As we entered the large hall several of the paintings immediately caught my attention. One of them, a large painting of a river winding its way around a massive red rock by Conrad Buff, practically shouted to come hither. It passed the 60 foot hurdle. As I got closer the structural rhythms and lines became more noticeable and formed an energetic and varied composition. Even more intrigued I yearned to observe the painting even closer. From just a few feet away the lively brushstrokes and crosshatched patterns of color gave me the anticipated payoff.

There were other paintings that gave a similar experience. With few exceptions these were the paintings I enjoyed most. So what was the phenomenon that was engaging me and giving such visual satisfaction? I came to the conclusion that at 60 feet a viewer can only see the most basic, abstract patterns. If this pattern is contrived by the artist to create an interesting motion and variety of interlocking shapes the painting communicates to viewers the possibility that on closer inspection they will be further rewarded.

At 6 feet viewers find it difficult to see the large pattern and begin to see the finer detail of composition. They began to see linear detail, and by this I mean the lines formed by adjacent shapes, as well as linear aspects that are created by shorelines, rivers, trees, and other forms. If this consortium of lines causes the eye to wander and dart through the two-dimensional space in a pleasing manner viewers are again rewarded and tempted to get closer still.

Finally, as viewers approach the canvas within a foot or so they see the texture of the paint marks and brush strokes. At this level the viewer is again immersed in an abstract world. If this abstract world has a conscious structure the viewer is again rewarded by connecting with the artist’s original intention.

What we experience as we approach a painting is a shifting series of presentations and interpretations which create an interplay of anticipation and satisfaction. Of course not every painting has to fulfill the viewer on every level. But on this occasion the paintings that fulfilled this three-tiered expectation were the most satisfying.

I concluded from this experience that I need to present to the viewer a strong abstract pattern at 60 feet. I need to present a rhythmic and visually pleasing linear composition at 6 feet. And at 6 inches I need to deliver an undulating interplay of interlocking texture.

I’m finding that the more I explore composition the more I love composition that doesn’t rely on formula but rather is an idiosyncratic expression of a unique mind. There are very few consolations to adherents of this opinion. There are even less solutions or safety nets. Once exposed to this reality you have no alternative but to abandon common solutions and push off into uncharted seas.

It is a lofty goal, one I have yet to fully implement, but it does at least open the possibility to discovery and innovation. I suppose I arrived at this opinion due to the ubiquity of the law of thirds and other compositional solutions so prevalent in our genre. And yet I am haunted by the weaknesses of these formulas.

I haven’t always been an admirer of George Inness. The last time I was at the Metropolitan Museum I went specifically to study a painting by Thomas Moran. Adjacent to Moran’s painting was one by George Inness. As my wife and I sat gazing at the Moran the subtle power of the Inness began to pervade our visual field. Eventually we were totally overwhelmed with the Inness. This was a curious event as I am a long time admirer of Moran. It was especially interesting because, unlike the Moran, the surface of the Inness was seemingly artless and lacking in any technical sophistication. All the force of the painting was centered in the sheer power of the composition.

That was a great lesson for me and I began to study the composition of George Inness with renewed interest. At midcareer Inness totally abandoned the compositional conventions of his era in favor of an entirely homemade system. Due to the influence of Swedenborgianism and numerology Inness created a bizarre mode of composition based on the opposition of the seen and the unseen world. Whether you agree with his foundational ideas or not is immaterial. What is important is that Inness constructed an entirely personal and previously unknown method of composition. Of course, not all of George Inness’ compositions are equally great. Acknowledging that composition is the loftiest art in a constellation of difficult arts we can forgive Inness his occasional errors. But few deny that his best work is entirely unprecedented in its compositional uniqueness.

Evolving a personal compositional approach is a lofty goal and one that may elude me. But I now feel obliged to nurture those obsessions and idiosyncrasies that might make my composition the unique expression of a unique mind.

I stretched a 36″ x 36″ canvas and gessoed it. I then drew a grid with lines every 6 inches. I transferred my drawing and begin glazing in my underpainting. I painted for about six hours carefully glazing and scumbling until I achieved the needed effect, a very thin but accurate rendition of my reference. I didn’t worry about surface texture or virtuoso brushstrokes. I worried only about painting values and hues.

I then wet my canvas by spraying on a thin layer of water from an atomizer. I then mixed up a series of values and hues carefully using my nine value grayscale to carefully match value. I mixed my colors with my left hand and swiped my brush across my palette knife to load my brush with broken color. I then very quickly applied the paint into small, discrete areas. This breaking up the painting into small areas was the major difference from painting in oils. With my initial layer I did occasionally notice a border between the different areas. But on the second application of paint these borders were eradicated and I could see no transitions.

