Edgar Payne, one of California's leading landscape painters of all time, helped me understand three key ideas about painting trees when I did a master copy.
I just stumbled across a beautiful book collecting the paintings of Edgar Payne. I know nothing about him, but I love the paintings. Great compositions and great brushwork. I'm inspired. Check it out, the book is called Edgar Payne, The Scenic Journey.
Read Article: Edgar Payne 1883-1947, The Scenic Journey by Scott A. Shields on Incollect.
Edgar Payne wrote a book called 'Composition of Outdoor Painting' which is considered a classic. I have to confess that I've never been able to read the whole thing, as I find his writing style to be incredibly ponderous and dull. However, the redeeming strength of his book are the numerous thumbnail compositional studies and examples that describe his ideas, analysis, and advice in a very clear and succinct fashion. To say that Payne practiced what he preached is an understatement. While he may be a less than ideal author for my tastes, his paintings are as strong and clear as his compositional thumbnails, and are full of vigorous brushwork and luminous color. One can learn plenty by studying his originals which are currently on display at the Crocker Museum in Sacramento. The show features a good selection of his well known subjects, the mountains, the fishing boats, the Southwest, and seascapes, most of them sizable studio efforts. I could only find about 3 pieces that I felt were plein air studies... 2 small seascapes and an alpine scene. What struck me about his work overall is how consistently he adhered to a strong compositional division of tone into 2 major value patterns. If he wanted to further direct the eye, he would push saturation and value more in a specific area, while remaining within the key of that region. His brush scaling was straightforward: the bigger the canvas, the bigger the brush! No more image detail was to be had in the larger paintings, just big, thick strokes of paint. He also seemed to exemplify Charles Hawthorne's oft-repeated advice about ''...putting the right spot of color in the right place", letting edges 'take care of themselves', so to speak. This was especially evident in some of the fishing boat paintings with figures, where there was a lot of blank canvas between brush strokes, yet the image was resolved about a few feet back. It was clear that the bulk of his imagery was devised in the studio, though based on plenty of firsthand observation from his numerous field trips. He landscaped many of his iconic mountain scenes with lakes conveniently and reliably placed at the bottom of the frame, whether they existed that way in nature or not. Some of his seascapes contained foam 'serpents' that rivaled a Frank Frazetta painting, all in the service of strengthening the composition Most of the Southwest paintings had a small grouping of figures on horseback strategically placed to provide contrast of scale to the cliffs and sky. Payne, a scenic painter and muralist by trade for many years, created a body of work that established an iconic language of landscape in his consistent use of these devices. A critic might dismiss all this as mannerism or formula. Some might call it style. Regardless, he's an excellent painter from whom one can learn and be inspired by. His compositions are rock solid, he captured light and color of various locales and time of day beautifully. Just google image his name and you can read his imagery easily in thumbnail form. There's really nothing obscure or murky about his work. And they are luminous!
When I think of landscape painting, one of the first artists who comes to mind is Edgar Payne. He was one of America's most prominent landscape painters.
Some books just rise above the others, some seemingly choose you, and some just keep coming back to you through all your years. I was introduced to “Composition of Outdoor Painting” alm…
Some books just rise above the others, some seemingly choose you, and some just keep coming back to you through all your years. I was introduced to “Composition of Outdoor Painting” alm…
Do you want to create paintings on canvas like the great landscape artist Edgar Payne? Then this blog post is for you.
Most people know Edgar Payne for his vast mountain paintings, but it seems he was also keen on painting boats at the harbor.
American Impressionist painter Edgar Payne grew up in Missouri, but spent the most productive part of his career captivated by the majestic scenery of the West.
In this post, I discuss the different types of shapes you will encounter in art, how to use them, and provide master painting examples.
I am continuing the theme of the last few days of writing short posts on a particular subject rather than a large theme. I will return to another series of related posts soon, after I recover from the massive "Every brushstroke" campaign. The paintings on this page are by Edgar Payne, the author of a book I want to tell you about. Some time ago I recommended John Carlsons Guide to landscape painting.Today I am recommending another book. Edgar Paynes composition of outdoor painting. These two books are the best resources on landscape painting.The east coast artists seem to prefer Carlson and the west coast painters tend to prefer Payne. They are quite different. Carlson is a broad how-to book covering every aspect of landscape painting. The Payne book is largely concerned only with the design of landscape paintings. He has been an enormous influence on plein air painters in the west and southwest. His work is broad and his color is unusual, You may have heard him referred to on this site in the comments. If you could only own two books on landscape painting these would be the two. The heart of the Payne book is his explanation of design stems. These are stock compositional arrangements that artists use to assemble paintings,. As I write this is it sounds rather uncreative, but I don't believe you will find it so. They are sort of skeletal armatures that help you think about a paintings design, rather than a template you build a painting within. Payne draws pages and pages of little thumbnails showing the major design stems that artists have repeatedly used in landscapes. After enumerating these stems, he shows how dozens of artists have used them to create paintings. He also shows a lot of little drawings explaining common design errors. I have spoken before about what I think makes for a good book on painting. I think the best books are written by fine painters. I think no one can teach you anything about painting that they can't do themselves. Payne was a very good painter and knew why he did things the way he did them. His prose is a little bit stilted and some passages have to be deciphered as much as read, but it is worth the trouble. You could read this book once a year and benefit by that greatly in your painting. I got my copy out to refer to to write this post and now I believe I will read it again myself. Soon i will do some posts on design stems for landscape painting. Some of the ideas I will tell you about come from Payne and some from the Rockport school and some just from my own experience. One of the reasons I am posting this today is that when I was on Amazon this afternoon and contemplating doing a post on the book, I noticed they had only a very few copies left. This book goes in and out of print. Sometimes you can get a copy, sometimes only used copies are available and they are expensive. So it might be a good idea to get one of these while you can. If you miss it though there will be more, hopefully soon. I am going to do another critique soon. So email me images to crit. I will photoshop your signature off of the paintings and I will tell no one whose paintings I am critiquing. You can send the paintings to me at [email protected] O
Do you want to create paintings on canvas like the great landscape artist Edgar Payne? Then this blog post is for you.
Most people know Edgar Payne for his vast mountain paintings, but it seems he was also keen on painting boats at the harbor.
Edgar Payne, one of California's leading landscape painters of all time, helped me understand three key ideas about painting trees when I did a master copy.
When I think of landscape painting, one of the first artists who comes to mind is Edgar Payne. He was one of America's most prominent landscape painters.
