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Terry Miura, an Amercian artist specializing in streetscenes has invited other artists to enter a visual dialogue with him. On his blog he posted a photo of a street, and challenged his readers to paint it and to simplify the scene.

 

The modern cityscape has not been on my painting menu, so I happily grabbed a chance to learn from a master of the genre. Terry gave advice on how to simplify, and much more.

 

When studying the photo Terry provided,  I had to make several decisions: format (landscape or portrait),  how to crop, where to place the area of interest, and finding the abstract shapes that would be interesting. I also needed movement in the painting.

 

The idea I decided on looked something like this:

 

Above: Inspired by the Westernized Japanese concept of Notan (how to shape the lights, darks, and midtones abstractly), I saw that this crop worked so well I didn't have to re-design the photo (thank you Terry for a great reference shot).  It had three different lead-ins taking the viewer to the tower in a meandering way. Yes, I'd chosen the tower as one of the areas of interest. Possibly, I should have cropped even closer, and not been so charmed by the line of the rooftops leading to the proud tower. The cars at the foreground lead to those in the background, and I kept the cars on the right for the sake of balance, but cropped them to thirds to show they're not significant. The trees lining the street would give a line that moved organically, contrasting to the man-made elements of the other two lines.

 

I liked the sense of depth, and the distant mountains (hills?) caught my fancy, as there are none where I live.

 

Now, I'm not a tonalist, as I work mainly with colour, but values are important to me. I work in soft pastel, on a sanded paper. Size is 12x9" (A4).

 

I simplified the scene further, for the underpainting:

 

In the underpainting, it is already clear what the scene will be, and the colours are very exaggerated, according to the principle that any colour I add will dull what is already there.

 

Next, in stage 2, I start to refine the colours, to something more approximating 'reality'. I work with pure colours:

 

 

In stage 3, I put in variations and variegations:

 

The reason I put in the foliage in stage 3 is that it will be a bit more integrated with the buildings. What I want very clearly visible, I put in from the start, and that which should be a bit more subdued comes in stage 3. Not that the green stuff looks subdued in the photo... But it had been way more 'loud' if I had created a separate mass for it in stage one.

 

Stage 4 completes the painting, Traffic:

 

 

 

All I had to do was to add a few marks here and there to suggest 'detail', and some handling of edges. The distant cars were drawn in. Any imbalance was corrected. The finished paintings has been colour corrected in the computer, while the three first stages are straight from the camera. As I upload this, I see I need to add some variations to the distant cars, as they're too monochrome.

 

This was way out of my comfort zone (which really is still-lifes, although I've done a lot of rural landscapes). By stretching ourselves, we grow as artists, and the ole comfy zone gets larger. Painting unfamiliar scenes allow me to be more free in reshaping them (although I didn't find it necessary in this case).

 

As I write this, Terry has posted some of the paintings that are coming to him. Beautiful work, from all over the world. You can see them in his blog, in First Contributions Are In, and Cityscape Challenge: The Next Batch.

 

I will add more links as they come, so watch this space!

 

Added links: Simplify! Some More! (where mine is, together with a bunch of other pastellists! and fine artists.)

More Cityscapes!

And now Terry has collected all contributions in a gallery on his website.

 

Thank you Terry for a delightful challenge!

 

Taking a walk in the park surrounding a manor, (Tyresö slott near Stockholm, Sweden) during one of the few sunny days in this unusually cold and snowy winter, I came upon this cottage, nestled in comfortably by snow and trees. While not a perfect scene, I saw some potentialities for a painting, and took some pictures.

Reference image:



Now, this is far from a perfect ref, so let's see what can be done with it. I really didn't like the straight dark band of distant land crossing the picture from left to right, the shape is quite boring, and separates the picture in two halves. I started to play with it in the small format of Notan, where I worked out how to place the darks and the lights, finding good relationships and interesting shapes. The first notan in top left is just an exploration of the actual image:



I simplify the Notan progressively, and in the middle row, rightmost picture, I'm starting to find what feels right. I still have to find a way to anchor the darker shapes to either the top or the bottom of the picture. I try bottom first, and that works fine. The notan marked with an arrow is the one I choose as a basis for the painting.

