SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT PAINTING WOODLAND SCENES

Throughout the ages, artists have enjoyed painting woodland scenes.  Today's modern painters' works, however, are a far cry from the woodland scenes of the painters of old.

Here is an example of an "old" woodland scene, painted by George Baret the elder (what a name!), 1723-1784.

I am sure we could not fault those trees...but to my eye, despite its probable accuracy, it is stodgy,  heavy and gloomy.

More modern painters have treated woodland scenes in quite a different way, and I would like to show you a few of my favourites, so that you can see, perhaps, a different "path through the trees" for your own work.

Lawrence Gowing says that he returns time and time again to certain woodland areas to paint.  He loves groves of trees, with branches meeting overhead, like columns of Gothic arches in a "cathedral of trees".  His woodland scenes are often concerned with a ceiling of leaves, making an enclosed space often leading to a further space beyond.  He makes small "sketch" paintings as rehearsals for larger paintings.  He says he tries to "paint the scoop of space without losing the flatness of the painting surface". Sometimes this results in very abstracted images, the motif having been just a starting point.  "Gifords Copse", the oil painting below, is one such image.

Giford's Copse

The painting "Four Trees in a Wood" 1987, below, also has a really contemporary feel to it, and to my mind, it is interesting to consider why.  Is it the colours ?  They are certainly of his own choosing and bear little resemblance to reality.    Is it the brushstrokes?  What makes it look so modern and such a far cry from the woodland scene of Mr Baret above?  If you look at it very carefully and closely, you will see that in fact, although not such an obvious abstraction as "Giford's Copse", the marks he has used are flat and two dimensional, there is little attempt to achieve three-dimensional form;  the tree trunk of the tree on the far right bears no resemblance to photographic reality whatsoever.  Yet, we recognise perfectly that it is a woodland scene and we understand it fully.

Here is another  woodland scene I have long admired:  Roger De Grey, "La Tremblade" 1989.  It is owned by the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and I wish it was mine!  I just love it.

When I first saw this painting, I was fascinated by the fact that there is little or no recession created by the conventional method of tones becoming paler in the distance.  Instead, the recession is created purely by change of scale.  The artist complains that he find trees "baffling things to work with" and difficult to paint, and spends hours, apparently, trying to make the trees in his paintings seem to grow out of the ground properly.  Clearly, those hours are well spent.

I cannot begin to compare to these masters above, but here is one of my own personal favourites, painted within a couple of hours at a demonstration evening for an art club. It was a bit of a departure for me, since I used imaginative colour, and allowed the painting to hover between representation and abstraction.  But, I hope you will feel it is still an interesting woodland scene even if it owes little to photographic reality!

and this one perhaps does have a little more to do with a "real" woodland scene, although again, I did allow myself some artistic licence with the colours chosen, borrowing some of the gorgeous cool turquoise greens that Lawrence Gowing used - they seemed appropriate to the cool early days of Spring.  It is important, I feel, to remember that creating a painting is not just about  faithfully"duplicating"  the real world...it is about creating something special.... a piece of art which connects with personal vision.

"Spring woods"  pastel on card  21x21cm
available, unframed (mounted) price $295

Arguably, it was from Monet and Cezanne that the landscape painting of this century developed.  Gradually, artists began to give themselves even more permission to try different ways of seeing and painting and expressing their relationship with the landscape. They recognised that the recording of every leaf or tiny branch of a tree may well lead to a rather tedious, lifeless image (and anyway, the camera can do it better) - and they knew that the exploitation of shapes, masses, rhythms, colours, textures and movement can produce far more exciting imagery.   The degree to which an artist transforms the landscape, to express his feelings, is entirely personal and can vary dramatically, but one thing is for sure...as a result our own mood and personality will inevitably be revealed in our paintings. 

 Two people, standing shoulder to shoulder, can photograph the same scene, and their photos will look virtually identical...but no two artists will ever paint the same scene in exactly the same way, even if they are painting side by side.  This is something we artists need to recognise - and capitalise upon.

THE TONE OF THE COLOUR

"I am inclined to think that no artist can be called an accomplished craftsman until all matters of technique are so well learnt that they are part of his subconscious equipment". - Robert Beverley Hale

Possibly tutors today would consider this an old-fashioned approach.  I remember well, at art school in the 70's, being told by one "modern" tutor, when the college decided to withdraw all life drawing classes,  that "life is on the streets...you dont need to use a model to practice traditional life drawing, just go out on the streets and draw people".    As I was a "mature student" and he was probably 10 years younger than me, I did a certain amount of eyebrow waggling at him, but sadly, his "progressive" ideas were adopted, the life class disappeared, and I had to go elsewhere to learn what I felt I needed to learn.

The moral of the story is that everyone has to take responsibility for their own progress.  I thought it might help some of you to know that even tho I went to art school, I felt that the teaching was, for me, incomplete. I had to go elsewhere for the information and practice I craved.

So - back to the learning of technique!

One of the areas of problem that I often came across with my students, was their inability to see and recognise TONES accurately. There was often a strange reluctance to recognise that something was as dark, or light, as it really was.  A white wall, in shadow, for example, is NOT white...yet sometimes it was like pulling teeth to get the student to admit that OK, perhaps it was not as white as the bit in the sun...

Subtleties were even worse.   I would come along, point at the scene and say..."ok, what's darker...that fence, or the grass?"  The student would ponder fence and grass for a while, and eventually reach a decision.  Then they would look at my face...and then down at their image, where lo and behold, they had REVERSED the tones.

for example....what's darker, the orange shape behind the market seller, or the dark wall above it?

 

So ...my little tip for today.  When you are studying a scene,  and trying to render it reasonably accurately for its tone values, don't just look at an object in isolation, draw it or paint it completely, and then move on to whatever is beside it.  When working in pencil or charcoal to create a monochrome image,  my suggestion would be to work lightly across the entire rectangle, leaving the white of the paper for your lightest areas, and working in a mid-tone for the rest.  Then, gradually build up the intermediate tones, working up to your darkest tones.

IMPORTANT PART HERE:

As you work, repeat these words to yourself ALL THE TIME.   "Is this area darker than that area?  How much darker?"     "Is this shape lighter than that shape over there?  How much lighter?"    Squint when you make your decisions, it helps to reduce the impact of the colour.

This simple method of checking the relative lightness and darkness of areas - particularly those which are not always side-by-side-  will help you to refine your ability to recognise the tone values before you.

Now this doesn't sound too difficult does it?  Many of you think you know how to identify tones quite well.  After all, if I asked you to pick up a graphite pencil and make a drawing of a bowl of fruit, you probably would not hesitate at all.....you would feel fairly confident of getting the tones right, even though the fruits might be all different colours.

But actually......how good are you?  How deeply embedded in your subconscious mind is this business of recognising the actual lightness and darkness of objects?  Can you really properly identify whether a red fruit is lighter or darker than a green one?

So here is a simple, fun test to help you find out how good you are!

1.  Tear a long strip from a magazine, about an inch wide, with plenty of different shapes and colours in it.
2.  Copy the strip, using a soft pencil (4B or softer), aiming for accurate reproduction of the lightness or darkness of each shape.
3.  Photocopy both strips in black and white.   Or scan them into your computer, and look at the results in greyscale.  THEN you will see how well you did!

Here's my attempt:

now scanned in greyscale:

Hmm.    "This student could do better".

If you get to the point where you can recognise the tones of colours automatically, subconsciously, you will know that this is an element of technique well under your belt.  You are on the way to becoming the accomplished artist you would like to be.