It's Better Than You Think!

[Marvin Mattelson]

Sooo, gentlemen, if I boil all of this theory down to its essence, what you're saying is that if you have a really, really, bright direct light source in your painting, you should paint it like it's glowin', right? Or am I missing something?

Yes Tom, I do believe you are missing something, but I don

[Tom Edgerton]

I'm sorry, my comment was so tongue-in-cheek that the bemusement was mistaken for (willful?) ignorance.

If all of this has in actuality saved me some confused thrashing around, I'm grateful, but we'll see.

My point is, whether you favor the stack of 8x10 glossies, or the circles and arrows, sooner or later you are faced with paint, brushes and a canvas. Having all of this theory in mind may or may not help, but when I'm painting, my actual method is to try something and if that doesn't work, try something else.

Or as Friedrich Engels said: "An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory."

Carry on.

[Marvin Mattelson]

I kind of follow Jim Croce's advice,

Now you don't tug on Superman's cape.
You don't spit in the wind.
You don't pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger.
And you don't mess around with Jim.

Especially the part about spitting into the wind. If one chooses to spit on a windy day, one should learn to do so with the wind at their back.

I look at painting theory as a guideline or a compass. It's function is to appropriately point one in the proper direction.

A wise man once told me, "pigments function in a more limited scheme than actual natural light. Anyone who paints runs into this limitation pretty early, whether they are intellectually aware of it or not. The trick is to translate, and eventually to control and enhance to achieve aesthetic goals."

[John Zeissig]

Marvin, thanks for the clarification of your position. I don't really have much quarrel with some of your broader views as expressed above.

[quote]If you paint a gray scale (equal steps from white to black) hold it up and compare it to a scene of norma[ contrast, (containing light and shadow) you will see that natures range is greater than paint

[Marvin Mattelson]

John, when you describe you are

placing the value scale in various parts of the scene, and viewing from various distances, it was obvious to me that, under equal illumination from the same source (sun), the RANGE of the value scale easily exceeded the range of values in the scene.

it

[Timothy C. Tyler]

Marvin, maybe we agree on this part-I'm not sure. Nature on this planet, has fixed ranges of value "on a sunnny day". Paint has fixed ranges of value. In order to depict the former we may use only the latter.

What I see too often are weak paintings where artists don't use all the tools available to them. Some landscape painters like Cyle Aspevig, T Moran, F Church can paint sunlight and distance wonderfully. Sargent and Bougureau can paint sunlight falling on figures in ways that move us. It is only when an artist understands NOT ONLY THE LIMITS of paint but also the OPPORTUNITIES of paint that work becomes more than dull and mediocre.

[Steven Sweeney]

Tim, Care to identify the title, painter, and provenance? (For both educational and copyright purposes. We can't post others' works here without permission or proper acknowledgment of their rights in those works.)

[Timothy C. Tyler]

Joaquin and I are very close so he won't mind, sorry.

[Marvin Mattelson]

Tim,

My point has always been that the range of values in nature far exceed the values available in paint. By understanding the value (as well as hue and chroma) relationships within a scene an artist can recreate the experience of seeing the "real" scene for the viewer. Gerome, at his best, was also a master of this, as well as his student, William McGregor Paxton.

[Timothy C. Tyler]

Paxton is maybe the best American figure painter that actually lived here.