How To Paint Water in Oils – Part 1
February 23, 2010
A View of Grand Canal Venice - Antoine Bouvard (1870-1955) French
There is a lot of conflicting information about Antoine Bouvard out there. Seems his birth, if not his life and work are mixed up with his father’s. Probably the most reliable biographical information I found is that Antoine Bouvard (1870-1955) was the son of Antoine J. Bouvard (1840-1920). The senior Bouvard trained at Beaux-Arts in Paris under Constant DeFeux. He was Architectural Director for the Sienne as well as a flourishing artist.
His father’s pupil, Bouvard accompanied him on trips to Itlay where they both painted the exquisite vistas of the Venetian backwater. Their paintings are remarkably similar.
This is a great place to start a discussion of depicting water in oil paint. The Bouvard illustrates the inherent mirror like quality of water, especially calm water. Obviously the reflective quality of water has a lot to do with the colors and values we will use when painting a given body of water. Calm water reflects objects clearly and distinctly while water in motion, especially extreme motion (stormy waves on the ocean) reflects them less so. The sky over head as well as trees, buildings and boats, etc. influence the colors and values we see in water. But reflections are not the only influence on the colors we see when observing water.
(Please note that I said, “….colors and values we SEE when OBSERVING water. I am not talking about formulas here but learning to understand and judge what we SEE. There is no substitute for the experience of working from nature itself.)
There are two other major factors which have influence on the colors and values which we see in water. There is the color of the water itself. We often think of water as transparent and colorless because that’s the way it looks when it comes out our kitchen faucet. That’s not usually the case in nature. In most river, lakes, streams, bays and oceans the water has some amount of turbidity. Turbidity refers to particulate matter floating in the water column. For instant a lot rivers have silt in them. The Mississippi River is called The Big Muddy. It looks muddy brown because of the silt floating in it’s water column. Here in west central Florida the Gulf of Mexico often seems a milky green gray or greenish tan. That’s because the local sand bottom is fine grained and a relatively light tan, almost white in color. When wind and waves have the water in motion their is a fair amount of this particulate floating in the water column. In places like the Florida Keys where the water seems clear and blue that’s because there is less turbidity. On Florida’s east coast the ocean waters often seem turquoise blue. That’s because of the close proximity of the Gulf Stream. Those blue waters contain very little particulate and allow light to penetrate rather than diffusing it as in turbid waters. What we see here in Florida may differ from where your local circumstances. Observation is the key to understanding.
The other major influence on the colors and values we see in water is underneath the water. The bottom. For instance, one of my favorite places to paint, the mangrove shores of Fort Desoto State Park in Pinellas County, Florida is an estuarine environment consisting of shallow (fisherman call it skinny) water. Beneath this water lies a dark reddish muck built up of years of decaying plant and other organic matter. This dark red muck influences the water’s color, especially in the shallowest parts. Bottom color is especially evident when looking down at the water. In terms of paint that means the influence of bottom colors are most often present in foreground waters.
Back to the Bouvards. Having observed several of their works in person I think they solved the problems of painting relatively still water this way: They washed in a midtone, usually a greenish blue gray,thinly, grading it from darker to lighter, foreground to background. I think they allowed this to dry and then painted their reflections and ripples on top of it using wavy vertical strokes of color, some lighter and some darker than the midtone wash. The effects were dramatic.
I will take up here next time as this promises to be a thread covering several posts. Now get out there and paint something!
Valentine’s Day, William Bouguereau, and Stobart Retrospective
February 13, 2010
L'Amoure et Psyche, Enfants by William Bouguereau
In honor of St. Valentine’ s Day this is William Bouguereau’s depiction of Cupid and Psyche. The mythical story of Cupid and Psyche first appeared in Lucius Apuleius’ The Golden Ass in the 2nd century A.D. Enraged by jealousy, the goddess Venus, orders her son Cupid to make the princess Psyche fall in love with a monster. Instead, Cupid falls in love with Psyche. After several celestial trials, Cupid convinces the gods to turn Psyche into an immortal so they can be married in the heavens. By depicting the lovers as infants Bouguereau seems to highlight the innocence, trust and companionship of true love which transcends physical attraction. Truly the stuff we celebrate on St. Valentine’s Day.
Pope Gelasius I officially declared Feb. 14th as the Feast of St. Valentine. This was in keeping with early Church practice of recasting pagan feast days. Here Pope Gelasius was recasting the Roman fertility festival, Lupercalia. There are three Catholic saints named Valentine, all three were martyrs and all three lived and died prior to the Pope’s declaration. So, it is not clear which saint the feast is actually named after. Scholars believe the saint of the holiday was a priest in Rome who fell into disfavor with Emperor Claudius II in about 270 A.D. Legend has it that Cladius prohibited marriage for young men claiming that bachelors made better soldiers. Fr. Valentine, who continued to perform marriage ceremonies in secret, was arrested and put to death. The feast day remained on the Catholic liturgical calendar until 1969 when the Church began removing feast days of saints whose historical origins are unclear.
