sandr037

While at Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, I took a snapshot of one of the rock formations. The resulting silhouette was almost as informative as a sunlight photograph and was quite dramatic. An object with a distinctive shape can gain strength when rendered with a silhouette-like technique. Self Portrait, by Jacek Malczewski, is an unusual and daring use of a near silhouette. The likeness is more difficult to read, but the effect is quite striking. Riders on the Beach, by Max Liebermann, features a very familiar form which doesn’t need much elaboration to be effective or r ecognizable. Flowers in a glass vase, on the other hand, create a more complex silhouette. Izsak Perlmutter took advantage of that complexity, and walked a fine line between reality (in the red flowers) and the competing complexity of the stems, glass and lace curtains. Cyclamen is a masterwork in the still life tradition. The Charles Bridge, in Prague, has a distinctive look and is adjacent to several bui...

Although hard-and-fast rules are not the sure path to good composition, there are basic rules that should be remembered. The following are rules that will keep an illustration from becoming static and flat. Practice them until they become second nature­---then proceed to break them. One-point perspectives should never be allowed to become too symmetrical. Kick the vanishing point to one side so that you see more of one side wall and the horizontal lines are not parallel. Do the same thing with two-point perspectives, making them somewhat asymmetrical. Avoid one-point perspectives when making exterior renderings. Rotate a rectilinear building so that it is not being seen on a 45-degree angle. Adjust the position of a building so that it neither is too centered in general nor has a corner (or distinctive feature) that is too centered. Don’t crowd the subject building in a too-small frame or let it float untethered in a large frame. Keep an eye out for perspective distortion at the edges...

Albert Bierstadt (1830 – 1902) was an artist associated with the Hudson Valley School. He was a talented student of landscape painting who studied light and nature with a clear albeit romantic eye. He can be melodramatic (I myself have been accused of same), but there is much to admire about and learn from him. Bierstadt, like Constable, Leonardo da Vinci and others, studied the sky and clouds. His purest sky paintings involve views over a calm sea, as in his Sea and Sky, above. … or this Beach Scene . Add a ship to such an atmospheric study, and you have scale and a story that will sell… yes, he had to make a living… duh. I find this painting, Wreck of the Ancon , moving on many levels. Landscape, combines a sky study with mysterious mountains and a foreground frame to create the quintessential Bierstadt painting. Bierstadt helpfully reminds me that the sky is simply a rendering of light, which can take almost any color. Sunrise over Forest and Grove spreads the warm light over th...

One of the best ways to ensure that your final rendering will have unity and impact is to work it out in a small sketch. If a thumbnail sketch is interesting, than the final rendering should have a strong presence. The best artists have been sketching ideas throughout their careers; working out ideas on a small scale and in a cheap and quick manner. Da Vinci’s sketch of St. Anne is small and rough, but starts to suggest the pyramidal composition of the final masterpiece.  Rubin’s sketch for The Birth of Henri IV of France is more detailed, but conveys the serpentine composition clearly. This sketch for Wolves Attack by Jozef Chelmonski is a wonderful piece of art in itself, but is also a roadmap for the execution of a large painting.  J. W. Waterhouse gets an amazing amount of feeling in this sketch of a Priestess on a Tripod . His final paintings were often reworked several times on the canvas, so this simple sketch was just the first impression. Old Man on his Deathbed...