Next the 'cartoon drawing' was made on the artist's quality sandpaper, which was then blocked in with the underpainting. Follow the progress here:


The painting took over, and decided it wanted a stream instead of a road, in stage 2. Evaluating the image, I found the stream lead too quickly to the house in a boring straight line, so before continuing, I changed the shape of the banks, and worked a bit further on the background copse of winterbare trees. In stage 3, I have decided that the foreground trees need a softer approach than bare branches would be, so I add dried and browned clusters of leaves. Only in stage four do I scumble nearly white pastels over the snow, to give the coolness and whiteness of snow.

I've made an effort to keep the simple structure from the Notan, and here is how the finished painting in black and white looks side by side with the Notan:



Quite close, although I instituted a row of lower bushes to the mid left, to provide more depth in the painting.

Now, this is a fairly large painting, and details vanish when shrunk to such a small picture as seen on your computer screen. This detail shows how the blue of the sky is actually woven together with not only blues, but also greens and purples. This weaving is part of why my paintings can be called Impressionist:



When comparing with the largest picture of the painting, can you find from which part of the sky this closeup is taken?

Part of my mission as a painter is to search for the beauty in the commonplace and ordinary. This simple scene had a beautiful cool light resulting in warm and cosy shadows that fit the subject perfectly. And it invites you to take part in it, so please have a seat!

Simple and rustic or not, I did preliminary studies. A series of notans (shown larger here, they really are tumbnail size), to find out where to place the darkest darks:


The last one is closest to what I did in the actual painting.

Then I made a quick sketch that took just one hour, to see how it all worked in colour. (Number 1 below.) Number 2 shows the blocking in of the masses, on the sanded paper Fisher 400. I've chosen colours that in some cases are complementary, as I wanted the wall and the table to be 'quiet' and not loud.

In 3 the colours are nearing what they will eventualy become, and 4 shows the painting nearly done, but still needing work and development of details. The cupboard within the wall will get some trimmings, and some things will be pushed darker, and others lighter.

I swear the chair with all its negative spaces took as long to paint as the rest of the picture!

The finished painting can be viewed as a larger image by clicking this link that will take you to my website.

This is a landscape if found really exciting to paint. It is almost like a great outdoors hall, with the steep near vertical cliffs, and the smooth 'floor' of the water. It was also a challenge to make grey cliffs out of the bright colours of my pastel sticks. No actual grey has been used, only prismatic colours.

But, colour isn't all, not even to me. First, there is Design. I made a large number of Notans (really small thumbnail sketches) to map out the darks and the lights. I'm continuing the study of Notan, as it is a very efficient tool.



I know they look just like a jumble of spots, but if you look closely, you can see that I've used 4 values (paper, light grey, mid grey, black) to test different ideas. The big dark cliff has been extended upwards, or cropped. The very bg cliff has been very light, or mid grey. All cliffs have gotten different heights in different combinations. There's been more or less sky visible, and as the sky was an arrow-shape, I decided early on to let the lighted part of the cliff that vanishes in distance have lost edges with the sky, so the arrow would point to the area of interest, which is where the river bends around the cliff. Tricky thing was to try to subdue the fg brightly lit cliff on the right, and the dark to the left.

I've tried to make the masses of value connect, or at least point to each other (as with the darkest darks). There is a flow of lighter and midvalue from sky to left side of the river (vaguely an s-shape), bridged by the exclamaition mark ! of the far away lit cliff.

Those 30-seconds studies led to this underpainting:



As I was working on Fisher 400 artist's sandpaper, I could layer a lot, and there is no need for a fixative.

The rather 'wild' colours of the underpainting get subdued as I layer on them, but they are what sets the quantity of light, and that is kept through the whole painting process.

See a larger version of the finished painting here.

At WetCanvas, there was a discussion/educational thread about how to paint snow which gave me the idea to paint my Flowing Ice. The view is from a privat castle outside Stockholm, Tyresö slott. When I shot the reference, there were unusual high water-levels, which then froze to ice. The whole swirly area of ice is a flooded meadow. Normally, the water would be behind the reeds and the boathouse, to the right. The dark "thingy" behind and to the left of the boathouse is a small jetty.

I've not painted many snow-scapes, as I really do not like the cold... Sure, snow is pretty, but it is also cold!

