The problem with supply lists

I should KonMari my paint collection, not add to it. We go to workshops weighed down with too much stuff.

No, I don't need any more watercolor pigments.

Many years ago, I took a workshop from a figure painter who specified cadmium green. I came home with an unopened tube and dropped it in a drawer. It’s still unopened.

I have great sympathy for students faced with a new supply list. In some instances, buying from them is redundant. For example, my list calls for Prussian blue, but if you already have phthalo blue, you’ve already got an excellent pigment for that color space.

It helps to understand the instructor’s reasoning. My list is based on paired primaries because I believe it allows the greatest range in color space. It occasionally changes as my painting technique evolves.  

Students usually show up with too much stuff because they don’t want to be caught without something they need. Most of what they carry, they never use. I’m feeling that urge to over-pack as I assemble the materials for Poppy Balser’s workshop in May.  Poppy, like me, is loath to send her students on spending sprees. However, it makes no sense to drive that distance and not be prepared.

And I don't need a new mixing tray, either.

I trotted out my watercolor basket expecting to have to fill in color gaps. Actually, I should KonMari my paints. What’s in the picture, above, is probably a quarter of the tubes in my basket. Does anyone really need five tubes of ‘opera pink’? More importantly, what is ‘opera pink,’ anyway?

Manufacturers love labeling convenience mixes with historic names. Consider Naples Yellow, used from the 18th to the 20th century. The real pigment is toxic lead antimonate. Modern paints labeled “Naples yellow” are made with a mix of modern pigments. You can make your own easily enough with white and yellow ochre.

That is the only name that really matters.

Pigments are listed on the tubes of all major paint makers in the form of Colour Index (CI) numbers. These are in tiny lettering on the side of most paint tubes. If the first letter is a “P,” that’s a pigment; if it’s an “N,” that’s a lake of a naturally-occurring substance like cochineal. The second letter tells you the general color family. The third tells you the actual pigment used.

A glance at my tube of ‘opera pink’ tells me it’s really PR122+BV10. The first is my old friend quinacridone magenta. Unfortunately, the second is a dye, rhodamine B, which bleeds and isn’t lightfast at all. I should pitch all five of those tubes.

My brushes, on the other hand, need help. New Yorkers will recognize some as being from the cheap bin at Pearl Paint.

If there is more than one CI number on the tube, you’re actually buying a hue or convenience mix. Many paint manufacturers sell hues of expensive pigments like the cadmiums and cerulean blue. They’re not consistent across brands, and they never have the handling characteristics of the more expensive paints they’re meant to imitate.

As with opera pink, even if the main pigment is lightfast, its partner may not be. Almost always, using single-pigment paint gives you the most flexibility in mixing.

There are many pigment guides on the web. Here is my favorite. Although it's meant for watercolor, pigments are consistent across all media.

The good, the bad, and the downright ugly

Can objects acquire a vibe from the way they are used and treated? Boats have personality, and it comes from their pasts.

Thaw, by Carol L. Douglas

I woke at 3 AM redrafting the bow of the American Eagle in my sleep. I didn’t start her from a measured drawing, but after an internal fight about composition. The winch shed at the boatyard was trying to take over the painting, as it did last year (below). But the fight sapped my determination to draw methodically. I ended up going directly to paint. The results are, perhaps, less accurate and more expressive than usual, and I was working that out in my sleep.

American Eagle is my favorite boat in local waters, but I feel I’ve never really done her justice in paint. She is very graceful and bears the imprint of many loving hands. Launched in 1930 as the Andrew and Rosalie, she’s been captained since 1984 by John Foss, who is a meticulous craftsman. American Eagle comes out of the water looking better than some boats do going back in. In modern parlance, she has good juju.

Winch (American Eagle), by Carol L. Douglas. What a difference sun makes!

An example of a schooner with bad juju was the Amistad. Its case would go to the US Supreme Court and pit the sitting president against his predecessor.

