Cityscapes - and Terry Miura's Challenge

Terry Miura - Cityscapes

If you're interested in painting cityscapes, I suggest you check out Terry Miura's blog Studio Notes as he's running a challenge.  It's akin to the challenges which Karin Jurick used to run - the provision of a reference photograph and the challenge to produce a painting from it - as the artist sees it.  The difference is that participant's posts are being reproduced - with commentary from the artist - on Terry's own blog.

Cityscapes are hard to paint not only because everything has to be drawn well, but also because there's just an overwhelming amount of information that needs to be processed. Simplification is key, but arbitrary editing of detail can easily end up with a weak painting that lack a sense of intent.

Here are the relevant posts:

• Simplify  - Terry suggests some rules he uses to simplify his cityscapes

One way to approach it is to have rules for editing –and you know by now I like rules. This way, you can do it systematically (more or less) and it helps me to get the painting going in the right direction. Here are some that I use often;

• Decide on a dominant color theme (in this case, blue green) and mix every color as a variation of it. (you want violet? start with blue green and bend it towards violet. Think of it as a violet-er version of the original blue green)

• Paint every element (car, tree, asphalt, etc.) in just two values. Later on you can add a third value to the more important elements.

• Link all similar valued adjacent shapes.

• Have a large passive area. (Forces me to have an area with NO detail, juxtaposed against which the more active areas need less "stuff" in order to look detailed)

• Treat super sharp edges as exclamation points. Don't shout everywhere.

• Simplify! - A Cityscape Challenge - in which Terry sets the basic guidelines for the challenge and how it works
• The Contributions:
• First Contributions Are In! 
• Cityscape Challenge - The Next Batch!
• Simplify! - Some More!

Here's a link to a slideshow of Terry's own cityscapes

Sketching Cezanne's landscapes

On Friday I met up with the group I go sketching London with at St Martins in the Fields. As it was very cold I decided that I needed to do a spot of landscape sketching - in the warmth and comfort of the National Gallery!

Part of my Art of the Landscape Project is about learning more about how past masters constructed their landscape paintings. I've found that a good way of doing that is to actually sketch them - because in looking at them intently to sketch you learn about the composition, their predisposition to work with mass or line and how they worked with colour - and anything else which mattered to each individual as an artist.

It's not about reproducing their work exactly so much as getting a better sense and understanding of it.

On Friday I sketched two works by Cezanne and started on Het Steen by Rubens - but the latter is a BIG painting and I need to go back to that one.

After Cezanne - Avenue at Chantilly
(L’Allee a Chantilly), 1888
National Gallery, London
8" x 6", coloured pencils in Winsor & Newton Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

One of the things I've learned about Cezanne in constructing this post is that once he found a motif he liked he had no hesitation about painting it repeatedly. I knew about Mont St Victoire but wasn't aware that the Alley at Chantilly was another favoured motif. Here's another couple of paintings of the same subject - each treated slightly differently

• The Alley at Chantilly (1888) (private collection)
• The Alley at Chantilly (1888) Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, United States of America

It's interesting that we can think sometimes that somehow if we've painted a subject once we've said all we have to say about it and we now ought to move on to aother subject. However, I'm more and more convinced that artists that keep painting the same subject learn more and more about their subject, themselves and their art.

I sat on the bench in the middle of the room to sketch this and didn't take a close look at how he had put down the paint until I'd finished. One of the things I've found is that I very much identify with the way Cezanne lays paint down in hatching strokes of the brush - while I hatch with the pencil.

I found an interesting quotation from Lawrence Gowing on the Tate website

Cézanne’s method, as he once said, was ‘hatred of the imaginative’, and we can feel that the hatred extended to all that was implied in the derived, fictitious contour of the early works.

His task was to hold in equilibrium the two conceptions which were vital to him, the conception of reality and of the picture.

This second sketch is of a painting which isn't in the National Gallery's listings which I assume means it comes from whoever has currently got Les Grands Baigneuses as that's out on loan.

? (not sure and forgot to note it down!)
National Gallery, London
8" x 6", coloured pencils in Winsor & Newton Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I've also discovered that there is a book which reviews how he constructed his paintings - Cézannes Composition: Analysis of His Form with Diagrams and Photographs of His Motifs - which I might try and get hold of.

More about Cezanne

• Paul Cézanne - Resources for Art Lovers is a website I've developed (and continue to develop) a website about Cézanne
• There's a very good overview (with images) of oil and watercolour paintings by Cezanne - in every genre - on The Atheneaum website and another on the Artilim website List of Paul Cézanne Paintings
• This is a link to a pdf file about the Cezanne in Provence exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington - which gives a good overview of his Provencal landscapes
  

Thoughts on how to design a formal 'Japanese' landscape drawing

Here are some of the lessons I learned from my attempt to translate my learning about Japanese landscape art into first creating a sketch and then creating a formal drawing.  The following is an extract from Japanese Art - drawing the Chokushi Mon in Kew Gardens #1.  It's my thoughts on how to create a formal Japanese landscape drawing from my subject matter - the Chokusi Mon Temple in Kew Gardens.

In this extract I've highlighted key design words

Here are some of the things which I've extracted from my mental 'to do' list as I sat down to write this post.

• I think the portrait format might offer more scope for a good design and I need to try this out
• I want to try and work with conventional Japanese paper formats and will be designing within their dimensions - probably around 15" x 10".
• I'm wondering whether I can get a scroll format out of this (I need to find out what the word is for that!)

• images are often asymmetrical eg large empty spaces balance small areas of concentrated details
• truncated objects are often more important than those which are wholly visible (the eye wants to work out what is 'hidden' from view

Principles of design and composition and ukiyo-e

• I need to work out where the empty space is going to be in the design - and how this might work with an asymmetrical angle to balancing different aspects of the design. I've noticed that the more emphatic the empty space is, the more you focus on the subject of the piece. I think the way forward is to adopt the portrait format and remove the green blur behind the conifer trunk (as I've done in the sketch).
• Some of the shapes and forms need to be simplified and exaggerated. I need to make sure that the drawing works in monochrome before adding colour
• I also need to focus more on the graphical line elements and symbolic patterns within the design in order to compensate for the lack of shading in a more formal 'Japanese' drawing.
• I started to do this through emphasising the markings on the bark of the conifer. Lots of scope to do more here.
• I still need to work out ways of drawing the conifer needles and the cherry blossom so that they read well and add visual interest. I'm wondering with both whether there is scope to draw with pen and ink to get simple lines and then overlay with colour and then draw into the colour with an eraser to get yet more lines.........we shall see!
• A simple, clear colour palette needs to be worked out. I also need to think about unity and the scope for using analogous colours! I'm wondering how many colours I can use - and how I can get those colours to be ones I like working with. Simple, bold and harmonious are the words I need to keep at the front of my brain!
• I'm wondering whether an initial drawing in pen and ink with coloured pencils to provide flat colour might be a possible way forward. It fits well with what I like doing when sketching.

I need to emphasise that I'm not trying to copy in a literal sense what is found in a Japanese woodblock print so much as trying to find a way in which the key elements and principles of their way of designing might work with my natural style.

Below are links to my resource sites about Japanese Art and Artists(which I created following my blog project about Japanese Art) if you're interested in finding out more

• Japanese Art and Artists - Resources for Art Lovers
• Hokusai
• Hiroshige