As I'm learning the use of Notan, I made some of these miniature studies:


I chose to use the bottom one for my painting, but without the dark upper right corner. Not that I know what I do, but it seemed to me that extending the background trees beyond the picture would create a more interesting shape and lessen the horizontals as the sky would be broken up and not be one mass. I also considerably lightened the landmass behind the boathouse, keeping all the really dark darks in, around, and connected to the boathouse. In the last notan is it also clear that I changed the patch of snow in the lower left corner so it would point to, and visually connect to, the bg snow, and not be a line that chopped off the corner.

Then I chose a terracotta coloured sheet of Colourfix, made the skeleton drawing, and painted in the first colour-statements. These set the light of the painting, and are flat pure masses of colour:

You can see clearly what the picture represents at this stage, but not if it is land or water. It is also very clear it is a sunny day, with very long shadows, so it is either early morning, late afternoon, or midday sun up by the 60th latitude in January/February.

Next, I made the colours more 'right', by painting on top of the first statements. I like to finish the sky pretty quickly, as it helps me judge the other colours, and also because the trees will go on top of they sky, as they are in the background and I want them hazier, more muted, not so harshly silhouetted. There are several layers of colour involved in making the still flat areas 'right':

Now it is crystal clear it is a winter scene. I developed the boathouse a bit further (beyond flat statements), as that unavoidably will be the area of interest, human artifacts in a landscape always are. In fact, the painting could be finished at this stage, as all the relevant information is there. I will not develop every area, some will remain as they are here. I've rushed ahead a bit more, and started to indicate depth of space in the flat planes.

Next, I developed more space, put in the really dark darks as I felt they were needed, and painted most of the swirls in the ice.

I pushed the house a bit lighter, to make the door part of the dark detials. I've started to work on details and edges.

And in the finished painting, I've added the trees in the bg, and the footprints of an animal, probably a dog, who has run happily over the ice and snow (so the snow wouldn't be a too boring area). I've added the sleeping bush, and reeds, all which are details. And I've paid close attention to edges. See for example how the roof-lines of the boathouse do not run unchecked off the page, they are blurred, which also serves to create the illusion of three-dimensionality:

Why is this picture cooler than the others? Because the others are photographed in incandescent light, and the finish in overcast daylight which brings out the colours much better than the light-bulbs.

A detail of the snow in lower right corner, with footprints. As you can see, the snow isn't as yellow as it seems -- it is the glow of the underpainting that peakes through the rather grayed upper layers:


And another detail from the distance:


And from where the ice ends and meet the snow in shadow:

Luxurious blues, eh? That is the strength of the Unison pastels!

24x32cm

While a simple sketch, this is a milestone marking a development in my development as an artist. It is on plain simple paper, Fabriano's Ingres, wich I seldom use for actual paintings, as it doesn't allow for much layering. The reason I celebrate this sketch is because it was drawn and painted in only one hour and 30 minutes! Speed has sneaked up on me, while I was not looking. A very pleasant surprise, as similar sketches about 6 months ago took me twice the time to paint. My goal of speeding up enough to do plein air is much nearer!

The reference was originally posted by Cyndi on WetCanvas, in the Weekly Drawing Event. I decided to make a notan, to test linking the darks to each other. I also lightened the bg mountains, but as I'm lazy, I tried the look of making them dark on the same notan...



Painting is a constant struggle to learn, but it is the learning and discovery of new things that brings such joy!

And if someone likes your painting, that is added joy.

16 september 2008
20:13:17

I recently came across the concept called 'notan'. The word is of Japanese origin, and means "dark/light". The concept is about the distribution of light and dark over the surface of the picture, but also of the placement of lines. In the Westernized version, it is a way to plan, or map out, a painting using normally two to four values (sometimes more), in thumbnail sizes.

I like the idea very much, as it is very easy to keep in my head, even if it is not so easy to do the notans well. It is really great to be able to try out different ideas in 'maps' of light and dark that only takes 30 seconds each to do.

It is a learning process, for sure.

Today I completed one such effort, as I parttook in an event on WetCanvas. The reference photo is taken by Tressa Hommel.



After testing several ideas, I chose a close crop. Below I show the process in thumbnail size:



The notan is no larger than showed here. Had I chosen design looking for colour, the blooming bush would have been my focus. As I was looking for interesting plays of dark and light, the pillar became the area of interest, and the architectural elements.

And here is a larger image of the completed sketch:



The sketch can be viewed in the Works section on my website.

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