I was surprised at how similar painting with acrylics is to painting with oils. I may continue in acrylics for awhile to see what the medium has to teach me. It should be an interesting journey.


(Click on the image of the painting above, Water and Rock, 36″ x36″, acrylic on canvas, to view texture).

So my lack of passion for red remains somewhat of a mystery. Some painters refer to red as the great moderator, meaning it needs to be felt in nearly every color as a unifying presence. For the time being, I suppose I will settle for reds that are useful. Among these I count quinacridone red, transparent earth red, and cadmium red light.

Some of my favorite painters use a limited palette so once, for six-months, I tried using a palette of ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson permanent, and cadmium yellow light. But with such a palette I found my paintings lacked complexity otherwise attainable by using additional hues. For me I found using a limited palette to be restrictive, and worse, it wasn’t any fun.

On my monthly visits to my local art store I love to linger over the paint display finally settling on a strange color. I find adding an exotic color or two boosts my creativity. I have discovered quite a few colors this way that ended up in my pantheon of must-have colors. Occasionally I pick colors in relation to other colors. For example I love andanthrone blue because it’s the perfect companion color to thalo blue. I also love dioxazine purple because it compliments transparent earth yellow so well. Transparent earth yellow is also a fantastic color because it is so dark out of the tube which gives a broader range of value.

I prefer some colors because of their tinting strength and purity of tone. Transparent earth red fits into that category as I find it stronger and cleaner than burnt sienna. Some colors are great because they make such wonderful grays. One such color is cadmium red light which mixes well with blues to make amazing grays.

Other colors are luxuries like transparent orange which although it is a hue( meaning it is a mixture of more basic colors) it is a beautiful one and difficult to mix. It is a great substitute for Indian yellow which I find has a slight gray undertone. I have no problem using hues if it saves time and generates the kind of creative enthusiasm I need to feel in the studio. Another hue I love is sap green as well as titanium buff and radiant yellow, two colors with lots of titanium white.

Although I feel I have settled in to a selection of colors I feel comfortable with and can easily predict color mixtures, I see no need to restrict my palette if in doing so I limit my potential. In the final analysis I just love color too much to do without such beautiful possibilities.


Click on the above image, View from Mountain Green, 16″ x 20″, oil on canvas, to see the texture.

In like manner I switched from oils to acrylics to test my abilities and see if acrylic paint had anything to teach me about the art of thick paint. And I learned quite a bit. The first thing I learned was that many of the prejudices against acrylic are unfounded. Many claim that oils has a richness that acrylics can’t match. However on close examination the lack of richness is from failing to use broken color, something that happens almost accidentally with oils. With acrylics you have to design the broken color. If you mix colors on the canvas you are going to get non-mixed colors, colors with very discrete edges because of the quick drying time of thin applications. These applications will look dead compared to a similar application of oil paint because there will be no intermingling of paint on the canvas. In other words painters were inadvertently assigning weaknesses for the wrong reasons. I found that if you use the techniques described in this blog (specifically entries 3 and 4) it is impossible to tell the visual difference between oil and acrylic. Additionally I found that when I painted wet-into-wet with acrylics I couldn’t tell the difference between the tactile quality of the two mediums, a claim nearly every oil painter makes.

However I could easily see and feel the difference when I applied thin acrylic paint onto a dry canvas. It seemed like the canvas was sucking the paint off my brush and drying instantly in parched, dead patches of color. Each stroke had a brittle edge and the painting began to look like a series of matt, lifeless swipes. There was no intermingling of color and few vibrational effects. So the trick to introducing vibrational color is to have plenty of paint on the palette and use LOTS of intermixed paint on the brush. The thicker the application the slower the drying time and the more you get the vibrational effects so loved in oils.

Ultimately the only difference I was able to see was that I couldn’t scrape the canvas if I applied too much texture. However after I gave my ceramics tool a razor sharp edge I was able to cut away large clumps of dried paint. It worked better than I thought it would. The only caveats are you have to be careful not to cut the canvas and it is a slow process. Golden Acrylics is sending me an additive that will make the paint film brittle like oil paint and it may solve this problem. If so that will mean I will be able to work back into a scraped canvas quickly and nearly indefinitely, building up both rich texture and painting wet-into-wet over previously thick passages. Another odd quality of acrylics is thick applications dry considerably thinner than the wet strokes. The impasto illusion is preserved visually, but it may bother thick paint purists who want those thick impasto strokes to remain exactly as they were applied.

