Day Ninety: Evening Distant Tower by Camille Corot
Hello and welcome to Day 90 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Evening Distant Tower' by Camille Corot.
We've done several studies after Camille in the series and though he was not actually a Tonalist painter he was extremely influential on Tonalism. For that reason I've included him in this series. Today's video features a track from my album The Lost Horizon, so please check that out.
We've been talking recently about my history as a artist and evolution to becoming a Tonalist landscape painter. I'm thinking that we may have covered most of the pertinent aspects of my journey. So today I'd like to discuss why I became attracted to doing actual physical oil paintings as opposed to working exclusively with digital media.
Digital media has taken over a lot of the artistic space that used to be dedicated to physical media. Much of this is in the form of movies and video games, but also in print media you see extensive manipulation of photographs and even hybrid artworks that are a combination of photography and painting.
As I've mentioned on this blog in the past I was very much into working with digital media and from 1995 to 2008 all the art that I did was created using a computer. I did do a lot of pen and ink work that was then scanned into the computer and colored, but ultimately all the finished artwork came out of an inkjet printer at the end of the day. There's absolutely nothing wrong with creating art this way but there are some major differences that people immersed in digital media to the exclusion of physical media may not be aware of.
One of the main differences, although it is subtle, is that artwork created with digital media has an ephemeral quality. This is because, for digital artwork to actually be displayed in the three dimensional physical world it must be printed on either paper or canvas. There is a lot of progress that's being made as far as printers being able to replicate the 3-D structure of actual paintings. It will be impossible to do this with two-dimensional art produced within the computer because, by its nature, it is always going to be flat.
Another difference that is even more subtle, has to do with consciousness and how consciousness inter-penetrates with physical media like oil paintings. This applies not just to good art but to all art created in physical 3-D reality. Every painting that you see reflects the consciousness of the artist which has been recorded stroke by stroke in paint. Even parts of the painting that have been completely covered have an affect on the consciousness level of the artwork.
This is not to say that artwork created with a computer is lacking in consciousness, just that the rendering of that work on to a piece of paper or canvas is not the same thing as an actual surface that has been lovingly painted and imprinted by the artists mind and hand.
When we look at a painting by one of the Masters, such as any of the paintings that I've done studies of in this series, we are connecting with that artist through time and space. This occurs even with the flat representation of their artwork on the computer screen or book, but far more so if you are fortunate enough to interact with their work in a museum or gallery setting.
For example, the post I made yesterday about values; it wasn't until going to the Louvre in Paris that I noticed some things about masterful oil painting that had never occurred to me when looking at these works in books or on a computer screen. There is really no way to compare human perception of a physical painting with the interaction that goes on with a facsimile via print or screen.There's a deeper level of perception and enjoyment beyond digital printouts.
As I stated above, the differences can be subtle, but so much of what makes art great rather than merely good is subtle. At the end of the day I feel the true purpose of art is to move the viewer emotionally and there's no question that a physical painting can do that far more than any reproduction.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Evening Distant Tower' by Camille Corot; I really enjoyed doing this study after Camille's painting. This seems to be a bit more sepia toned than much of his other work I've seen, which tends to have more of a silvery gray quality.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Evening Distant Tower by Camille Corot , Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x5, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is 'Evening Distant Tower' by Camille Corot.
We've done several studies after Camille in the series and though he was not actually a Tonalist painter he was extremely influential on Tonalism. For that reason I've included him in this series. Today's video features a track from my album The Lost Horizon, so please check that out.
We've been talking recently about my history as a artist and evolution to becoming a Tonalist landscape painter. I'm thinking that we may have covered most of the pertinent aspects of my journey. So today I'd like to discuss why I became attracted to doing actual physical oil paintings as opposed to working exclusively with digital media.
Digital media has taken over a lot of the artistic space that used to be dedicated to physical media. Much of this is in the form of movies and video games, but also in print media you see extensive manipulation of photographs and even hybrid artworks that are a combination of photography and painting.
As I've mentioned on this blog in the past I was very much into working with digital media and from 1995 to 2008 all the art that I did was created using a computer. I did do a lot of pen and ink work that was then scanned into the computer and colored, but ultimately all the finished artwork came out of an inkjet printer at the end of the day. There's absolutely nothing wrong with creating art this way but there are some major differences that people immersed in digital media to the exclusion of physical media may not be aware of.
One of the main differences, although it is subtle, is that artwork created with digital media has an ephemeral quality. This is because, for digital artwork to actually be displayed in the three dimensional physical world it must be printed on either paper or canvas. There is a lot of progress that's being made as far as printers being able to replicate the 3-D structure of actual paintings. It will be impossible to do this with two-dimensional art produced within the computer because, by its nature, it is always going to be flat.
Another difference that is even more subtle, has to do with consciousness and how consciousness inter-penetrates with physical media like oil paintings. This applies not just to good art but to all art created in physical 3-D reality. Every painting that you see reflects the consciousness of the artist which has been recorded stroke by stroke in paint. Even parts of the painting that have been completely covered have an affect on the consciousness level of the artwork.
This is not to say that artwork created with a computer is lacking in consciousness, just that the rendering of that work on to a piece of paper or canvas is not the same thing as an actual surface that has been lovingly painted and imprinted by the artists mind and hand.
When we look at a painting by one of the Masters, such as any of the paintings that I've done studies of in this series, we are connecting with that artist through time and space. This occurs even with the flat representation of their artwork on the computer screen or book, but far more so if you are fortunate enough to interact with their work in a museum or gallery setting.
For example, the post I made yesterday about values; it wasn't until going to the Louvre in Paris that I noticed some things about masterful oil painting that had never occurred to me when looking at these works in books or on a computer screen. There is really no way to compare human perception of a physical painting with the interaction that goes on with a facsimile via print or screen.There's a deeper level of perception and enjoyment beyond digital printouts.
As I stated above, the differences can be subtle, but so much of what makes art great rather than merely good is subtle. At the end of the day I feel the true purpose of art is to move the viewer emotionally and there's no question that a physical painting can do that far more than any reproduction.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Evening Distant Tower' by Camille Corot; I really enjoyed doing this study after Camille's painting. This seems to be a bit more sepia toned than much of his other work I've seen, which tends to have more of a silvery gray quality.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Evening Distant Tower by Camille Corot |