Capturing the complexity of a landscape

Field and trees in a nearby park.

Landscapes are never frozen in time the way a still life is. Nature is changing from one moment to the next, and somehow that has to be put across to the viewer. 

Besides, outdoors is a lot more complicated than indoors. Only God can make a tree and all that, and so much more is going on all at once in the great outdoors that I don't believe you can freeze a moment and have it seem anything like the reality of nature. 

A change of style to suit the landscape

So I work rather more loosely, using chalks, usually NuPastels, and trying to avoid patches of pure color. Pure color can be the dramatic highlight of a still life: think of the white reflections on a bottle or a blotch of bright red on an apple. Yet there doesn't seem to be anything resembling pure color outdoors. Usually something looks like a familiar color but if you look closely it is really a zillion colors combined that give the illusion, at first glance, of one color. 

Reflections on creating a still life

Three objects, a still life by Paul Creedon.

I think of still lifes and landscapes as being quite different in purpose and mood. 

(Digression: I drew plenty of human figures back in the day, and the day was about 25 years long, and now I just want to do other things. Nonetheless, the teachers were right in saying that drawing the figure is the best way to learn how to draw. It's true, I think, that if you can draw a person you can draw pretty much anything else. Michelangelo believed it. End of Digression.)

Lighting in a still life

Still lifes usually have one main source of illumination. The objects don't move, and the fascination seems to lie in recognizing everyday things like fruit and bottles and tables, presented in new and different situations. Sometimes I look at something I've owned for years, and I feel as if I never saw it until I painted it. 

The light reflects from say, an orange, onto a silver pitcher, and the pitcher becomes something brand new. But the light and the situation have to be constant, and the pitcher and orange have to be depicted realistically, because we have to recognize the them immediately. So I work in a tight manner, and use pastel pencils with occasional forays into the land of the big pastel stick (to get a splotch of pure color) to make the onlooker's eye go where you want it to. A lot of the work is done before hand, when setting up the objects in the scene, and the trick is to represent what is laying there quietly in front of me, pretending to behave itself. 

Of course there is another consideration. People like to go right up to a still life and look as closely as possible at the execution. I know I do. So the technique needs to hold up under inspection. 

To be continued.

The Boss

Changing techniques to suit the subject

Cool tones for a cool afternoon.

Here are two pastels, sized 5" by 7". Both depict scenes from Irwin Park about a mile from where I live. The first is quite loose in style, depicting an open field on a windy, sunny day. The "palette", that is, the colors used most prominently in the pastel painting, tend toward blue and white with a little purple added. These are often referred to as cool in tone, and they make the viewer feel that way. That is, cool as in temperature, not attitude. It was a bit chilly that afternoon.

I used a lot of long chalk strokes, hoping to convey the continuously changing patchwork of light caused by the swaying branches and moving foliage around me. The viewer might even 'feel' the vibrant atmosphere.

Getting warmth to show through 

Stillness goes with warmer tones in this scene.

The second painting shows a path about a third of a mile away, running through a small valley sheltered from the elements more than the field shown in the first picture. The canopy of trees is cut off from the wind, producing an environment that feels warm and still.

So the painting tends to use warmer colors, that is greens with a yellow tint, and even the purples have a dose of orange in them. You can still sense the same blue sky with hints of white in it. The drawing is much more traditional, relying a bit on techniques picked up from a 19th century book on how to draw trees. Too much line work would have distorted the sense of stillness. The patches of light are there, but are not constantly shifting.

A technique called scumbling

I did employ a nice late 20th Century technique called scumbling on the lower right-hand corner; I dragged the side of a large yellow pastel over a section of dark green to create the illusion of sunlight filtering through onto a patch of grass and small shrubs.

Although one painting appears tightly rendered and the other full of aggressive line strokes, both pieces are equally abstract. 

Get to know the differences in art medium

Two different drawings, done on two different sized drawing pads (but both on acid free paper!), using different media, depicting two different stopping points on the same orchard path in the New Canaan Nature Center.

Effect of dark chalk in a landscape

Sunny Orchard by Paul Creedon, 2012.

The first drawing shows the entrance to an orchard, with a patch of woods on the left and a large apple tree in the center. The shape of the tree and the dark shadow underneath drew my interest: it formed a near triangle, and gave a perfect center of attention to the scene. I used dark chalk on white paper to convey the stark impression of bright sunlight in the orchard.

Softened light using graphite

A smaller, graphite lead drawing was done further down the path, and the heavy shadow under the apple tree can be seen on the right hand side. The trail continues toward Rt. 124 in the distance.

             Orchard Shadow by Paul Creedon, 2012.

At that point the shadow of the tree is directly to the right and the woods are still following along on the left, and the feel of bright sunlight is gone. I had reached this second vantage point on an overcast day, whereas I encountered the previous scene on a sunny afternoon. The focus shifts to the path and to the way down to the road. So I used a lighter lead pencil on a softer tone of paper to suggest the change of atmosphere. After I scanned the drawing I noticed the inadvertent cue at the end of the lane: the shadow between the bushes looks like a hand with a finger pointing to my destination.

Since it's election day, why not vote for your favorite in a comment below!