By 1839, the United States and most other American governments had abolished the slave trade. Since slavery itself remained legal, however, the temptation to smuggling was strong. In the spring of 1839, 53 Sierra Leone captives—49 adults and four children—arrived at the depot of Spanish slave trader Pedro Blanco, who was one seriously bad dude. Most of the captives had been kidnapped, although some were war booty. They were part of a cargo of 500 people sent to Cuba on the purpose-built slaver, Tecora. The individuals in question were purchased as laborers for a sugar plantation near Puerto Principe.

American Eagle is a well-cared-for boat.

On the night of June 28, Amistad left Havana, intending to run past British patrols. She was not built as a slaver; the captives were chained in its cargo hold. And they were abused. The cook, in particular, delighted in implying that they would all be killed and eaten when they reached their destination.

Led by a farmer named Joseph Cinqué, the captives revolted. Using cane knives they found in the hold, they bludgeoned the cook to death and killed the captain. Two crewmembers escaped by canoe, and the cabin boy absented himself from the melee. Two others were ordered to sail the boat back to Sierra Leone.

Landlubbers, the Africans didn’t notice that the crew were sailing them north instead of east. The boat wasn’t provisioned for a long journey, and dehydration and dysentery took their toll. In all, the Amistad traveled 1400 miles before hauling up on Long Island. The surviving slaves were taken to Connecticut, which was still a slave state, and imprisoned.

From A History of the Amistad Captives, 1840. New Haven, Connecticut: E.L. and J.W. Barber, Hitchcock & Stafford, Printers.

The case was a legal morass. It appeared stacked against the Africans. The naval officers who captured the boat claimed it and the human cargo as salvage. The slavers wanted their property back, falsely testifying that the Africans had been born in Cuba and were not subject to the slave trade prohibition. The Spanish and US governments wanted the Africans returned to Cuba, where they would face death. Anticipating victory, President Van Buren sent a Navy ship to hustle the Africans away before abolitionists could file an appeal.

No appeal was necessary. The Hartford court ruled in favor of the African prisoners. Our government pushed the case all the way to the Supreme Court. By then, former President John Quincy Adams had signed on as counsel to the Africans. Adams accused Van Buren of abusing his executive power. In March 1841, the Supreme Court decided in favor of the slaves, and they were free to leave—except that they had no resources. Northern abolitionists raised their fare to go home.

On November 26, 1841, the 35 surviving former slaves, accompanied by five missionaries, boarded a boat bound for Sierra Leone and freedom. The Amistad was purchased by Captain George Hawford of Newport, RI, who returned it to cargo service as the Ion. It passed out of history somewhere in the Caribbean.

Oh the places you’ll go

Cheap, plentiful, environmentally-friendly, and you can create a masterpiece with it. We should all use more charcoal.

Portrait of my friend Jane in charcoal, by Carol L. Douglas.

 Art supplies tend to be expensive, especially at the rarified corners of the business. Mother Nature, however, has given us a drawing material that is plentiful, dirt cheap, and environmentally friendly. A package of 12 sticks of Winsor & Newton vine charcoal costs just ten bucks, and a tablet of newsprint is about the same. For the cost of a pizza, you can go to the far corners of self-expression.

Charcoal is a great way to work out difficult drawing problems before you commit the problem to paint. Feet by Carol L. Douglas.

I use charcoal extensively in my studio: to work out new ideas, for gesture drawings, or to contemplate composition. It’s an excellent medium for experimentation. As a student yesterday remarked, “it’s not all about lines, like pencil work is.” When blended and lifted with an eraser, charcoal handles much like paint, making it the perfect preparatory medium for oil and acrylic painting. That’s why I start every new class with charcoal drawing exercises. It’s far better to learn the fundamentals of drawing and composition with something that’s not precious.

This was a preparatory sketch for a painting. By Carol L. Douglas.

