#15 Charles Appel 'Landscape' - 25 Days of Tonalism
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| Painted after - ' 'Landscape' by Charles Appel Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Our video features the progression of this painting from its early underpainting stages on up through the final finishing brushwork. Also featured is my usual rambling narration, so please check it out.
Today, I would like to talk about art reproductions. While I am not an expert in art reproductions nor the art print market, this does not preclude me from having some strong opinions about reproductions.
I was around art reproductions quite a lot in the time that I worked as a picture framer, when I younger. I saw the poster and limited-edition print market explode in the 80s and early 90s first hand. Back then, it used to cost quite a lot of money to make a good quality art reproduction. These days, that is no longer the case.
The advent of computers and high-quality color inkjet printers has made it possible for just about anybody to create a good quality reproduction on their desktop. For this reason and several others, I feel that selling investment art reproductions are now somewhat of a boondoggle.
There are several reasons I do not care for art reproductions:
- Anybody can do it now.
- You never have any real way of knowing if a supposedly limited-edition is indeed limited due to modern-day technology.
- A reproduction is just a facsimile of the original. It does not contain anything more than the two-dimensional visual information of the original.
- The plethora of cheaply made reproductions on the market diminishes the value of original artwork in general.
I'm sure there's a few others that I am not remembering.
Reproductions to have some good qualities as well. They are generally more affordable than originals and give people on a limited income a way to purchase imagery to decorate their home. Other than that, I think they are a waste of time, especially as an investment.
I should clarify here that by reproductions, I am not referring to hand pulled prints like etchings, wood blocks or lithographs. These types of prints were created specifically handmade and the print is a final part of the artistic process.
I was quite surprised when I first started becoming involved with landscape painting while still living in California. I went to several galleries near where I lived and saw lots of reproductions printed on canvas and stretched over the typical 1 inch stretcher bar, being sold for big bucks. Maybe it's because I was involved with graphic art and illustration for so many years as a commercial artist that I saw this practice as essentially bankrupt, at least as far as an investment in art goes.
This leads me to my biggest issue with reproductions and that is the fact that no reproduction captures all of the qualities of the original. This includes not just the two-dimensional color information but the overall texture and luminosity of the original painting.
There is some new technology now available that will actually reproduce the three-dimensional qualities of a painting and I expect this technology to become cheaper and cheaper, to the point where it is possible to reproduce more realistic copies of original paintings. Still, I've never seen a reproduction that equaled or bettered the original and I don't expect to anytime soon.
There is one other very important factor to consider about the art reproduction market. It keeps people from buying more original art and thus from supporting the work of artists creating original paintings. Because there is so many cheap or not so cheap reproductions available, it muddies the water of the art market. Let's face it, there is a limited amount of buyers for artwork in the first place.
I would like to see a lot more support of original art by galleries and other venues where artwork is being sold. In a world full of visual images the original painting is still something special that deserves to be treated like the valuable commodity that it is.
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
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| Original painting' 'Landscape' by Charles Appel |
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| Study by M Francis McCarthy of ' Landscape' by Charles Appel (Detail) |
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| Study by M Francis McCarthy of ' Landscape' by Charles Appel (Detail 2) |
#12 Charles Appel 'By the River' - 25 Days of Tonalism
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| Painted after - ' 'By the River' by Charles Appel Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Our video features the progression of this study from its early underpainting stages on up through the final finishing brushwork. Also featured is my usual rambling narration, so please check it out.
For many years I worked as an illustrator. Prior to that time I was usually engaged in drawing and learning how to draw better. I know quite a lot about drawing and illustration and I have some thoughts about the differences between the illustrative mode of art versus the fine art approach that I'm going to try to share today.
One of the primary differences I find is that when you are illustrating and endeavoring to capture every particular of your subject, it requires a lot of conscious focus and concentration. The more detailed and accurate your illustration is, the more focus and concentration is required. The part of our minds that focuses attention is directly tied to the intellect. For this reason, I see illustration as more intellectually driven than painting.
When I was a young artist I used to really like super detailed drawings and illustrations. I was a big fan of science fiction, fantasy artwork and comic books, my favorite artists were always the ones with the most detail in their work. As I matured my tastes changed and I became more fond of artists that were able to convey a lot of expression with just a simple brushstroke.
These days I appreciate that type of work even more. Using the intellect to render very precise and faithful portrayals of your subject, often means that there is little room left for simple gesture and emotion to be expressed. Now That I create fine art paintings I often think about that interplay while I am painting.
There is a juxtaposition between the ordered part of our minds and our spirits that interact when painting. When painting a tree for example and looking at the reference, I do not try to accurately capture every individual branch of that tree, nor do I worry about rendering every rock present in the scene or accurately delineating any aspect of the scene at all. What I am predominantly interested in, is expressing my impression and getting across an emotive response. Because of this, I have to use both my intellect and my intuition while creating a painting.
This can be frustrating if the painting starts to get disjointed or too inaccurate. I often feel that it would just be easier to hunker down and use my intellect while creating a painting. What happens when I end up doing this, is that the painting becomes choked and less expressive not to mention less pleasing to look at.
