Artists we have looked at

Various Zen calligraphers
Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510)
Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940)
Edward Hopper (1882-1967)
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)

Depicting depth in painting

Just some handy tricks:

• Overlapping
• Diminishing sizes
• Linear perspective
• Parallax
• Aerial perspective (invented by Leonardo Da Vinci, the effect of air: lighter and bluer in the distance)
  
• Less detail in distance
• "Down in back" (This is from Paul Georges: open up the space in your painting by having a vertical intersect with the bottom edge of your canvas. The viewer almost feels that he can 'step in' or 'reach in.'
  

Not every painting needs a lot of depth, and not every painting needs any of these tools, but it is useful to be able to pull them up when you are stuck and trying to analyze what to do with a painting. This lesson was very simple, huh.

Artists we have looked at

Masaccio (1401-1428)
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)
Rembrandt von Rijn (1601-1669)
Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675)
Jurgen Wilms (contemporary)
Rackstraw Downes (contemporary)

"Nothing is less relevant to a work of art than how long it took to make." --approximate quote from Yvonne Jacquette

Artists we have looked at

Yvonne Jacquette
Catherine Murphy
Alyssa Monks
Russell Chatham

"Don't be a raggedy-ass painter!" --Neil Welliver

Whether your work is rough and painterly or smooth and detailed, painting is all about creating a surface and controlling it. You can be as loose and painterly as you like, as long as your strokes are 'felt' as a surface.

It is a paradox that the more your paint creates the illusion of a surface, the better it can depict whatever depth you choose to depict, even a deep space. Why is this?

Painting is all about accessing the non-verbal part of your brain. If you look at a chair, you 'know' it is a chair and you can skip a lot of the experience of looking. In painting that chair, however, most (but not all) artists want to say something about actually looking at and experiencing something about that chair. If you 'skip' areas of your painting, viewers are forced to fill in with their knowledge and memory instead of actually experiencing anything new. Knit your painting together like a quilt, and a miracle will happen.

I guess I should have introduced myself and this blog

Welcome! I am a landscape painter, living in the beautiful western US. My husband & I spend all the time we can in the back country, hiking, driving, exploring, whatever. We never tire of it.

In this blog I am posting the things I talk about with my painting students, trying to distill many complex ideas into small, useful nuggets that I often pull up to help me work through a painting. I put my URL in my profile.