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| Winter Scene by John F. Carlson |
It's always been on my suggested reading list for students, but now I'm going to make it required reading. You'll need to read it before you come to the workshop.
I'm talking about John F. Carlson's Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting. Many consider it the “bible” for plein air painters. I'm surprised how few of my students have read it.
When you first see the book, you might be a little reluctant to get involved—especially given the bounty of free YouTube videos showing you how to paint. The book is the old-fashioned kind, with too many words and too few pictures. Worse yet, the pictures are all in black-and-white. Not much there to entice the Tik-Tok generation, is there?
But Carlson's book has everything an outdoor painter needs to know about painting en plein air. Once you get started on it, you'll read it through to the end. You'll be a much better painter because of it.
I have two copies. One, the paperback, which is unfortunately locked up in my Campobello Island studio until the pandemic passes. A second, digital copy, which I keep “in the cloud” and available so I can refer to it at odd moments when on the road, teaching workshops.
Here are some quotes to enjoy. These are some non-technical ones. I'll leave it to you to get the book and read the rest.
The sketch is a true statement of things as you found them; the picture is an arrangement of these things as you wish them to be.
No one can teach “art.” No one can give a singer a glorious voice, but granting the voice, and emotional sensibility, a teacher can teach a man to sing.
A good picture is a series of good corrections, a striking of balance.
We must have design in a picture even at the expense of truth. You are using nature for your artistic needs.
When you see something that interests you to paint, do not flop down in some cool, convenient spot and begin by painting. Walk around your motif two or three times and decide what quality it is that made you wish to paint it, then find the spot from which your motif best lends itself to your needs and arrange it accordingly.
Concerning the “complementary colors in shadows,” that one hears and sees so much of among beginners, little need be said excepting this: If you see the complementary color anywhere, paint it as you see it, but do not try to invent complementary juxtapositions.
You may find (to your satisfaction) that some distant patch of flowers or a grain field will look very warm or very red. Paint it very warm or very red, by all means; but since you are trying to paint a receding piece of ground in a landscape, rather than the still-life of a patch of flowers in the distance (or the individual field), be sure to make it “stay back” where it belongs, even if you have to resort to stratagem
There's so much more. Get the book, read it. Consider it Scripture.
And yes, there'll be a pop quiz.