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'By the River' by Charles Appel; as I stated in the video I can find problems with almost any painting by Charles.
He was not the best of the Tonalist painters. That said, there is an awful lot that I like about his work, I definitely get something out of doing studies after his paintings.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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| Original painting' 'By the River' by Charles Appel |
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| Study by M Francis McCarthy of ' 'By the River' by Charles Appel (Detail) |
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| Study by M Francis McCarthy of ' 'By the River' by Charles Appel (Detail 2) |
Day Sixty Nine: The Last Gleam by Charles Appel
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| Painted after - The Last Gleam by Charles Appel, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood pane |
Today study is 'The Last Gleam' by Charles Appel.
We've done a few studies after Charles in this series. He was fairly well known in his day but not so much now. Today's video features a track off my latest album Lost Horizon so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today I would like to discuss the palette knife and how I use it.
It's no secret that many painters paint with these knives and some of them quite effectively. I have given it a try for painting but palette knives do not lend themselves very well to working on wood panels.
Occasionally I might paint something very straight with the edge of a palette knife. I have experimented with using them for the limbs on trees and that can work. Ultimately though I prefer to use the clean edge of a brush to do the same sorts of things. If necessary I will resort to using a new brush that has a good crisp edge before painting with a palette knife.
So, what do I use palette knives for? On my palette I use them for cleaning and scraping the palette. Also, as I mentioned in my post about raised peaks of paint and scraping thereof, I use palette knives to scrape down those peaks.
In my actual painting process I use palette knives for one thing. It occurred to me yesterday while I was writing about edges that I do quite a lot of blending and picking with the point of the knife, generally right before finishing for the day. At times I will even do some swirly mixing with the knife through the wet paint.
This is a small part of my painting process but it is something I do (almost unconsciously) all the time. A little thing you can do add to the painting but all those little things add up.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'The Last Gleam' by Charles Appel ; I really like the rich over saturated colors in the sky in this painting by Appel. I enjoyed painting the sky and I'm glad that I did a study of this piece.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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| Original painting, The Last Gleam by Charles Appel |
Day Twenty: Landscape by Charles Appel
Hello and welcome to day 20 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Painted after - Landscape by Charles Appel, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel
Today's study is of: 'Landscape' by Charles Appel.
Charles Appel,a very mysterious guy. No doubt he was not terribly mysterious when he was alive but while researching him online this evening it became quite apparent that however popular he was when he was alive, he was definitely more popular than he is now. After some rigorous searching I was able to find some very basic biographical information about him. He was born in 1854 and died in 1928. I've read the short biography I found about him in the videos narration, so check that out if you want to learn more.
The defining characteristic of Charles seems to be his very colorful twilight skies. I quite like his work and if I should do a second series of studies, I will be sure to include some more of his work.
I was listening to a podcast today wherein the interviewee of the program was discussing how art history likes to skip from Impressionism to Surrealism which is about a 30 year jump in time. Its an unfortunate coincidence that tonalism occupies this supposedly uninteresting time in art history. This would be the time from the Civil War until just after World War I, Certainly a time of incredible changes in the way people lived, worked, created and interacted with art.
Continuing on with our conversation about the defining characteristics of tonalist paintings, I'd like to discuss the concept of unity today. We discussed this a bit in the video narration for
which featured a study after a George Inness painting. However, most of that narration was from a quote by George Inness, I thought it would be good to write about unity in an actual blog post too.
Unity is achieved in a landscape painting by avoiding expansive vistas and/or convoluted compositional motifs. The reason for this is that a scene that needs to be scanned to be perceived, is interacted with visually by the viewer in a very similar manner to the way we perceive nature itself. In other words the scene is scanned point by point and an image is then created in the mind of the viewer. The ideal would be for the scene to be perceived by the viewer all in one go with no scanning required.
I won't repeat the quote by George Inness here verbatim, but basically it goes something like this: "cut a hole in a piece of paper about 3x6" and place that piece of paper 10 inches away from your face, everything that can be seen through that hole can be perceived by the human eye in one scan". You wouldn't have to move your eyes or your head to take in a scene like this. For this reason a scene of this type would be compositionally more restful than something that is much broader in scope.
This is a very simple and yet subtle idea. Subtle in that it's easy to miss this sort of idea especially when working with photographic reference while painting. It's too easy to believe that just because the scene is encapsulated within a rectangle that the scene can be portrayed with visual unity. Unity is something that needs to be installed into your picture and I feel it's very worthwhile to do so.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
A bit about Landscape' by Charles Appel. This was a fun study to do and I am happy with the final study. I enjoyed painting the colorful sky. I worked very quickly and most of the application of paint here is done quite thinly as well.
There is an interesting contrast in this study between the intense chroma of the sky opposing the desaturated colors of the landscape itself. I embraced the absence of detail as evidenced in the original. I believe that Charles Appel abandoned detail in favor of enhancing the emotional content.
To see more of my work, visit my site
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Original painting, Landscape by Charles Appel