Part 3 Project 2 Research Point 1

In this piece of work I'm going to take a look at artists who use landscape as their main subject.  They range from Durer who was one of the first artists to paint landscapes as we understand them through to those who create art today.

Albrecht Durer 1471 - 1528

Albrecht Durer - self portrait (1)

Durer was a German painter, print maker and theorist and has been regarded as the best Renaissance artist in Northern Europe.  He made his reputation in his twenties and his work covered the whole range of subject matter.  For this work I will look at his landscapes.

Landscape with a Woodland Pool - Albrecht Durer, 1496
Water colour and gouache (2)

This was painted in 1496 when Durer was just 25 and is thought to be amongst his most sensitive work. Durer was one of the first artist to recognise the potential of water colour and he was responsible for bringing it to a much more prominent position.(3)

The same year Durer painted House by a Pond, again using watercolour.

House by a Pond - Albrecht Durer, 1496
Watercolour on paper (4)

Both of these paintings have a very subdued feel, there isn't that much detail and yet there's lots of information.  For instance in House by a Pond in the foreground there is the remains of what might be a jetty giving an air of neglect and in Landscape with a Woodland Pool we are left wondering why the trees on the left are dead, when all we are given are a few grey lines.

Durer has used blended colours in all of the main panels.  The water appears still in the reflections it is full of rippling movement nearer the shore where the blends are muddier. 

Although Durer used oil paint in other work I can only find landscapes in watercolour.

Claude Lorrain - 1604? - 1682

Claude Lorraine (6)

Constable said of Lorrain "he is the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw".(5)  Lorrain's speciality was the rendering of idyllic, pastoral scenes very much as Constable painted much later. Lorrain's work however often included reference to mythical themes .....

Landscape with Aeneas at Delos - Claude Lorrain, 1672

or sometimes Biblical ones....

Landscape with Hagar and the Angel - Claude Lorrain,  1646

Born in Lorrain, the artist travelled to Italy and Germany sketching and learning as he went.  He made drawings from which he selected the images he wanted to paint.  Sounds familiar. His work seems mainly to be in oils and it looks so much "heavier" than the water colour of Durer.

Years later Turner admired Lorrain and felt some rivalry. He was constantly trying to surpass him in terms of composition and in the Turner bequest he decreed that two of his works should be hung with two of Lorrain's. (6)

L S Lowry - 1887 - 1976

L S Lowry - self portrait (7)

Laurence Stephen Lowry became famous for depicting scenes of the local industrial landscape in oils. Until he retired from his work as a rent collector when he was 65 he painted in his leisure time and he was prolific.(12) 

When his family first moved from suburban Manchester to the industrial town of Pendlebury  Lowry hated it but later confessed to becoming obsessed by it. Although he painted portraits we recognise his industrial landscapes with matchstick figures as definitively Lowry.

Another trademark is the way Lowry painted with flat slabs of colour and little by way of shadows. There is a grimness about his work that is nothing to do with the subject matter.

Street Brawl - L S Lowry

Street Brawl is a painting that has no shadows but there is a sense of distance as the figures diminish in size and the buildings become less distinct.

Industrial Landscape - L S Lowry, 1955

Lowry used a sketchbook and often amalgamated drawn images in his paintings.  He also introduced imaginary elements into his work and Industrial Landscape is one of these.  Even so his landscapes are recognisable as real places and nowadays fetch vast sums of money.

George Shaw - b 1966

George Shaw (8)

I am unfamiliar with Shaw's work.  His paintings have a semi photographic quality and they are gritty and uncompromising.

Ash Wednesday - George Shaw
Humbrol enamels

The unusual choice of media (Humbrol enamel) is new to me as well and I wonder what Shaw paints on.  Ash Wednesday has a yellow sky, yellow road markings and yellow shadows through the railings. Even the building silhouettes are yellow.  It is a very limited palette

Landscape with Dog Shit Bin - George Shaw, 2010

In Landscape with Dog Shit Bin there are wider range of colours and the tiny spot of red for the bin needs no seeking out.

Sarah Woodfine - b 1968

Sarah Woodfine (9)

Woodfine won the Jerwood Drawing prize in 2004 with her work Wyoming but is another artist who is new to me. I am surprised at the way she has pushed drawing.

