Catacomb Saints

A relic from the Holy Catacombs of Pancratius.

Historical Museum St. Gallen in Wil, Switzerland

Catacomb saints were the bodies of early Christians exhumed from the catacombs of Rome and sent to Catholic churches in Germany and other northern European countries. The skeletons were often lavishly decorated with gold costumes to simulate early martyrs. These figures were created to replace statues and other decorations that had been destroyed during the Beeldenstorm of the 16th and 17th century.

When to use an underpainting

Paul Lekang  asked on YouTube: "You often, but not always, start by giving the painting an "undercoating." How do you decide IF you should do it ... and how do you decide the color? Does the color shine through in the end - even though you've painted over it (several times?)"

Solar flare underpainting in casein

Paul, you're right, I don't use those undercoatings all the time. I prime a few pages in advance without knowing what painting I may do over them. I use a thin layer of casein or Acryla Gouache, both of which dry with a matte surface that won't reactivate. I use gouache or casein over them, and those opaque colors to shift the color into other realms. 

The priming layer influences all the choices I subsequently make, and that's why I like it. The color of an underpainting inevitably does shine through. Sometimes the underpainting color is similar to the colors I end up using for the finish. 

Other times I use a contrasting set of colors for the final paint. For example, it's exciting when a blue underpainting peeks through an orange painting, or when you glimpse a red underpainting beneath green foliage. 

Interview with Steve and Marty

Here's an interview with a the YouTubers Mary and Steve (Mind of Watercolor). (Link to YouTube) 

Mel Brooks Meets Abstract Art

in this 1963 short, comedian Mel Brooks is the voice of a skeptical character looking at abstract moving shapes in a crowded theater. (Link to YouTube)

Botanical Garden Interview

The NYBG posted an interview about painting outside in the gardens. Here are some of the questions and answers:

NYBG En Plein Air (Photo by Ben Hider)

Helena La-Porte Burns asks: "What makes plein-air painting so special?"

JG: I like interpreting the world around me with no filter. It’s just me and my little book and my handful of pigments trying to make intelligible the whirling chaos of reality. As artists it’s hard not to fall back on conventional approaches, but sketching from life helps me discard my expectations about what an “artistic” subject ought to look like.

I try to find something beautiful in a subject that most of us overlook, such as a supermarket doorway or a jet airplane parked at the airport. This inclination sometimes makes me feel ill at ease in places with such obvious beauty and lushness as a garden, because the tradition is so strong, and the standards have been set so high by garden painters such as George Elgood or Mildred Butler.

Cleome, casein on canvas mounted to panel, 11 x 14

Do you have a favorite flower to paint, and why?

JG: One year in the Garden I fell in love with a small group of cleomes, or spider flowers. They were tucked away in the Family Garden. I used an old-fashioned paint called casein, which was popular before acrylic was developed. I was fascinated by the shape contrast between the oval petals and the long, filament-like stamens. I love the way the leaves get smaller and yellower as you go up the stem. You don’t see paintings of cleomes as often as other flowers, but to me they just call out to be painted, because they make such a beautiful silhouette, and they seem so delicate.

HLB: Which NYBG collection is your favorite to capture?

JG: I know roses are the popular favorite, and they’re my favorite, too. There’s so much richness of form and color from an artist’s perspective. And of course on a warm summer day the scent is heavenly, the people are friendly, and there’s a painting just begging to be captured anywhere you look. In the included video I’m painting the variety called “Carefree Beauty.” I’m close enough to see the structure of individual flowers and leaves, but far enough away to allow the individual flowers to group into masses.

What amazes me with roses on a warm day is how much the blossoms change from the morning to the late afternoon. If your painting shows the particular shape of specific blossoms, they will change drastically by the time the session is over, and if you return the next day hoping to find the same arrangement, it won’t be there. Seeing plants in the dimension of slow time is a huge revelation.

HLB: What does the NYBG Plein-Air Invitational mean to you?

JG: When I think of each of the years we’ve done it, I recall the feeling of camaraderie and common purpose shared by a group of friends, each of us trying to carve a slice of the magic that is NYBG. After weeks of anticipation we head out to our chosen spot on a golf cart. As we paint, it’s a chance to meet members of NYBG’s loyal public, many of whom have artistic inclinations of their own. At the end of a busy day of painting, we gather to munch on treats, sip wine, share our tales of triumph and disaster, and check out what each of us created.

HLB: Which seasonal collection do you look forward to painting in the future?

JG: I want to get back to painting the lilacs again. The aroma is heavenly, the variety of colors and types are incredible, and I appreciate being allowed to set up our easels on the grass around them. While studying the lilac flowers, it’s fun to watch the bees busy at their work. I love the way the flowers start out as bulbous buds, each with a tiny “X” at the tip, and the way they open into four-petaled flowers, starting at the base of the spike.

 

(Link to video) HLB: What is the most challenging aspect of the art?
JG: I’m always fascinated and challenged by the way petals of hollyhock, roses, and peonies can focus and intensify color in the center of the blossom. Nobody described the artistic effect better than Gertrude Jekyll:

“Some of the colour is transmitted through the half-transparency of the petal’s structure, some is reflected from the neighbouring folds; the light striking back and forth with infinitely beautiful trick and playful variation, so that some inner regions of the heart of a rosy flower, obeying the mysterious agencies of sunlight, texture and local colour, may tell upon the eye as pure scarlet; while the wide outer petal, in itself generally rather lighter in colour, with its slightly waved surface and gently frilled edge, plays the game of give and take with light and tint in quite other, but always delightful, ways.”

HLB: As a longtime plein-air artist, have you noticed any significant changes in the environment that affect your work? Do you have any examples?