I particularly like to have watercolor students do value exercises with charcoal. Value separation is a major challenge in watercolor. It helps to do it up front.

Charcoal is the cheapest medium in which one can create a masterpiece with staying power. For example, there are many works on paper by Edgar Degas done in charcoal and white pastel. He and other great masters used charcoal extensively.

Charcoal allows us to work out compositional questions. By Carol L. Douglas.

Choose a paper with a dull finish so that the charcoal can bite into the surface. Charcoal doesn’t stick well to hot-pressed, smooth papers like Bristol. It’s best on a fine-toothed, dull paper, but a rough tooth is also appropriate at times, although it raises more dust. My solution is to buy Canson’s Mi-Tientes, which has a different surface on either side, but there are many fine papers for charcoal work, including Canson Ingres, Strathmore 500 Series and Fabriano Tiziano. You shouldn’t need to use fixative to get the charcoal to adhere; if you do, try a different paper.

Compressed charcoal is powdered charcoal bound with gum or wax. It’s harder than vine or willow charcoal, meaning it can be sharpened to do very fine work. However, it’s not appropriate for using under paintings, because the binding can bleed. It doesn’t blend or erase as well. I never use it.

Seated figure, by Carol L. Douglas

Willow and vine charcoals are made of burnt grape vines or willow branches. They have no added binders, making them easier to erase. This charcoal can be used to sketch on canvas before painting in oils or acrylics; it will just vanish into the bottom layers of your work. It’s very light and makes soft, powdery lines.

“It takes a steady, careful, and patient hand to use charcoal,” an online student remarked yesterday. Only sometimes! Charcoal is an infinitely varied medium, in which one can make smooth graduations of value as well as slashing, dark strokes.

Flat-packing the landscape

Painting composition is all about ruthless editing. It’s a creative process, and it’s based on seeing.

Bill's Yellow (with Admiration), 2005, Cornelia Foss, Houston Museum of Fine Art

Sometimes I hand out little plastic viewfinders to my students. Mine are made of Plexiglas, roughly along the lines of this one. But they are for beginners, to help them start to break down the vastness of the landscape into palatable bites. I don’t encourage reliance on viewfinders, any more than I like working from photos. Art is based on seeing.  Seeing isn’t a mechanical process; it’s a learned art.

Artwork Essential’s viewfinder is based on the Rule of Thirds. When I was in school, I was taught to divide canvases using the Golden Mean. It’s imprinted in my aesthetic, so I still see it as the most graceful compositional device.  Later, I learned about Dynamic Symmetry. All of these are good working systems, and all of them are based on mathematics.

The Golden Mean is closely related to the Fibonacci Sequence.

The human mind, in receiving mode, likes to tarry on puzzles. That’s why we use these complex mathematical systems to compose our paintings. In sending and processing mode, however, the mind ruthlessly regularizes thoughts. If you’ve ever tried to paint a screen of branches as in the Klimt painting below, you know this to be true. You must fight to keep them honest. Left to its own devices, your subconscious mind will line them up like little soldiers.

We “know” compositional rules, and then we see a painting like Cornelia Foss’ Bill’s Yellow (with Admiration) and we realize that all such rules can be set on their heads. Ms. Foss isn’t ignorant of design systems; in fact she knows them so well that she can play with them. Bill’s Yellow wouldn’t have been nearly the painting had she offset the brush and tree in a conventional way. It is monumental because she centered and overlaid them.

Beech Grove I, 1902, Gustav Klimt, New Masters Gallery, Dresden.

Compositions designed with mechanical devices are ‘safer,’ but they eliminate the space needed to make creative discoveries.  I greatly admire the work of painter Mary Byrom. Having now known her personally for several years, I know she endlessly experiments with composition and form. She isn’t getting those arresting compositions by setting up with a viewfinder; she gets them by slogging through damp marshes at twilight, and endlessly tinkering.