On the positive side acrylics naturally encourage hard edges. And since I naturally use too many soft edges acrylics is a good remedy for that weakness. It also allows for nearly instant glazing possibilities since it dries so quickly. I tend to glaze too heavily in oils but less so with acrylics so again it is a good remedy for that deficiency.

The experiment is ongoing and I want to paint at least one more large acrylic painting. I doubt I will abandoned oils in favor of acrylics. But meanwhile acrylic has taught me a great deal about my own weaknesses. More importantly it has brought into sharp relief why I love thick paint and allowed me to see more clearly the problems and challenges of that technique. As mentioned in earlier entries, if you can’t see a problem you can’t fix it.

Painting from photos is a great advantage but in the absence of painting from life your interpretation of nature can become impoverished. Painting shadows too dark is a common error of painting from photographs as is painting highlights devoid of color. Even in high and low values the natural world maintains saturated colors. Which is impossible to replicate with the limited value range of pigments. The wide value range that maintain their color intensity in nature is one of my biggest problems when painting outdoors. I tend to match values but because of the inability of paint to capture the high and low values and still preserve saturation I lose color in the high and low value areas of my painting.

This year I intend to consciously focus on forcing my value range more toward middle values, sacrificing an accurate value range in favor of a richer range of colors. In the field I may have relied too heavily on my value scale, but value is only one aspect of a painting. When I painted en plein air my lights would look washed out and my darks like black holes punched in the canvas. My values were accurate but I lost the sense of luminosity.

The remedy is to observe accurate value, record where the important value zones are, but then compress the values to allow more color in those areas. For example the lights should be in the 6 to 7 range and the darks in the 2 to 3 values. That leaves values 4 and 5 for the middle range. In other words to paint effectively outside you must consciously compress your value range to give the illusion of saturated color. Does that mean the 9 value finder is of no importance in the field? Not at all. It will give you accurate measurements you can then decide how to manipulate on your canvas.

The reason plein air painting is so difficult is the need for subtle value shifts, and the necessity of using illusion to maintain saturation. It can be hard to differentiate one zone from the next and still maintain the necessary pattern. If you lose this pattern you lose your overall design and the painting becomes indecipherable. One way to preserve these subtle shifts in to be sure to maintain hard edges and to keep value patches discrete. If edges become too soft or blurred the value zones will no longer fulfill their compositional function.

Nature is the ultimate teacher for the landscape painter and the time is at hand to resume our eduction.

As a precursor to actually going out into the field I decided to make a list of necessary items. This list will be growing, contracting, and generally evolving throughout the plein air season as I refine my methods.

The main item in any painter’s field kit will be a good portable easel. I have a French easel and a Gloucester easel for larger paintings. I prefer my gloucester easel but it is difficult to carry on airplanes and has a large palette I made for it that can be difficult to carry over large distances. The french easel has straps like a back pack so I can free my hands for other gear. I use a large white artist umbrella with a clamp to shade my canvas and palette.

I also have an attaché style wooden box which carries pencils, brushes, palette knives, and viewing devises. I carry a canvas bag with all my tubes of paint which are all 150 ml tubes. I have a large tin of mineral spirits (I use Gamsol for low toxicity) and a box of tissues for cleaning my brushes, a plastic bag for disposal (I place a rock in it in the field to keep it from blowing around). For canvases I bring a variety of Utrecht pre-stretched canvases already toned with Venetian red and placed face to face using metal canvas clips to hold the wet surfaces away from each other.

Regarding viewing tools my painting glasses are a must as well as my reduction glass and prism. I made a few composing viewers which I will demonstrate in a future video, one of them used by George Inness. I use my nine value grayscale a lot in the field so I take several of those. I use the palette that came with the French easel but I strap it to the open drawer with a bungee cord so it resembles my studio set-up. I need my left hand free to mix paint just like in the studio.

Concerning colors it is important to keep things simple without resorting to a limited palette (which personally is not to my taste although some use it masterfully). LaConte Stewart suggested a palette consisting of a warm and cool of each primary, which I believe is a good start. I’m going to suggest having dioxazine purple, and transparent earth yellow, two very deep hues that complement each other beautifully. I would add alizarin crimson permanent and sap green. Cadmium red light is a good warm version of red. For blues I use thalo blue (very warm) and Indanthrone blue (very cool). My transparent earth yellow with white works as yellow ochre but I do need a cool yellow so I add cadmium yellow light (which is cooler than the transparent earth yellow). That gives me a cool of each primary plus purple and green. Just to round out the secondary color spectrum I add transparent yellow, a very warm orange similar to Indian yellow (but cleaner). As I mentioned these suggestions will evolve as the season passes so stay tuned.