Why the Format Matters

I’m in the middle of writing a watercolour course for Artefacto.school online which I’m really enjoying. I’m also painting some larger studio oil paintings from my trip to the Matterhorn. In all of this painting fever I have been reminded of the often forgotten (or less considered) art of putting the painting into the right Format.

What do I mean by this?

A Format is a fancy word for the shape of your painting. It’s the four sides of the square or rectangle, and they have a massive bearing on how the picture turns out. They are a major part of the composition. Take a look below and see how a change in format can really effect the feel and purpose of a painting.

1. Here is the “normal” landscape format.

2. But if we put our landscape into a square format it becomes more stable, still, quiet, solid…

3. …and if we zoom in on a part of the landscape in the square this feeling of intimacy and peace is increased.

4. Here is another landscape format but elongated to show a panorama. This is useful when you want to broaden the view. It’s possibly much more how we actually see the landscape.

5. You don’t always have to put a landscape into a landscape format. This portrait format works well to lead the viewer into the distance.

6. This elongated portrait format allows the sky to dominate and overpower the painting. Good for stormy scenes!

Almost the first thing we need to do before picking up a brush is to choose the correct format for our scene. (That is apart from making a cup of tea!)

I hope this has been of help to you. Have a great week painting!

#art #learningtopaint #landscape #Composition #watercolortips #paintingtips #paintingformats #formatapainting

Life in neutral

How neutral colours make better paintings

We don’t live in a high colour intensity world… so why paint it that way?

I am sure you are familiar with the good old colour wheel.

This has the primary colours (red, yellow and blue) equally spaced in a circle with secondary colours (green, violet and orange) in between them, making, in effect a rainbow. These colours are high chroma (intensity) and usually very pretty.

However they are not much use in a painting as they don’t really reflect the world around us. Unless we use them in a rainbow or a flower, or in a bright umbrella or some other man-made thing, then they shouldn’t really be found in our paintings.

Most of our world exists in the neutralised colours that we find towards the centre of the colour wheel. Almost every colour in nature is neutralised. This may seem a bit dull, but it’s true. Take a look at these photos below.

Original photo (left) and saturated colour (right)

The original photo which captured the colours pretty well shows them to be desaturated (neutralised or dulled). When I increase the saturation (right) the scene looks artificial and cartoon-ey. But unfortunately this is sometimes how we paint.

Now, I know that there are schools of colourists who make amazing art by pushing the saturation. But I’m suggesting here that to make ‘realistic’ art we need to neutralise most, if not all of the tube colours that we use.

What do you think?

#neutralcolors #art #painting #learningtopaint #Colour #greyedcolors #paintingtips #colourwheel

Painting the Matterhorn

There are hundreds of mountains higher than the Matterhorn; there are hundreds that are harder to climb. But there is none, anywhere in the world, which has so consistently and deeply stirred the imagination of men.

Rising in an immense isolated pyramid on the high frontier between Switzerland and Italy, it possesses not only the dimensions, but the stark simplicity, of greatness, and its sprawling neighbour-peaks, several of which actually exceed its 14,782 foot altitude, seem to shrink into significance beside it. Through all the centuries that men have known and travelled the Alps their eyes have been drawn irresistibly upward to its savage, soaring pinnacle. Other mountains were—well—mountains. This mountain was beauty and magic and terror.

(from “Climbing the Matterhorn – A Collection of Historical Mountaineering Articles on the Brave Attempts to Scale One of the Highest Peaks in the Alps”)

Welcome to my Matterhorn adventure!

After painting the mountains around Mont Blanc, I have now been able to also get to paint the Matterhorn. What an amazing mountain, and how tricky to paint in oils. I never realised how quickly the view could change. As a plein air painter I have got used to the fact that over a period of time the scene in front of you changes. The sun moves, the shadows change, and the white van invariably parks in-between your set up and the thing you are painting!

But this mountain was a level above that. It changed every few minutes! The rocky peak seems to create its own climate, producing clouds that eminate from it on one side, and sometimes appearing and disappearing at an alarming rate in mist and snow. This makes it hard to paint. You have to retain a clear image in your mind of how it was when you started, and avoid chasing the light – or in this case, chasing the mountain. It was almost alive; a living, moving being.

And then there was the freezing temperature that caused the oils to go all gooey. I stopped thinning with water for the underdrawing, (as ever I used Cobra water-mixable oils) but even so the paint formed globules and became stiff to use. But then it was -10c (14F) or so.

When the peak hid behind the misty, snow cloud, I had to content myself painting some of the other rocky massifs (below).

My plan now, before heading off to some other mountain region, is to attempt some large studio paintings from the hundreds of photos I took. I’ll let you know here when they are on the website.

#art #oilpainting #matterhorn #pleinair #landscape #Paintingmountains