Six Tips on Landscape (and other kinds of) Painting

Rockwell Kent, Moonlight in the Adirondacks. 

1. The late Canadian landscapist Robert Genn suggested that, “rather than go with your first choice in a composition, go with your second choice.” Why? I think because we’re scared little puppies and we want to be told we’re good artists, so we stand there summoning up every bit of what we know works before we even begin. But the first composition that “comes to you” is probably one you’ve received from paintings you’ve studied and liked. "It’s likely to be in your comfort zone, but it is your second choice that will stretch your capabilities and expose new creativity. How to do this?" Genn suggests the following: “slowly rotate yourself in a full circle, taking every possibility into consideration. Sort out and at least anticipate the potentials of every angle before you start.”

Sometimes it'll just click. Something jumps out at you and suddenly you can imagine the the general outline of the finished piece, even though you have no idea how to even start - and that's your painting. 

The Flying Dutchman, by Albert P. Ryder

2. Feel, don’t think, your brushstrokes. Try to occupy your mind by imaginatively entering into your subject. Feel your subject in your imagination and let your hand follow. Painting is about expressing a feeling. Allow your feelings, not just your eye or your head, to move your hand. Paint from your arm, not your wrist. There will be time for fussing - er, I mean "polish" - later.

Stuart Shils, Urban Landscape, An Unexpected Place, 2012
available at Somerville Manning Gallery

3. Mix colors promiscuously, apply them relationally. Pare down your palette to the primaries and a few earths, forget "color theory" and just play. Be an alchemist - mix nameless colors (as Eric Aho is fond of saying). Make a color and put it on the canvas. Make another one and place it next to the first one. NO FEAR. It isn't possible to mix "mud." Don't believe me? Look at the foreground color in the square that's front and center in the painting by Stuart Shils above. Well, yeah, that's "mud color," but it only makes the painting better when you notice it: look how well it relates to the surrounding colors, especially the warm pale yellow immediately above and the deep, electric violet to the bottom right. Paint that is the color of mud is beautiful and absolutely right when placed on a canvas relationally and with intention. "Mud" (the bad kind) is something that happens not on the palette but on the canvas when you smear colors together, usually because you're using numerous brushstrokes in a desperate effort to "fix" something (I think in most such cases the cause of the trouble isn't with the color you've put on but with its value. We end up trying to blend it into submission (resulting in muddy colors) - much better is to take off the stroke, remix the color to the proper value, and put it back fresh). Ideally: "Put it on and leave it on." 

Eric Aho, March

4. Design, design, design. Pay more attention to what’s happening on the canvas than to what’s “out there.” Consider everything - color, shape, value, stroke - in relation NOT to exactly what's "there"  in the world but to everything else on the canvas. Reject received compositions. Be a brilliant composer. Improvise: Play jazz. Ultimately, it’s not accuracy or faithfulness to the visible (to a particular marsh, mountain foliage color, or ocean wave), but what ends up on the canvas that makes the painting live or die. 

Jake Berthot

5. Maintain a dialogue with the painting. To open up this dialogue you have stop frequently, after every few strokes. Consider what’s just happened and instead of worrying about how to fix it, ask what it suggests about what might happen next. React imaginatively - yes, to your subject - but also to each new relationship of color and brushwork that you create. Everything you do changes the equation; the sooner you notice how it’s adding up, the better you’ll feel at the end. Oil paintings are infinitely changeable, and creativity ultimately mysterious - but if you can stop insisting that it it's your way or the highway, your painting may just start leading you where you really want to go (whether you know it or not).

Samsara (oil, 12x12") Zhaoming Wu, 2015
available at Abend Gallery

6. Sit at the feet of masters. Not literally; I mean find the paintings that humble and excite you, that make your head explode, that make you say "Yes - THAT'S painting." They don't have to be by dead people (though some of them probably should be). Just let yourself be blown away by what an artist you've encountered has achieved. This isn't the time to ask "how?" Just feel it. Take it in. Look long. "Listen" to the painting, in part and in whole. See what someone has done, take a deep breath, and remember how it makes you feel. Implicitly understand the "why" - the only answer to which you need to know is: "Because Damn - that's PAINTING."

JMW Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed, the Great Western Railway, 1844