Wyoming - Sarah Woodfine, 2003
Pencil on paper (15)

Wyoming is based on imaginary journeys in USA and 

intends to have the sense of a dwelling being circumnavigated, enticing the viewer to tease their imagination around the sides of the building.  Ultimately the impossibility of reaching the other side allows the mystery to remain unresolved. (15)

I love the sense of intrigue about this image - the sense of so much we don't know about.

The artist has a background in sculpture and this is probably where her drawing ideas were born. Newfoundland is a 3D piece made (I think) with paper on which she has drawn.

Newfoundland - Sarah Woodfine, 2004 (14)Acquired by V&A (14)

The V&A have a commitment to artists who push the boundaries and say of Newfoundland:

This is an important acquisition for the V&A, which aims to collect artists that represent technical and conceptual innovation, and works which extend the conventional definitions of drawing. Newfoundland does this with elegance, wit and originality. (14)

This is truly an eye opener for me who simply would never have imagined this sort of development of drawing.

Oliver Lovely

Oliver Lovely (10)

I can't find much information about Oliver Lovely but I have met him and he is a fairly young man. He is a local artist whose work I have bought because I like it so much.  He works in watercolour and paints landscapes mainly of the area he lives in.

The Lace Market from Canal Street - Oliver Lovely, 2012
Water color on paper (10)

Lovely says of this painting:

This is a watercolour painting I produced last year working from photographs, notes and sketches I'd done to develop the design.  It was drawn initially using a pencil and ruler with colour being added in pieces like a jigsaw, allowing each one to dry before continuing.(10)

I live near to the Trentside power stations and this one caught my eye although it isn't a view I'm familiar with:

Power Station 01 - Oliver Lovely, 2008
Water color on paper (11)

As ever it is easier to find information about artists who are long gone and information about Oliver Lovely is very sparse.

Drawing as an independent discipline and not just a stepping stone to a painting seems to be a fairly recent development.  Drawing now seems to encompass work that previously I would have thought to be painting.  The V&A acknowledges that drawing is difficult to define

It has been understood in different ways at different times and is difficult to define. During the Renaissance the term "disegno" implied drawing both as a technique to be distinguished from colouring and also as the creative idea made visible in the preliminary sketch. (15)

I enjoy having unfamiliar artists introduced by way of the Research Points.

(1) http://www.albrecht-durer.org/

(2) http://www.theguardian.com/arts/pictures/image/0,8543,-10704549991,00.html

(3) http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pd/a/albrecht_d%C3%BCrer,_landscape-1.aspx

(4) http://www.wikiart.org/en/albrecht-durer/house-by-a-pond

(5) http://www.claudelorrain.org/biography.html

(6) http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/claude

(7) http://www.thelowry.com/ls-lowry/his-life-and-work/

(8) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-13349611

(9) http://www.prattcontemporaryart.co.uk/sarah-woodfine/

(10) http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/title/art-works--oliver-lovley/id/5821

(11)  http://www.oliverlovley.com/30.htm

(12) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._S._Lowry

(13)  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/8569028/Painted-memoir-record-of-a-Coventry-childhood.html

(14)  http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/n/newfoundland-by-sarah-woodfine/

(15)  http://195.194.24.18/jerwood/archive/2004/winners/woodfine.htm

(16)  http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/w/what-is-drawing/

Part 3 Project 1 Ex 3

In this exercise I will be sketching a group of trees.  In my last course, Exploring Ideas my final work was based on a group of silver birch and I did a summer collograph print that I was particularly pleased with.

Silver birch collograph from Exploring Idea

Now it is winter and the trees are bare and the weather is dull and damp.  I have a friend who calls this sort of weather "dreek" which I understand to mean a combination of dismal and bleak, and it fits well.

It's raining and misty and I don't feel inclined to go outside. I have taken photos of groups of trees from various windows. These are the best.

North with the garden shed in the background

North towards the power station

South towards the church

I cropped the one looking towards the church.

Crop looking towards the church

With a bit of license it could be said that the hedges in the foreground are just well pruned trees!  The indistinct smudges in the distance are Scots pines.

I worked indoors looking though the window.  I sketched on pastel paper using a charcoal pencil then worked it further with charcoal sticks. Towards the end I put in some yellow Conte crayon on the mahonia and browns on the hedge.  It was hard to resist putting the brown leaves on the beech tree because I know they are there but in reality everything just looks grey.

I liked the way the mahonia looked but the image was best when I cropped some of it off:

A Dreek Day (1)

Two days later...

