The Benefit of Reflection from Viewer Comments

The Jacques Barzun book “Simple and Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers” is on my desk directly in front of me. In it Barzun states, “It has been said that we should write as we speak. That is absurd, …. Most speaking is not plain or direct, but vague, clumsy, confused, and wordy….What is meant by the advice to write as we speak is to write as we might [author’s emphasis] speak if we spoke extremely well.” This had special meaning to me as I read it this afternoon.

In responding to my daughter Laura’s comments on the blog post this morning, I had a bit of an epiphany that I will express here now. I was trying to explain to her that I had discovered from the Bob Rohm book “The Painterly Approach” (Northlight) and through watching a video I have of him doing a demonstration, these simple principles of painting methodology:
1. Formulate the idea.

2. Simplify the shapes.
3. Average the values.
4. Average the color.
5. Determine the extremes.
    What is the darkest dark?
    What is the lightest light?
    What is the most intense hue?
    What is the most dynamic edge?

Mr. Rohm states that, by adding the extremes to the under painting containing the simplified shapes, averaged values and colors, one has solved the picture. This is a condensation of a few of the critical points in his book and I commend it to you should you wish an expansion on these principles.

I realized that this is exactly what is missing in my previous work in several genre. Formulate the idea and focus everything on the expression of that idea.

That is basic, for instance, to sermon preparation: the Big Idea. My years of preaching were filled with homilies that, in hindsight, did not communicate very well. From the pulpit, I poured out lots of information gleaned from my study to the point of overwhelming those in the pew. Sometimes I think their eyes would literally roll back in their head. What was missing was the Big Idea of the passage, something that should be clearly understood from the pericope and should be consistent with the entire argument of the context. That Big Idea should be simply and directly expressed by “simplifying the shapes,” “averaging” the values and the color of the details, and eliminating any verbiage that is not directly related to the argument of the Big Idea. That is far more important than having lively or funny illustrations which I never was very good at so didn’t use many. If the illustration doesn’t help the listener know, understand and take home the Big Idea then it doesn’t belong in the message.

I compared my previous art work and found it to have a similar dilemma—no real clear concept that I wanted the viewer to see, too much detail, not enough simplification, no linking nor averaging of the values or colors, no real directing of the viewers eye to a particular place except as the natural composition I was viewing dictated. There are no extremes as listed above. They all have a good deal of sameness throughout due to my “copying” the details I saw. Too wide a range of values, too much sameness in textures and details, too few big shapes, no one place that holds two or more of the extremes of dark, light, intensity or sharpness of edge. They were technical “copies” of the scene.

My undergraduate and graduate papers most all suffered from not narrowing the idea enough and not simply and directly expressing that idea. Too much rambling around verbally.  My posts on this blog suffer in the same manner, up to this point at least.

My verbal communication suffers from the same problem. My dear wife often says, “TMI, too much information.” I never thought about the common thread of error in these various modes of communication.  This carries over even to my Information Technology support work.

As I considered these principles and attempted to communicate them to my daughter, I realized that I would like speak, paint, and write in a more elegant (in the true sense of the word) way: simple and direct.  Quietly formulating the idea I want to express--that which I want the one receiving the communication to hear, see or read.  Carefully choosing and adjusting my words or my brush strokes, colors, values to express the concept in the clearest, most engaging form.  When that is done I’ll be ready to expose that idea. I found this realization both enjoyable and encouraging.

I asked my daughter to post her comments on the blog, which she did, so others could benefit from her candid and very helpful thoughts and understand how they led me to step back and take a fresh look at improving my communications. Hopefully this will encourage others to comment freely which is what I desire. I’m not fragile and find criticism, whether positive or negative, very helpful as it causes me to reflect, review, and possibly redirect my efforts thereby growing, improving and learning from others.

As some famous orator has said, “If I had more time, I’d have said less.” I appreciate hearing from each of you and welcome the exchange of ideas, discoveries and thoughts as it helps me to connect to the outside world from the cage of my office.

First Color Sketch in 10 Years

Saturday, November 7, 2009 I put paint on a canvas for the first time in nearly ten years.  My intent was to just do a color sketch from a photo my daughter had taken near Tyler, Texas a couple of years ago while we were in the area for Thanksgiving.

I selected a 9X12 prepared gessoed panel and blocked in my darkest values using black gesso following the approach of the Svob book mentioned in an earlier post.  After that dried I applied a wash of Burnt Sienna acrylic over the entire surface.  I allowed that to dry before continuing and set out my palette of oil colors:

My palette consists of Cadmium Yellow Light, Cadmium Yellow Deep, Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Red, Alizarin Crimson, and Transparent Brown (warm colors in top row) as well as Ivory Black (I'd been told never to use black), Winsor Violet (Dioxanine), French Ultramarine Blue, Cobalt Blue, Viridian, and Titanium White (cool colors in second row).  My palette is glass with a white paper underneath and a four-value scale slipped between for value comparison.

The photo shown on a LCD computer monitor serves as my reference.  The photo is enhanced in the coloration, brightness and contrast using Adobe Photoshop CS4 since it is a "rejected" photo sent to me by my daughter.  She sent me a number of photos to use for reference and the first group were photos she did not expect to print due to them not being up to her standards.  I chose to use photos such as this as her photography is so good that I just want to frame her work and not paint it as it is already art itself.  I just selected 18 of her photos for printing (12X18) and framing to hand in our home.

As I began painting in oil on the completely covered canvas board, I first painted the brightest color having already established my dark masses with the gesso and middle values with the burnt sienna acrylic.  The first color I painted was the green grass in the pasture on the right followed by the yellows and oranges in the bank of trees on the right and the bright areas of sunlight on the road.  Next I laid in the sky and began to lay in colors in the middle values followed by reestablishing some of the dark patterns that were either misplaced originally or that needed some local color modulation.  Here is my "finished" color sketch which is much looser than my previous works.

I have "pushed" the hues and intensity of the colors to make the painting more dynamic.  As a beginning on my journey to become a better painter, I am pleased with this color sketch as it is much looser and dynamic than my earler work, a few of which I've shown below for comparisson.  This first attempt is more a painting than a copy of a photo and moving in the direction I desire to travel.  It went pretty fast and was done alla prima entirely.  It does not have the texture of paint application I was wanting as I had a tendancy to revert to my old manner of applying paint.

Below are a few of my paintings I did prior to 2000 which was the last time I painted before this journey began with this first color sketch done this past weekend.

In coming weeks I shall continue to paint even smaller (6X9 and 8X10) color sketches doing as many each day as I can accomplish to gain more freedom in execution and to develop my ability to see the subject as a painting with greater dynamics than the original and better design in composition and capturing the viewer's attention.  By doing these small color sketches I hope to quit focusing on the details and see the painting in my mind I want to produce.

By the way, I have been encouraged by two fine artist friends of mine and would like to invite you visit their websites and see their work:

http://www.jamesahumphrey.com/Gallery.html (James A. Humprey of Grapevine, Texas)

http://markkeathley.com/  (Mark Keathly of Victoria, Texas area)

These are both accomplished, successful professional fine artists whose work I'm sure you'll enjoy.