Three-Day Pastel Landscape Workshop
Santa Monica, California
Draw some of the most beautiful and famed coastline in the world with artist Michael Newberry.
May 15-17, 2010
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Light and shadow are two of the most challenging problems facing a painter. Painters can’t harness real light and shadow; instead they must rely on subtle gradations of color to create the illusion.
Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, 1634. Galleria degli Uffizi
In general, I use “light” in painting to mean all those areas which are directly lit by a light source. For example, in this Rembrandt self-portrait most of his face, the glow behind him, some of his hair, and the front of his coat are in the light. The “shadows” are all those areas which fall outside of the light. To demonstrate the division between light and shadow, I cut and pasted squares of color taken from this painting, and divided them into two groups below.
Shadow Light
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On the left are squares taken from the shadows from his face, coat, hair, and the wall. Notice how extremely close in tone they are.
On the light side, there is a larger range of colors and hues.
The thing to understand is that in the light areas the painter has more freedom with the whites, oranges, grays, yellows, blues, greens etc. But, in the shadow areas, the painter must be very careful to keep the shadows homogenous. Rembrandt painted all the shadows as if they were covered by a dark veil.
Monet is another painter known for his wonderful light, yet he is quite different from Rembrandt.
Monet, Impression, soleil levant, 1872. Musée
Marmottan Monet
Here Monet is not making dark shadows, yet he is making his shadows homogenous by linking them with a blue hue. It is as if he placed all the shadows under a blue filter.
In Monet’s light areas he has painted both warm and cool colors. If you squint your eyes looking at the color charts below, you can see the larger range of color in the light section.
Shadow Light
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Both Rembrandt and Monet are doing similar things; their shadows are very subtle and they use both warm and cool colors for their light areas.
I hope you enjoyed seeing shadow and light in a fresh way.
Michael Newberry
Santa Monica, October 2009
Here is the amazing Martha Argerich in a relatively recent 2008 live performance of Bach. She is my all-time favorite pianist, and my top five favorite musician. It’s wonderful to appreciate great artists of the past like Bach and Rembrandt, and appreciate great performances from musicians no longer living. But it takes something more to seek out and appreciate living performers and artists who are creating exceptional works now. That is one of my aims with curating shows at my gallery, and I encourage everyone who loves the arts to give a special nod to those making art now.
Cadieux, Winter Sunset from My Pool, 2009, oil on canvas 18 x 24 inches
Cathey Cadieux pushes the envelope on just how sensual color can get. But her imagery is not decorative or flat; she moves and pulls the forms of sky, water, and vegetation with an effortless shift of color vibrations. Notice how the blue violet reflection in the water in the foreground zooms right up to us, while the sky it is reflecting has a paler, pinker violet color, which is softy angled back towards the horizon.
Cadieux also perfectly balances the gradations of light, forming a hierarchy which takes steps leading up to the lightest and most brilliant patches of color. What impresses me as well is the richness and beauty of the purple shadows, and how they serve as a complementary foil to the dark, earthy browns and greens. The overall effect bathes, soothes, and manipulates one’s vision like a spa for the eyes.
Winter Sunset from My Pool and four other Cadieux paintings will be featured in the group show, Landscape with a Modern Edge, October 17th at the Newberry Gallery in Santa Monica.
Michael Newberry
www.NewberryGallery.com
Daud Akhriev, Harbor Noon, 2009, oil on archival board, 6 x 20 inches
Daud Akhriev, Roof Top Serenity, 2009, oil on archival board, 6 x 20
Daud Akhriev has one of the quickest and most deft hands of any painter alive. He can embellish huge amounts of detail, yet never lose the overall architecture of the picture. For those not in the know, representational outdoor painting demands extremely quick paint application before the sun has an opportunity to move on, changing the lighting. Daud creates thousands of detailed forms, such as the clouds, buildings, docks, and colorful merchant stalls; all of which delicately encourage our eyes to move through the painting’s depth.
Daud has been featured in Artists Magazine and has given courses at the Florence Academy of Art, in Florence, Italy.
Harbor Noon and another of his works will be featured in the group show, Landscape with a Modern Edge, October 17th at the Newberry Gallery in Santa Monica.
Michael Newberry
The complete image list for the upcoming show, Landscape with a Modern Edge at the Newberry Gallery October 17th, 2009 is online now.
Michael Newberry, Black Night, White Knight, pastel on black paper, 19 x 26 inches
Michael Newberry, Lit Entrance, 2009, pastel on black paper, 19 x 26 inches
I just signed these to pastel nocturnes today. They will be featured in the group show, Landscape with a Modern Edge at the Newberry Gallery in Santa Monica, opening October 17th, 2009. For more information please visit: www.newberrygallery.com
Woodul, Espiritu Ascendente (Ascending Spirit), 2007,
charcoal on Rives BFK, 16 x 26 inches (40.6 x 66 cm)
Espiritu Ascendente
This piece is dedicated to my granddaughter Pao who as some of you know, left us two years ago at age five. She was born brain damaged and was deprived of verbal communication and voluntary movement but she had the capability of offering a smile with a radiance I have never seen in anyone else.