I am basically off the hook on St. Valentine’s Day largely because my sweetheart and I celebrate our wedding anniversary on Feb. 7th. That date is significant because the year we were married in Tampa, Fl Feb. 7th was Gasparilla Day. Gasparilla Day is Tampa’s version of marde gras. It celebrates the day when the pirate Jose Gaspar (who may or may not be a myth himself) invaded the city raping and pillaging. An odd thing to celebrate, I know, but they do it with a parade and bead throwing, the whole nine yards. My wife and I rode through parade traffic in a limo from church to reception hall. We stood up through the sunroof of the limo and people tossed beads to us….ironically Penny caught one gaudy set of red beads in the shape of hearts. Great memories!
This year we celebrated our anniversary by spending a couple of days in Palm Beach, Fl. We chose Palm Beach because we wanted to see a retrospective on the work of painter John Stobart at the Society of the Four Arts. That show was fantastic. Stobart is a master of historical maritime paintings. If at all possible you should make the trip, see the exhibit before it leaves on Feb. 28th. If you do go, here is something to look for. Stobart, who at the age of 80 is doing arguably his best work, hides a little wine bottle in each painting. It was fun playing “find the bottle” as I got everyone in the gallery including the security guard involved.
An added benefit to the weekend was that the American International Fine Arts Fair was at the convention center in West Palm. We enjoyed browsing galleries from all over the world. We saw numerous paintings by a favorite , Daniel Ridgway Knight. We learned that Monet had a step daughter, Blanche Monet, who became his daughter-in-law, studied under his tutelage and copied his style. We watched a man debating whether to purchase an original Claude Monet based on if it was the right size. He even had the gallery attendant measure it. We saw a Bougoureau that was so grotesquely ill proportioned that I blurted out, in front of the gallery owner, “No way that’s a real Bouguereau.” He looked at me sideways to say the least. We also developed an appreciation for artists whose work we had not seen before: Antoine Bouvard, Dorthea Sharp, Edward Seago and Sir Alfred Munnings.
Oh, and while we were over there we ate at one of our favorite reastaurants, Cabana Noevo Latino. I highly reccomend this small chain out of NYC for it’s gourmet cuban style food, reasonable prices, eclectically austere atmosphere and wonderful cleanliness.
Composition in a Plein Air Painting
February 3, 2010
The Meagen Garrett by Robert J. Simone 8 x 10, oil-linen
This small plein air painting was posted in a previous blog. I keep it in my studio because I enjoy it’s company. It was painted during the Crescent Beach event in October 2009. There’s a funny story that goes with it…Upon arriving in the area I set course for the city of St. Augustine in search of marine subjects. The boatyards and marinas along Riberia St. are where sailing, yachting and commercial vessels moor. I found an old shrimp boat which presented a nice view of her port bow (that’s the left front). “Late in the day she’ll be mostly back lit”, I thought. “Clouds should build up by then, too.” I asked the dock master about her. “That ol’ thing?”, he said with certainty. “Never goes anywhere. She’s been there for months!” Receiving permission to paint, I checked the time and figured to come back in couple of hours. Return I did. The scene was unfolding! Beautiful clouds floated over the waterway! The sun moved southwest and low in the sky! I was just in time to wave goodbye to my shrimp boat as she motored away. Gone fishin’, as they say. Heart sunken I came about and noticed this beautiful tug who offered her stout stern, flowing gunwale and aft cabin door. How could I resist.
Let’s revisit the thread we started on composition. There was a post on armatures, one on main line and a third on centralizing interest. How does this tugboat painting make use of those concepts?
The abstract design construct or armature is called a “grouping”. It’s simple concept that is often used in still life paintings. It doesn’t require too much imagination to see this as a sort of “boat still life”, does it? Edgar Payne illustrated the concept in his book Composition for Outdoor Painters.
The main line, or path which the eye follows, is fairly simple, too. It’s designed such that the eye enters at the bottom left, follows the arc of the tug’s reflection to the vertical pilings and then aided by the curve of the gunwale and angle of the clouds, it loops from pilings, to birds, to tug, back to pilings and eventually, up and out of the top of the picture.
main line
What about the four means of centralizing interest?
- keep your most interesting shapes near the center of your design.
- keep your greatest value contrast near the center of your design.
- keep your most vital and saturated color harmonies near the center of your design.
- keep your sharpest edges near the center of your design.
All of the most interesting shapes are on the tug. Of course that didn’t require any genius. Those were all handovers. I did, however, simplify all of the other shapes. Most of those were reduced to their basic geometry. A lot of stuff was edited out, too, like bow rails on the sailboat and numerous trees in the distance.
The greatest contrast is with the tug, too. The darkest darks and lightest lights are there. Now, you could say, “Wait a minute the light on that sailboat is pretty light. So is the light on that boat to the left.” That’s true but neither of those boats have any darks like the hull of the tug. So the greatest contrast is with the tug.
The most vital and saturated color harmonies are on and around the tug, too. It’s safe to say that the overall coloration is very neutral. The only colors that could be called saturated, and remotely so, are the green trim on the cabin and stack, the red orange of the life ring, the dark blue of the hull and the blue spot of sky above the tug. The overall color harmony of blues and greens with a touch of red orange (blue’s complement) is present on the tug and repeated in the neutral background material.
Lastly, all of the sharpest edges are with tug. Where hull meets water. Where hull meets the boat on the right. Where the cabin meets the sky.
These design elements along with its dominant size leave no doubt that the tugboat is the center of interest in this painting.
Time for a commercial: There are spaces available in April’s Cortona, Italy workshop. Don’t delay…