JG: I live in the mid-Hudson Valley, and I’ve noticed the effects of invasive plants such as Japanese stiltgrass in the understory, and I’ve certainly noticed the effects of the big die-off of pine forests when painting mountain landscapes in Colorado. During this recent lockdown period, I’ve noticed some encouraging signs of nature bouncing back, with far more native wildflowers, such as trillium, in our local forest. I don’t know why they haven’t been browsed by the deer, but I appreciate seeing them again.

HLB: What tips do you have for budding plein-air artists?

JG: I would suggest that young artists who want to paint from life should always keep a sketchbook for pencil sketches and quick color studies. Building up a practice of regular sketching excursions with friends is a great way to get started. There are Urban Sketchers groups and plein-air meetups in almost every city. Every once in a while I think it’s important to slow down and spend more than one session on a work of plein-air, perhaps at least three or four hours on one study. And you don’t have to do it in a busy, public location if you’re nervous about people watching or judging you.

Look for non-touristy places where artists rarely go, and where no one would expect to find someone painting. You’ll have it all to yourself and you’ll really be able to concentrate.

HLB: Is there anything else you would like to share with us and the readers at this time?

JG: I’m grateful to the NYBG for its sponsorship, both of botanical illustration and plein-air art. While both may result in attractive images of flowers, the botanical artist is more concerned with portraying individual flowers with a scientist’s perspective, removing a plant from its context to understand form and function while still seeing the beauty in it. The plein-air artist pays attention to the whole living ensemble as influenced by light, air, atmosphere, spatial depth, and that intangible element of life and change. A goal of mine is to combine the two perspectives, to see both the forest and the trees.
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Watch my video "Flower Painting in the Wild,"available as a DVD from Amazon and as an HD download from Gumroad and Sellfy.   

Also sample my Gumroad tutorial: "Casein Painting in the Wild." 

Musicians in the garden were members of the Dolce Ensemble.                                                             

More from NYBG about plant talk and backyard botany

Teaching Art, Pre- and Post-Pandemic

Art teachers: What were your biggest challenges pre-pandemic? What new issues have you faced in recent months? (Sketch from a symposium of art profs in Pennsylvania)

Limited Palettes and Constrained Writing

With no yellow and no green, this limited palette knocked me out of my color mixing habits and forced me to improvise in an alternate universe that felt alien, but still harmonious. Colors: ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, pyrrole red, and titanium white.

Writers have played with self-limiting challenges, such as E.V. Wright, who wrote the 1939 novel called "Gadsby" as a lipogram, without using the letter "e." Here's an excerpt: "Now, any author, from history's dawn, always had that most important aid to writing:—an ability to call upon any word in his dictionary in building up his story. That is, our strict laws as to word construction did not block his path. But in my story that mighty obstruction will constantly stand in my path; for many an important, common word I cannot adopt, owing to its orthography."

There are other examples of constrained writing, such as sonnets, limericks, and haiku, all of which thrive within strict limitations of form and meter, or palindromes, where the sentence reads the same forward, such as "Never odd or even."

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Limited palettes are discussed in my book Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter.

Unfinished Portrait of Roosevelt

Elizabeth Shoumatoff started working on her watercolor portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt at about noon on April 12, 1945. 

During lunch, the President complained that he had "a terrific pain in the back of my head" and he slumped forward unconscious. FDR died later that day of a stroke. The painting was never finished.

Hank Green includes this story in a thoughtful video about what unfinished paintings can show us about their creators and subjects.

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More about Shoumatoff's unfinished portrait on Wikipedia

Hopper's Light: Evocative or Illogical?

Did you notice that something is missing in this picture? It's the cast shadow from the horizontal sash of the window. Also, the shaft of light is far wider than the window, and the rays of light aren't parallel.

Sun in an Empty Room, by Edward Hopper

Hopper also ignores the effect of the secondary source of soft blue skylight that would influence the base of the wall adjacent to the shadow, and he leaves off the baseboard moulding at the edge of the shadow.

John Walsh of Yale University gave a lecture on YouTube, which discusses Hopper's manipulations of light and geometry. The bottom image shows a digital reconstruction Wash commissioned to show the window shape necessary to achieve the light patch. To skip ahead, visit the video at about 12:00 and 47 minutes.

Are these faults or are they fair choices to make a more striking picture? I can see why Hopper didn't want to make the sun patch smaller or to cut it up with cast shadows. The painting is about emptiness and it's a big statement of light and shadow. There's not much else to look at here. 

Rooms by the Sea by Edward Hopper, collection Yale Art Gallery

There are a lot of things wrong here, too. He shows a slanting shape of light cut off on the left, as if it's limited by the top of the doorway. That's OK. But the bar of light across the floor has a similar angle. Something feels wrong about that.

Perhaps he remembered seeing the light effect and constructed it in a way that felt right to him geometrically. But it's completely impossible.

I set up a quick cardboard maquette to show the problem. That shadow across the floor shouldn't have an angle to it. It must be a straight line from the edge of the door to the base of the wall.

Do these criticisms seem trivial or pedantic? I hesitate to share them because I like Hopper's work.

But art should stand up to hard looking. Once I start noticing how illogical the light is (not to mention the perspective and the carpentry details), it's harder to appreciate the sentiment of the picture. It's like trying to walk with a pebble in your shoe. 

An artist has freedom to do anything he or she can get away with if the resulting painting communicates more effectively. But its probably best to make a statement that's consistent with truth.

Zinn's Chalk Paintings on Sidewalks

David Zinn found an art form that doesn't need to begin with a blank canvas.

He draws chalk characters that interact with manhole covers, lampposts and other street fixtures. He's not only an ingenious artist, but he's also an excellent public speaker.

 

David Zinn's Ted Talk