This smile, like her giggles would make me feel and understand how such a simple action could give you moments of complete happiness. No other smile has ever been the same.
The flower symbolizes her as I think she left us that day, radiant and turning to a light that only she was capable of seeing. The lace is characteristic of her fragility, beauty and her Latin heritage. The cloth is the baby sheet she spent many hours on in my house when she was brought to visit me frequently. I can feel her sweet angelic smile as I have worked on this and now that I am posting it.
I have chosen a Spanish title that translated means, Ascending Spirit. Spanish because, as the lace, reflects her Latin heritage and I think it is the title that best describes this piece. The flower, her symbol, has a slight turn upward as if it were lifting itself from the sheet to the light that guides the Spirit.
I thank Michael Newberry from the bottom of my heart for this unforgettable experience that at times was difficult, as he said it would be, but most of the time I had the pleasure of feeling her presence.
Mary Woodul
A giclee of this work will be in the upcoming group show, Symbolic Still Life, Jan 23 – Feb 26, 2010 at the Newberry Gallery in Santa Monica.
Robin Purcell, Bartholomew Park, 2009, watercolor on arches, 12 x 16 inches
Robin Purcell has a unique style in which quilt-like patches of color overlap and flow across both the paper and the landscape. She varies the tone and hue of the colors, which encourages our eyes to move from one area to another; notice how this works with the four different patches of burnt orange (lower left to lower right of the image). More elaborately, she does the same thing with the variations of the greens, from the first three triangular shapes in the foreground to the many shapes changing in intensity as they recede back through the hills.
Purcell’s style has hints of early 20th-century children’s illustrated books, with the patchwork landscape of Southwest England, and Vermeer’s abstract patches of light and shadow.
This work along with a few other of Purcell’s watercolors will be on display in the group show, Landscape with a Modern Edge at the Newberry Gallery in Santa Monica.
Michael Newberry
Cezanne, Still-Life with Apples and Oranges, 1899
There are unlimited possibilities for what one can do with a composition; the combinations are countless. Composition is essentially the arrangement of objects/forms within the border of the canvas or paper. The aim of this tutorial is to illustrate that there is one essential ingredient to superb composition.
There are quite a few compositional theories about how to direct the eye movement, how to tier figures, how to create either dynamic or calm feelings, etc. Virtually all of these theories are valid but the sheer weight of all the different rules can easily overwhelm an artist with a pencil in hand and a pristine white page in front of him or the spectator trying to grasp the quality of a composition.
Since I was a kid I studied artists and one particular approach I had was to look for the common denominator between artists. For example, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Michelangelo, Picasso (in specific periods) use an egg shape for their heads. Another example is how great artists have similarly arranged compositions and I discovered the following:
An excellent composition has interesting shapes in all four corners.
The operative word is interesting. And I cannot stress that aspect enough. Artists too easily fluff the corners with gray emptiness or boring, generic shapes. The pro-active way is to accent and look for the shapes and colors that excite you.
Ok, let’s start. Here is Vermeer’s Girl with a Water Pitcher, 1665. I have drawn an oval on the image. What concerns us here are the colors and shapes outside of the oval, the areas of the four corners. We have the motifs of a map and the carpet table cover on the right. There are beautiful abstract shapes of the window, corner of the wall, and light in the upper left. And in the bottom left there is nuanced shadowing of the corner walls.
Diebenkorn, Cityscape 1 (Landscape No. 1), 1963
Diebenkorn obviously is not a realist like Vermeer and yet, like Vermeer, he has interesting shapes in the corners.
Las Meninas, 1656, by Velazquez is one of my favorite paintings. In 3 of the corners we have wonderful shapes of the canvas, the dog and the children, and window niches and framed paintings. The upper left corner is essentially the ceiling but notice how Velazquez created a pocket of light there.
Van Gogh’s Room at Arles, 1889
A nice contrast to Las Meninas is this Van Gogh painting of his bedroom. Notice that there is little in the bottom center, rather all the objects are pushed out towards the corners.
Picasso, La famille de saltimbanques, 1905
In three of the corners of this painting Picasso uses changeable stuff of clouds and light to create interest.
Vermeer, Girl with a Red Hat, 1665
Another favorite painting of mine is this Vermeer. I think by now you can easily see that these artists create very interesting shapes, colors and light in their corners.
You might want to go back to the top and have a good look at the stunning Cezanne composition.
I hope you enjoyed seeing composition in a fresh way. I guarantee that you will feel a great deal of satisfaction when you take a little extra time and effort in the corners of your paintings and make them interesting!
Michael Newberry
June 2006
Film Tour Landscape with a Modern Edge Show
October 20, 2009 — Michael Newberry