Early Dusk, Mary Byrom

“Plein air painting is like a test you take in class,” Brad Marshall told me. “You have to use your knowledge and finish by the end of the class period. There’s no credit for incomplete answers.

“Studio paintings are like essays. You have enough time to do your research, write and rewrite until the work is good enough to turn in.”

There’s room for both in professional painting, but for learning and growth, working from life is critical. That’s why I strongly discourage working from photos in my studio classes. Photos have already done the most important job for the painter: flat-packing the scene.

Confronted with the vastness of reality, all artists must relentlessly, ruthlessly edit what they see into a working design. With photographs, that is already done. And there’s no guarantee that it has been done well.

Come paint with me in my studio in Rockport, ME or my workshop at Acadia National Park.

Where realities collide

When video games include entire fantasy worlds, trompe-l'œil painting is obsolete. But it has delighted viewers from prehistory to now.

Andrea Pozzo's painted ceiling in the Church of St. Ignazio, 1690. Note how the figures blur the line between the walls and the ceiling.

 All good things must come to an end, and the rise of photography spelled the decline of one of painting’s fascinating genres, trompe-l’œil painting. The phrase, which means “deceive the eye,” came into vogue in 1800. The idea itself is as old as mankind.

Pliny the Elder told a story of a throwdown between two famous painters of antiquity, Zeuxis and Parrhasius. Zeuxis’s painting of grapes was so realistic that birds flew down to peck at them.  Parrhasius then asked Zeuxis to pull back the drape concealing his painting, which revealed that the drape itself was a painted illusion. “I have deceived the birds, but Parrhasius has deceived Zeuxis,” the latter admitted. Besides implying that the artists were two pompous asses, the story hints that realism was a primary goal of Greek painting. In turn it was a primary goal of the 18th and 19th century painters who delighted in repeating Pliny’s tale.

Andrea Mantegna’s ceiling panel in the Camera degli Sposi in the Ducal Palace, Mantua, c. 1465-1474. 

Trompe-l'œil fits in the niche between fine painting and the decorative arts. It includes the lowly, unsung painters who put corbels and arches where no such architecture exists, as well as the work of known masters. We have no idea when the first trompe-l'œil was done. The rock-relief fronts at Petra are a form of trompe-l'œil, as are the mosaics at Herculaneum. So are the faux finishes you can apply with a kit from Home Depot.

The great age of faux painting was the Renaissance, when artists couldn’t stop playing with their new toy, perspective. Andrea Mantegna’s ceiling panel of the Camera degli Sposi in the Ducal Palace in Mantua uses single-point perspective and foreshortening. He has painted an oculus through which putti, people and a bird are looking down at the viewers.

Church interior, c. 1654, by Gerard Houckgeest

As knowledge of perspective increased, trompe-l’œil ceilings grew more complex. The goal was the same as that of the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages: to dissolve the barrier at the top of a room. Ceilings were painted as if they were continuations of the walls. Both ceiling and walls were enhanced with figures. This required a technique called perspectival anamorphosis, in which objects are distorted in such a way as to be visible only from a certain vantage point.

Hans Holbein used this technique on a famous canvas called The Ambassadors. It contains a skull that has to be seen from the extreme edge of the canvas. That was clever and difficult. Jesuit brother Andrea Pozzo used the same technique on ceilings and walls high off the floor. That was several steps past clever, since he couldn’t exactly step back and see whether his illusion was working or not. I can figure out how most things are done in painting; I cannot figure out how he managed to calculate the foreshortening required to make figures on a wall appear to be floating in space.

The Faithful Colt, 1890, by William Harnett

Trompe-l’œil had one more burst of popularity, in America at the end of the 19^th century. Paradoxically, this coincided with the rise of a new technology that would mean the death of painterly realism: photography. But even with that, trompe-l’œil returns now and again. What are Andy Warhol’s soup cans if not an homage to the art of fooling the eye?