If I'm honest I don't really like this very much and feel dissatisfied with it.  The drawing of it felt laboured and arduous and I don't think it is very expressive.

I had another try and set out to actually use tone.  I have found tone difficult so I made a sort of tonal bar to help me to decide which tones to use:

My tonal bar

I decided that the beech tree was a dark mid tone and worked from there.

A Dreek Day (2), charcoal

I felt much more free doing this image.  I didn't dwell on any detail; just the misty, spectral trees.  I particularly like the tree in the right foreground because it's very textural.  I used a dark tone and lifted some out with a putty rubber leaving circular marks.  I then added dark marks for the shadows.

On the way to the Harley Gallery this morning I drove through Clumber Park.  For the first time in ages the sun was out and the sky blue.  Lime Tree Avenue was perfect so I took a photograph so that I could draw later.

Lime Tree Avenue, Clumber Park (1)

This quick charcoal and pastel piece left me in a much better frame of mind than Dreek Day.  Maybe it was the sunshine.

There are however some things to note:

• I used a grey pastel paper.  White would have made a better job and allowed the day the brightness it deserved
• The trunks of  the trees in the left foreground look a bit hefty and the branches start too far down.
• A very light blue wash would have helped the sky along a bit using the white paper for highlights.
• As most images do this looks best from a distance.
• It's sometimes the next day when objective review is best made.

I'm a bit like a dog with a bone and I couldn't let this lie so I tried again using white paper in my sketchbook. I took the opportunity to put things right.

Lime Tree Avenue, Clumber Park (2)

This captures the feel of the day much better.

Quite coincidentally the water colour course I've been doing with Stephen Coates worked on trees today. This is what I produced:

Winter trees with lake

This course (six lessons) is now complete.  It has dwelt on water colour technique and the science behind it rather than personal creativity and I've found it a revelation.  The importance of planning and trialing ideas is so important because one mistake and you are unable to complete the work. As well as learning about water colour I've learnt lots about tonal value, perspective and colour mixing that is very relevant to my OCA work. There's a further course that I intend to enrol on next year.

Stephen has published these first six lessons in his book "The Water Colour Enigma". (1)



(1)  Coates. S. (2014).  The Water Colour Enigma; Science of the Medium. Arc Publishing and Print, Sheffield

Part 3 Project 1 Ex 2

My task in Exercise 2 is to look closely at tree and show its character in my drawing. Henry Moore is famous not only for his sculptures but also for his drawings.  I looked at these images by Moore and they convey lots about the tree they depict.

Tree Trunks II - Henry Moore, 1982.
Charcoal, ballpoint pen, gouache (1)

Tree Trunks II is an image of a very old, possibly dead tree.  It looks like it was coppiced many years ago, it is knarled and its roots are exposed. Moore is looking at it head on and there is no evidence of the height we suppose the tree must have.  It is rendered in charcoal, ballpoint pen and gouache although it is hard to see the detail on my picture.  The marks are smudgy and indistinct and create a strange, other worldly atmosphere.  There are no outlines just lots of tone.

Trees II Upright Branches - Henry Moore, 1979
Etching on paper (2)

Trees II Upright Branches is an etching and it is much more defined.  The viewpoint is unusual as it is looking up into the tree tops from quite close up.  Neither the top nor the bottom of the tree is visible. The tree trunks are outlined and the curved marks on them indicate roundness.  The branches are a tangled mass of tones and the trees in the distance are paler and smaller.

There is a lot to learn from looking at such lovely work.

The weather is cold and wet, what an awful time to be doing a project that demands outdoor work.

The ash tree I have chosen to draw is at the bottom of our garden and was once part of a hedge.  I know this because there is evidence of it being cut regularly.  Now though it is immense but in itself unremarkable.  However, at the bottom of the tree there is a large root which emerges from the ground then turns back on itself and makes a hollow bowl shape.  Inside the deep bowl it is so dark that no plants live in it. I am going to sketch this part of the tree.

I'm working in my sketchbook because it's easy to manage outdoors, initially using pencils and a graphite stick.

Old ash tree - graphite

When I went indoors again I added a tiny bit of green and lime green pencil crayon which I then wet a little.  It's hardly there.

Old ash tree 2 - graphite and pencil crayon

The big old tree is on the right side with a semi mature, smooth trunked offshoot growing up against it. The other twiggy uprights are new shoots emerging all over the place.  The whole thing is covered in winter undergrowth and surrounded by moss.