Note cards for any occasion

These unique notecards were designed by Pat Creedon Design, Inc. using original art by Paul Creedon. They are currently available at Koenig Art Emporium in Darien, CT or directly from Pat Creedon Design. Purchase them by the package of 8, or one at a time. Four of Paul Creedon's pastels are featured (2 of each in the packages of 8) and they are blank inside.

Coloring outside the lines

Four Apples original pastel painting.

The first still life was framed and hung in the solo art show held last Fall. I had looked forward to seeing what it looked like up on the wall and was disappointed. It had been hung in the frame crooked because I had not colored in the part beneath the table edge all the way to the pencil guideline line I had drawn. Let this be a lesson to all: don't keep it between the lines. Let things bleed on past the borders a little. In other words, coloring outside the lines can be a good thing!

Second, as an in-law pointed out, the apples looked a bit like tomatoes. They were too shiny. You might say I was relieved it didn't sell so I could see if I could fix the problem. Later on the framer we use needed a favor involving taking the pastel out of its frame so he could use it in another project.

But then the apple/tomatoes still life was left on a shelf for a long time. I was sick and didn't quite know what to do with the picture anyway. 

A solution is found

Four Apples still life as it is now.

This week I sprayed fixative over the whole painting and drew a "new" version over the old one. This second edition is less colorful, (on purpose; maybe being ill affected my outlook on life?), and the apples were toned down, roughed up a bit, and simplified a little. Not too much, since the point was to have them look fairly realistic and a bit less like tomatoes! In any event, this is what it looks like now.* The picture was painted out to the edges and beyond, so when it gets reframed, the table edge should be level. I think it succeeds now as a pastel painting of apples. What do you think?

*When I was ten, my father had a very difficult time convincing me that tomatoes are not fruits, but rather are vegetables. I insisted that vegetables come in dull green and brown colors, and certainly not in cheery bright red. On the other hand, he pointed out that fruits taste good, and thus won the argument. 

A Place Called Innisfree

Here's a scene from a place called Innisfree Garden in Millbrook, New York.

Millbrook is a town in the eastern Hudson Valley in New York State. My wife drove us up there as a day trip one steamy August day several years ago. We went down a not very promising dirt road that the map said would lead to a nice garden. It did. 

Innisfree Garden Scene by Paul Creedon

An elderly gentleman relieved us of some cash and directed us around the sites. He looked relieved to have someone to talk to. What on earth the place had originally been I cannot imagine, but it had a lake and numerous stone terraces covered with plantings and connected by decaying stairways. Nothing about it made any sense, but I took pictures of everything with my old Canon Sure Shot. One of the photos later mutated into the pastel landscape painting here. 

A Small-Scale Pastel

The pastel is only 7" by 5", which meant I could interpret the scenery fairly loosely. On this occasion being a little messy was just the ticket to getting what I wanted. I wish I liked some of my other pastel landscapes as much. The stone wall in front gave me a lot of trouble, but the decision to do the foliage with simple chalk strokes was forced on me by the small scale. That part went quickly and easily and came off on the first try. If only all my paintings went as smoothly. 

After a couple of hours wandering through the garden we were both on the verge of passing out from heat exhaustion. We found a diner in town, and after being cold shouldered at first by some locals we managed to get a table and I had a very tall and frosty soda, a hot dog and a piece of Boston Cream Pie.  

I like the painting partly because I think it works, and partly because it reminds me of how good that first sip of coke tasted in the diner afterwards. 

Creating Art Without Time Travel

Since I have been working on landscapes for the past several weeks, it's obviously time  to talk about a still life again. This one isn't in an art show; I just am fond of it. It isn't perfect; I would do the wood table in a different way if I had a TARDIS* and could go back and rewrite time. But that would mean crossing my own time stream, which would blow up a third of the universe, so it will have to stay as it is. I can't change it now because the picture is already in a frame.

Doing a still life with glass is not as hard as it seems.    

Making the glass bud vase seem transparent was the primary temptation, er, I mean challenge in this one. People get scared at just the mention of painting a clear object with the background showing through. They shouldn't: mostly you just blur whatever's behind the glass and throw in some highlights and a reflection or three and you're there.

Still life with glass vase.

I gave the background some texture by cross hatching with pastel pencils, and by smudging the parts where it would show through the vase introduced a sense of the glass's smoothness.

The importance of the pastel painting's background

I made the background lighter in tone on the right hand side in order to balance the dark shadow cast by the vase. The background is dark on the upper part so the red rose would look more prominent. The heavy highlight on the nearest edge of the vase leads your eye up to the rose, and corrects what might otherwise be a very strong tendency pulling the viewer's eye to the left. And besides, highlights are cool. The lighter area in the middle of the vase's shadow is the light source shining through the glass, and is also meant to correct the pull to the left.

Was I thinking about all of this while making the picture? Of course not. Don't ever believe art teachers when they tell you the artist thought of all this before they started painting. The painter is just fixing the mistakes he makes while doing the project. The successful works are as much a product of luck as of anything else. You never see the stuff that doesn't work.

*if you are not a fan of Doctor Who... well you just should be.