Landscape Processes:
A Sampling of Demonstrations and In-class Exercises
My landscape classes at Gage Academy of
Art are exceedingly practical. Class time is a combination of lectures, demonstrations and exercises, all designed to teach the core skills necessary for landscape painting — simplification and massing, composition and site selection, and color strategies.
The samples below are from instructor demonstrations
and student exercises.
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. An underpainting doesn't need to be very detailed, but it must have enough form and value to suggest the overall structure. Even a simple plein air painting can begin with an underpainting.
Underpainting
Suzanne Burnell
Class: Studio Landscape Painting, 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.
Color Strategies (below)
Joan Ostendorff
Class: Studio Landscape Painting, 2009
Students are encouraged to develop their own color stragegy, especially when working from photos in the studio. Aabove left, 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.
Limited 4-Value Study
Charles Smith
To learn how to translate complex subject matter into more simplified shapes, students do a study with very limited values — only four. This "limitation" actually encourages you to think in terms of discrete shapes, without any blending between values, as if the shapes were paper cutouts.
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?
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
