How fortunate to be an artist, and observe the seeds of incalculable numbers of paintings unfolding before your eyes. All men of deep emotion experience these feelings. The portrait painter looks into the depths of the faces of his sitters. The landscape painter wanders among his giants of the forest, shimmering lakes and tumbling rivers, feeling fresh-fallen snow crunch beneath his feet. The still-life painter observes the wonderful light that breathes life into his subject. Time passes so fast as one stands alone deep in thought!

Now dawn is upon our small craft and the men are talking with excitement, expecting soon to see the first fish hauled over the side. There is an excitement in the wind, too, for it has shifted to the southeast and has picked up to a steady breeze. The ocean is starting to get choppy. The fishermen are working hard and fast to get their catch in, and their gear aboard before they head for port. The wind is not going to let go; it is going to pound us harder, knocking the tops off the choppy oceans and sending a spray across our boat.

Three hours now of hauling gear. The ocean has lost its erratic chop and long deep swells are forming, driving our craft down the side of one wet mountain and up the other. The horizon is gone at times and one is looking straight out into a wall of deep water. We will have to abandon the remaining gear and make a run for home. Turning the boat’s stern to the oncoming ocean, we ride like a tiny surfboard being driven by an awesome force to the northwest.

“Here she comes!” someone calls out as a torrent of white foam breaks beneath our stern, then comes rushing into the small stern cockpit, driving gear and men against the bulkhead. This is no time for meditation-just hang on until we can reach the safety and calm of our harbor.

All through this experience I do not mention the sketch-pad, for the living of these moments are my sketches and I will relive this trip perhaps more vividly in my mind than a few sketches would ever recall to me. No matter what subject an artist chooses to paint, he should try to live his subject, not in two dimensions but in three dimensions, in great depth. Painting is a product of the mind, and the eyes are the lenses to it.

The entrance to the harbor is even more erratic than the open ocean. Into the small cove that forms the mouth of the port, the great oceans are shoaling up in sharp, twisting patterns, tossing the small craft as though it were so much driftwood. There is no rhythm to the ocean here. Through this we pass, to emerge into the quiet of another world. The stowing of the gear, the scrubbing down, the many things that go with securing a fishing vessel, are finished.

As I walk back to my studio with the swaying of the ocean still in my possession, I anticipate with excitement the large canvas that I have already half planned in my mind. A number of sketches will have to be made to work out a composition that will convey the feeling I experienced the moment that great ocean broke at the stern of our craft. First of an, it is the ocean I want to paint, not the boat, the open ocean with its great heaving masses I challenging all who dare her surface. The canvas I selected was 30 by 44 inches, so the perpendicular and diagonal lines of the painting will have a long sweep, and lend excitement to the up and down movement of the ocean. The horizontal lines will be held to a minimum. Even the ocean at the horizon will have this perpendicular action. The feeling must be that this storm continues for miles beyond the confines of this canvas. Three large basic shapes are all I will use for the movement of the ocean. If I use more, it will only tend to minimize the magnitude of the ocean around me. I must feel again as if I were in the valley of the deep, looking out into walls of water, and convey this feeling.

“The Following ocean” is typical of the pictures of a storm at ocean. Due to the lack of permanent rocks to help the foreground, I had to make use of large shapes of the ocean itself. The arrangement of the dark-and-light patterns had to take over for the depth in richness that rocks lend to paintings.

The colors for this picture consisted of Thalo blue, Thalo violet, Thalo green, yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt sienna and Venetian red. The Thalo colors are dark and rich and give clarity and depth of color to the clean deep water of the open ocean. If you experiment on the palette with the above earth colors into the Thalo group, you will find that all of the clear, beautiful ocean colors can be realized with relative ease. I am assuming, of course, that your selection is based upon the color and tone of the sky, for after all, clear water is but a reflector.

I should like to stress that a painter of nature should never consider the start of any canvas without first paying strict attention to the Source of light and the sky itself. This canvas was washed in with very little color at the : outset, a blue-grey mixed with white to the proper values. The area of foam was laid in heavier and made a full tone lighter than the final effect called for. The foam pattern was held very simple and lighter, in anticipation of future glazing as the picture progressed. Care must be exercised while glazing with the above-mentioned colors, for they are strong and have great tinting power-if carried too far or if the picture is overpainted to excess, the glaze will make it hard and brittle in character. If you do experience difficulty with strong colors such as the Thalos, perhaps a more transparent group should be selected, such as viridian green, French ultramarine blue deep, ultramarine violet and ultramarine red. If glazing is a new departure for you, then start with a selection of colors that are by nature more transparent, and you will experience much less difficulty. Flake white is a good selection because of its quality of drying fast and because it is semi-transparent. Each succeeding day it will be sufficiently dry to proceed with the glazing.

