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!
Austin Briggs was 19 and still in art school when he sold his first drawing to Collier's magazine. Briggs soon decided he didn't need more school. He was making good money from Collier's imitating the popular artists of the day. But after a couple of years Briggs realized that he was faking it. Many of his lines were just random squiggles with little understanding of what went on beneath the surface. He was borrowing solutions he hadn't earned, and his shortcuts began to betray him. His assignments started to dry up. He'd never learned to paint. Desperate for money, he quit the field of illustration. He took other jobs, but all the while he was determined to go back and do it right: "I set about learning to draw, which I never could do before." Briggs' son described this turning point in his father's life: I see how correct he was in his mature assessment of his early work: he could not really draw, but with sheer vitality he faked his way to renderings that conveyed power and authority. When the new demand for color illustration left my father in the Depression virtually without work and with a wife and two small children to support, he would not quit. Taking his easel and sketch pad out of the studio, he began to look at the world-- to really see it. Over God knows how many long hours of work, he taught himself until he eventually developed great skill as a colorist and as a draftsman.... Looking back, Briggs recalled: These were experimental years; I explored new compositional approaches, new techniques or variations of old techniques and new manners of working with limited means. The fees I received from my drawings were largely plowed back into my work.... This was my chance to learn, and I worked over drawings until they were as good as I thought I could make them. Briggs learned to draw and to paint with great skill: Then his art got looser... And even looser: Briggs became a dominant force in American illustration of the 20th century. His strong, opinionated work covered the full gamut of the illustration field, from pulps and comic strips to the movie industry to the covers of books, records and top magazines. But the thing that interests me most about this story was that, at the height of his powers, having invested years in mastering painting and color theory, Briggs returned to simple drawing where he started. As he became more fearless, he no longer needed fancy paints or even inks. He simplified down to a pencil or a litho crayon. Art directors for prestigious magazines were happy to accept a drawing from Briggs where once a full color oil painting would've been expected. Briggs became famous in the industry for a remarkable series of drawings that he did for TV Guide, which were cited when he was inducted into the Illustration Hall of Fame: Image courtesy of Taraba Illustration Art If you compare Briggs' later drawings with his early random squiggles, you get a sense for how much he learned. In the words of T.S. Eliot: We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
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…
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