5 souvenirs; a still life

8/7/2019 5 Souvenirs; A Still Life

1/10

Lesson Five: Souvenirs; a still life

Page 1The text and original art in this document are the property of Robert Stites, all rights reserved.

1947 Freshman Beanie,


2/10

Lesson Five: Souvenirs: a still life

Lesson Five

Ordinary Subjects

Dont feel that you have to find dramatic or exotic subjects to paint good pictures. From what Ive seen, artists

do their best work with subjects they are familiar and comfortable with, and these are often ordinary things.

It would be my guess that Andrew Wyeths paintings were all done within walking distance of his home in

Chadds Ford Pennsylvania, or at the Olsen farm in Cushing, Maine.

He didnt go in for Arizona buttes, or Hawaiian surf. The Long Limb, for example, is quiet, ordinary scene

the painter probably saw on his frequent walks. He once said he was

out to capture ''the depth in every object,'' and believed, likeConstable, that ''you don't have to make things up, you don't have to

put in animals or people, you just have to sit there, and it [the picture]

will appear.''

He seemed to get involved on a personal level with his human

subjects, and once said, "The difference between me and a lot of

painters is that I have to have a personal contact with my models I

have to become enamored. Smitten.

If the Helga Pictures (a series of 245 paintings and drawings of

neighbor Helga Testdorf) need any explanation, thats it. Over thecourse of 15 years, Helga posed for Wyeth indoors and out, nude and

clothed, unknown to anyone including their spouses. The pictures were

stored at the home of a friend, and when finally made public, hit the

covers of both Time and Newsweek almost immediately. Helga was

upset by the publicity, but remained close to Wyeth, and helped care

for him in his old age.

An unpretentious man, Wyeth dismissed as boring much of the abstract

art that critics say is good for people. ''I believe in the principle of what

I'm doing,'' he said, that challenges them, threatens them [the critics].I'm not interested in their profound thoughts on art. !

We follow Wyeths advice in our choice of subjects for this lesson. The assignment is to paint a still life of one

of your own souvenirs; something that has meaning to you. But first, consider the work of another American

artist who could also appreciate the beauty of ordinary things.

Page 2

Braids, (a Helga picture) Andrew Wyeth 1979

Long Limb Andrew Wyeth 1999int


3/10


Edward Hopper traveled far more than Wyeth, but his pictures have an unchanging air of bleakness, and

simplicity.

Wyeth had his Helga pictures, but none of that for Hopper. A story has it that his use of female models made

his wife uneasy, so she told him, If you need a woman to paint, paint me. He did, and happily for the art

world, Mrs. Hopper was a good model, appearing the artists work at every opportunity from then on (thats

her with her husband at the counter in Nighthawks). It would demean marriage to suggest this as an

example of everyday things, but there it is.

He painted hotels, motels, trains, highways, and other public places: restaurants, theatres, and offices, but his

subjects were never gaudy or pretentious. His theatres are half empty, with a few patrons waiting for the

curtain to go up, or actors standing in glare of stage lights.

Still Life

This preamble is to help you understand that everyday,

familiar subjects give the artists talent its best

opportunity for expression, especially when there are

good associationsand this is why we asked, at the end

of the previous lesson, that you choose a souvenir to be

the subject for a still life.

Whats a still life? Its simply a pleasing arrangement of

inanimate objects. Artists love to paint them, and have

been doing so all the way back to first century, probably because the genre gives the artist complete control of

the subject, its composition, and illumination.

Page 3

Nighthawks Edward Hopper 1942 (thats Hopper and his wife at the counter)

House by the Railroad Track , Edward Hopper

Still Life from the wall of a restaurant in Pompeii, ca 70 A..D.
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/hopper/hopper_hotel_lobby.jpg.htmlhttp://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/hopper/hopper_car_293.jpg.htmlhttp://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/hopper/theatre.jpg.htmlhttp://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/hopper/ntoffice.jpg.htmlhttp://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/hopper/ntoffice.jpg.htmlhttp://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/hopper/theatre.jpg.htmlhttp://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/hopper/hopper_car_293.jpg.htmlhttp://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/hopper/hopper_hotel_lobby.jpg.html


4/10


Just one more; though I advertise myself as the Archie Bunker of the art

world, I like this still life by George Breuer.

Composition

We defined a still life as an arrangement of things. Thats where

composition comes in, but we dont get too deep into this subject for

several reasons:

1. At this stage of your training, you need practice more than theory.

2. Many of the rules of composition are speculative.

3. Such rules as there are, apply mostly to landscapes.

If the rules of composition bore you, just ignore them, and arrange your

subjects in a way that looks right to you.

