts are so good I'll bet many artists, maybe even Andy Wyeth, wouldn't feel the need to go to Maine to escape 'The Green Problem'.
Jim, looking forward to the next posts. Just a question though:
Isn't it a bit unfair on the camera? :)I mean, when we say that the eye is so much more powerful?
I mean, each fixation of the eye is akin to a photograph, really...with a very small angle and with many of the problems of photography...the thing is that we take hundreds of such "photographs" when we look at a scene, and then "glue" them all in our brains.
If you allow the camera to take hundreds of photographs, each with its own settings of aperture, exposure, and so on, you find the camera is pretty flexible too.(you can see HDR as a first approach to that, but really, the fair comparison is just take lots of photos)
(although I agree the eye is a pretty powerful photon detector, and we don't suffer so much at high iso ;))
At the end of the post you mention painting in studio from a lot of studies...again, the gluing of many experiences, each study being in turn the gluing of many others.
(I am looking out my window now and trying to force myself to make a single fixation of a leaf on the tree outside...it really isn't very much better than taking a good photograph. :)-it's when I let my eye dart around -and my mind with it - that the magic happens)
The word art can describe several things: a study of creative skill, a process of using the creative skill, discount oil paintings, or the audience's experience with the creative skill. The creative arts (art as discipline) are a collection of disciplines that produce artworks (art as objects) that are compelled by a personal drive (art as activity) and convey a message, mood, or symbolism for the viewer to interpret (art as experience). Art is something that stimulates cheap vibram 5 finger shoes, emotions, beliefs, or ideas through the senses. Artworks can be explicitly made for this purpose or interpreted on the basis of images or objects. Although the application of scientific knowledge to derive a new scientific theory involves skill and results in the "creation" of something new, this represents science only and is not categorized as art.