Landscape Processes:
A Sampling of Demonstrations and In-class Exercises
My landscape classes are exceedingly practical. Class time is a combination of lectures, demonstrations, exercises, and free painting, all designed to teach a practical strategy for solving the core skills necessary for landscape painting — simplification and massing, composition and site selection, and color strategies. When working outdoors, I don't stress working fast; rather I encourage students to think like landscape painters and take the time they need to problem-solve and make the best choices possible from the very start.
The samples below are from instructor demonstrations
and student exercises.
PREVIEW VIDEO CLIP [4:30]
from the workshop Landscape Painting in Skagit Valley, 2010.
Underpainting Instructor demonstration
A great deal of emphasis is given to the underpainting or "wipe-out" — a very reliable method of beginning a painting that establishes a foundation of composition, value and drawing. The underpainting also establishes the "value plan" or the underlying patterns that direct the composition.
Underpainting
Suzanne Burnell
Class: Landscape Painting: Essential Theory and Process, 2009
Massing and values are they key to underpainting — the subject must be translated into its most basic shapes, both in terms of the value and the underlying design and composition. Although the underpainting is atonal, and works with only one color, that color may be any pigment that is dark enough to express a full range of values from light to dark. In this example, ultramarine blue is used, a color that will resonate with the many blues and cools found in this particular scene.
Shape Painting
Joanna Thomas
Simplification and massing is a core practice in all classes. Students are always encouraged to first think in terms of bold, simplified shapes, and detail second.
Class:
Essentials of Plein Air Painting, 2010
Color Strategies (below)
Joan Ostendorff
Students are encouraged to develop their own color stragegy, especially when working from photos in the studio. Below, Ostendorff applies an analogous color scheme, which has a unifying effect. On the right, a complementary color scheme provides a color contrast that helps simulate the illusion of sunset light.
Class: Landscape Painting: Essential Theory and Process, 2009
Color Strategies
Maggie Sharkey
Class: Landscape Painting: Essential Theory and Process, 2010
Preliminary Shape and Value Study
Margaret Plumley
Students are always encouraged to do studies that reduce the subject to its simplest shapes and patterns.
Class: Landscape Painting: Essential Theory and Process
2-Value Study (Notan)
Instructor: Demonstration
By limiting a study to as few values as possible, students are better able to see the basic underlying shapes and patterns that make up the composition.
Class: Landscape Painting: Essential Theory and Process
2-Value Pencil Study
Shaw Khan
A great deal of emphasis isplaced on planning. THis simplethumbnail express the basic values and compositional energie.
Class: Landscape Painting in Skagit Valley
Limited 4-Value Study
Lisa Snow Lady
To learn how to translate complex subject matter into more simplified shapes, students do a study with just four values. This "limitation" actually encourages them to think in terms of discrete shapes.
Class: Landscape Painting: Essential Theory and Process
Limited 4-Value Study
Class: Landscape Painting: Essential Theory and Process
Limited 2-Value Study
Joan Ostendorff
Even more challenging is the 2-value study. With only black and white to work with, you must make more choices about the intermediate values. Which values will fall to white and which one will fall to black?
Class: Landscape Painting: Essential Theory and Process
Limited 2-Value Study
David Maclean
Even more challenging is the 2-value study. With only black and white to work with, you must make more choices about the intermediate values. Which values will fall to white and which one will fall to black?
Class: Landscape Painting: Essential Theory and Process
Plein Air Painting
Instructor
Demonstration
Workshop: Landscape Painting in the Skagit Valley, 2007
Plein Air Painting
Instructor
Demonstration
Workshop: Landscape Painting in the Skagit Valley, 2007