The Eye Tracker

One reason composition is speculative is

theres never been a way to get inside the

viewers head to see what he really

notices, and what he ignores. But now

theres an apparatus called the eye

tracker which does just that.

Well take a web page for an example.

Every movement of the test subjects eye

was recorded as he viewed this page. The

summary shows a blue circle where the

eye paused; the larger the circle, the

longer the eye remained on it.

But ignore the circles for now. We can see

that the page designer wanted us to

notice the SALE banner before anything else. He put it in a prominent place, and used large display fonts

on a saturated red-orange background.

Back to the blue circles; there is something unexpected going on here: this test subject completely ignored the

banner. Maybe it was an aberration. What if we tried it on someone else?

A heat chart (following page) is even more revealing, for it tells us the results for a whole group of testers.

The longest dwelling times are shown in orange on a heat chart, diminishing through yellow, green, then

gray, showing which parts of the page are studied and which are ignored.

Results art the same. The heat chart tells us: Every one of the people in this test group ignored the SALE

bannerwhich is enough to make you wonder whether what we thought we knew about

Page 4

Violin and Candlestick, George Breuer,1910


5/10


composition (at least with respect to web page

design) is really true.

To see the video of an actual test, go to

http://www.youtube.com/v/lo_a2cfBUGc?fs=1&hl=en_US"

The Rule of Thirds

This is more a convention more than a rule. It

helps avoid some clumsy errors, like putting

the focal point in the dead center of the page.

The rule of thirds says you should:

Divide your picture into three equal rows andcolumns, and locate your centers of interest where the lines or intersect (at the red dots).

See the examples on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds

We can best describe the other basic rules of composition by saying, theyre not rules at all just guidelines:

Provide a center of interest.

Dont show a subject facing out of the picture.

Allow space in front of moving objects.

Remember that high contrast, elements have as much impact as those

which are larger but dull.

In landscapes, locate the horizon line a third of way up to emphasize

the sky, or two thirds up to emphasize the land.

Details

A still life gives the viewer a close up look at the subject, meaning that the artist has to show more detail than

usual. But detail is not the forte of pastels, because they dont keep a sharp point for long. This is a good place

to use your black and white charcoal pencils, which can be sharpened to a fine point, and hold it better.

If you do a lot of still lifes (sounds awkward, but thats the plural) in pastel, I recommend you try pastelpencils, which are a little harder than soft pastel, but a little softer than the hard. They can be sharpened to

fine point, and hold it fairly well.

Perhaps your greatest challenge in doing a pastel still life is in showing texture, and we will have more to say

about that in the Example.

Page 5
http://c/Users/Bob/Documents/YouTube.dochttp://c/Users/Bob/Documents/YouTube.dochttp://c/Users/Bob/Documents/YouTube.dochttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirdshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirdshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirdshttp://c/Users/Bob/Documents/YouTube.dochttp://c/Users/Bob/Documents/YouTube.doc


6/10


Exercise

Position your memento(s) in a way that pleases

you, do an underpainting on a quarter sheet in

hard pastel, and block it in. Dont try to show

more than one or two articles for your first still

life. Use either side of the paper. The following

example shows the steps.

Example

I still have my old freshman beanie (upper classmen threatened

dire consequences if you got caught without one). In the photo,

its hung on the back of a chair. I begin by drawing it in white

charcoal, and you can still see remnants.

The background is too cluttered; it was feathered in and will be

darkened later, but the subject is rotated slightly clockwise,

which looked better to me.

The vertical chair post leans, but can easily be corrected.

Page 6

Photo Freshman Beanie RWS

Underpainting, blocked in


7/10


Then I ran into a problem that was new to me;

how do you show wooly looking fabric?

Scumbling doesnt work because it leaves a

texture thats too coarse. I was dissatisfied with

this picture, and started over.

Page 7

Beanie, first try


8/10


On the second try I used the rough side of

the paper, hoping the added texture would

help. I laid in a dark green for the cap,

mixed a greenish gray acrylic, and applied it

lightly with a stippling brush; each dableaves tiny dots of paint within a one ince

circle and also later leaves a rough surface

for subsequent scumbling with a light gray

pastel . The seams got an extra treatment of

light gray, because theyre raised and show

the most wear.

The background of the first picture was a

disappointment. This time I simply laid in a

random mix of lighter colors, partly rubbed.

Youre lucky to get a painting right the first

try. If not, dont hesitate to do it over.

Assignment

From the underpainting prepared earlier, complete your still life in soft pastel.

Revised 2/12/2011

Page 8

The completed pastel


9/10


Page 9


10/10


Page 10