Fast and loose

The term 'fast and loose' usually conjures up visions of sloppiness. Not so in impressionist painting where the emphasis on speed was often driven by the artist's desire to capture the moment. The rapid pace and minimal reworking of the paint gave rise to a style that suggests energy and movement that is hard to dissociate from the impressionist style.

Summer Scene was done in just about half an hour against a roughly sketched in composition. The only brushstrokes used in this piece are ones that either put the paint down on the paper or those that instantly led to an impression of movement. I made no attempt to smooth the paint or even out the color. Personally I think the sky is the most interesting aspect of this picture!

Summer Scene, Acrylic on 140lb watercolor paper, 9"X12", $70 (unframed)

Time-of-day effects in a landscape

That landscapes are subject to daily and seasonal changes provides opportunity to explore the same scene many times over. In the case of the impressionists, such exploration often spanned many years of their lives. The simplest approach I believe is to create a middle of the day study (such as Distant Coastline), then switch colors and adjust values for other times of day in subsequent pieces.

Sunset is an attempt to use the same composition as in Distant Coastline but with colors that might be more likely as the color hue and temperature changes with the waning of the day. The basic method used in Sunset is as I have previously described -- layers of gesso worked to a buttery cover for the canvas and then other colors worked into it with a knife.

Pictures like Sunset do not effectively separate the background, middle ground and foreground - except with the use of color. This can make the perspective appear a bit flat. This is less of a problem for an impressionistic work like this one but would be problematic for a more realistic style.

Sunset, Acrylic on canvas board, 8"X10" $90 (unframed)

Quick studies aren't so quick!

Before taking up painting, I had the naive impression that doing a "quick study" meant less effort. As I have tried different techniques to get to a finished picture, it has become evident that a quick study sometimes is anything but. Getting the composition and tonal values right can often be almost as much of a challenge as finishing the final picture or a bigger version of the study. In industrial parlance, a study would be the prototype from which the final (or 'production') version is derived.

The two studies here use the same compositional elements. The paint is applied thinly with a small brush. This allows a choice of finishing the painting either with thin or impasto application of paint. In the meantime, if I don't quite like the study it is but a simple matter to re-coat the canvas with gesso and start all over again.

Countryside 1 and 2, Acrylic on canvas board, 5"X7", Not for sale