This captures the quite spooky nature of this part of the ash tree.  I don't think the colour adds anything at all but I just wanted to try it out.

(1) http://sculpture.uk.com/artists/henry_moore/
(2)  http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/moore-trees-ii-upright-branches-p02693

Part 3 Project 1 Ex 1

Sketching individual trees

I thought it might be pertinent to look at how Turner drew trees.  I recall an image I used in a previous course of a sketch he did.

Pen and sepia sketch - J M W Turner (1)

Study of a tree -  J M W Turner (2)

These sketches are dynamic and atmospheric and I feel sure are the product of lots of close observation.

If I ever find myself getting bogged down in detail I will be returning to these images as an aide memoir.

Van Gogh,  Cezanne and Monet all painted trees but in very different styles.

The Mulberry tree  - Vincent Van Gogh, 1889
Oil on canvas (3)

Trees and Road (Abres et route) - Paul Cezanne, 1890
Oil on canvas (4)

Antibes seen from La Salis Gardens - Claud Monet, 1888
Oil on canvas (5)

Not one of these artists painted "leaves" they just made marks in their own style with whatever medium they chose.  Yet there is no doubt that "leaves" are what they drew.

More recently David Hockney interpreted trees in his unique way:

The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate - David Hockney, 2011

Here Hockney drew "leaves" individually to represent the whole.

A bit more accessible is a lovely water colour image of trees by Carole Baker that hangs in my home.

Trees by Carole Baker

Here the trees are much more abstracted and leaves merely hinted at.  What these different ways of rendering trees tells me is that there is no one way to draw them although what seems pretty definite is that you don't even think about individual leaves.

I wandered around the garden and took some photographs of trees.  It is mid November and many trees have bare branches although some cling to a few scant golden yellow leaves.  I noticed that the branch structure trees of different species are different shapes:

Snakebark maple - a fan shape

An ancient apple tree - almost a semi circle

Silver birch - a diamond

Another birch - a triangle

Prunus x Surbhirtella "Autumnalis"

I drew the outline shape of the prunus then developed it to the point of the leaves.  These were four separate sketches all starting from the same outline shape and following through the process.

Vaguely goblet shaped prunus

I drew in some branches

I looked to see how the leaves were placed

And scribbled some leaves (too many)

I looked closely at how Turner represented leaves and it is so ethereal I really can't tell.

Study of a tree -  J M W Turner (2)

I tried to represent the colour of the autumn leaves that are fast falling off my prunus tree.  These are the most successful.

Conte crayon

Small dots of water colour

Larger dots of water colour

Long water colour marks

I think the long water colour marks works best but there's a need for some darker paint.  I collected some leaves from the ground and this was confirmed.

Leaves collected from the garden

I tried again using a wider range of colours.

The water colours I used

My Autumn leaves

I allowed some blending of the colour and I'm pleased with the result.  It has the same intensity and excitement as the real thing.  However, I need to think of the light tones as well so I used the same colours but very diluted.

Muted Autumn leaves

Next I used the same colours but far less diluted.  My aim was to get light and dark tones to give depth to the tree.  It makes the light tones recede as I wanted it to.

Light and dark tones

I've suddenly realised that I've become seduced by individual leaves and how easy it was to get sucked in.  A change of focus is required I think.

I love the dawn redwood in our garden - it was the very first tree we planted on what had been neglected land.  It has grown from a stick to a beautiful tree about 10.5 metres tall. The tree is a deciduous conifer and an ancient species.  The trunk looks very dominant at this time of year when the leaves are falling but in the summer the tree is a bright green with needle like leaves. The autumn sees it turn the most wonderful bronzey pink.  It has a quirky bend at the very tip of its trunk.  The branches rise upwards and become very fine.

Dawn redwood - based on an inverted triangle

I take the trees in the garden very much for granted but on closer inspection not only do they offer entirely their own characteristics they provide a structure for the rest of the planting.

(1) ruskin.ashmolean.org
(2) www.tate.org.uk
(3)  http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/the-mulberry-tree.html
(4) http://www.barnesfoundation.org/collections/art-collection/object/7019/trees-and-road-arbres-et-route
(5) http://www.monetalia.com/paintings/monet-antibes-seen-from-la-salis-gardens.aspx
(6) http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article3581620.ece