In the springtime along the coast of New England (and England too), one can expect all types of weather to occur in a short span of time-rain, snow, cold, warmth, sun and fog. If the artist loves change, this is the time and place for it. This is the time, too, when the heavy oceans and fog combine to give the artist a quality of mystery and composition that is both strong and yet can be very subtle-a wonderful time to study shapes and reflections and the unexpected.

I recall one time when the breeze held in the west for two days with a clear sunny zenith and rather cool spring weather. Then a change took place. The weather vane made its slow, unseen swing to the southeast, bringing with it warmer southern air on a collision course with the cold North Atlantic. With this set of conditions, only one thing could occur: fog. And occur it did, accompanied by strong winds and heavy oceans. All during the night one could hear the low rumble of the surf on the far side of the island, muffled by the heavy moisture content of the air. The unpredictable North Atlantic was doing her best to stifle both sound and sight. The lighthouse beacon could no longer be seen and the sound of the foghorn was carried away from the island towards the mainland. By morning, it was very thick.

It took only a few steps from my studio to be engulfed in the heavy greyviolet fog. It is but a quarter of a mile from my studio to the easterly side of the island yet, in that short distance, I experienced the full range of color changes that occur in the spectrum. In the low flatlands near my studio, the fog lay at its heaviest, reducing the amount of light that could pass through it from the sun in zenith, so that it tended towards violet-grey.

As I walked up the hill towards the lighthouse, the wind shifted the fog into varying thicknesses. Sometimes the blue of the overhead sky made its presence felt. Other times, the mixture of warm sun and blue sky produced grey-green. Looking towards the place where the sun should be, I saw its influence showing through the fog at times with a pale orange and yellowgrey. These colors could only be seen in relation to one another, they are so subtle.

It may seem strange to relate this fog to a sunset or a moonlight or any other type of picture. But as far as the spectrum is concerned, they are the same, just presented to us in a different visual manner. One of the few things you can rely on is the spectrum, and knowledge of it will allow any artist to see deeper into the emotional side of painting.

Beyond the lighthouse I passed through a spruce forest that led to the inlets. Here the fog was being gathered up by the rich green needles of the trees and producing its own rainfall for the roots below. On the trip to the far side of the island, I could have paused at any number of places to sketch, for the fog had created countless compositions for an artist to contemplate and paint-the mysterious shapes of people and buildings drifting in and out of the fog, the half-seen boats at the dock, the fish houses emerging for just one moment, the grasses III the meadow around the lighthouse still dressed in their golden brown of winter, the quiet spruce forest wearing its mantle of permanent green.

But the ocean and rocks are what I was headed for. You can hear the ocean crashing below you as you emerge on a headland, but it is not to be seen. It is engulfed in nature’s cauldron of swirling fog 200 feet below. The path down the side of the headland is steep but short, ending on great blue-black rocks below, that reflect their wet surfaces as though all had been freshly varnished. The highlights stand out like jewels against the velvet background of the rich dark rocks. On a day such as this, I could see very clearly each individual color in the foreground-the grey colors that come from dryness are gone; the brilliant sun that makes you squint, reducing color, is not present; the dim light of nighttime or a storm does not impede your vision. Strangely enough, the immediate foreground of a painting on a foggy day can be your richest in color. On a bright sunlit day, you hardly notice the periwinkles, the rockweed, the kelp in among the rocks, but on a day such as this, each stands out, revealing its colors. As soon as your vision travels from the foreground to the distance, these easily seen things disappear in the fog, creating a strong rich foreground against the pale light background.

The ocean on this day was evasive, sometimes seen, other times disappearing into thicker fog. A cresting wave built up and crashed somewhere in the fog, its pale greys and greens undulating in slow motion. I had to wait before seeing it cascading in from the nothingness, swirling among the dark rocks with its white foam, creating great contrasts in the foreground. It was cold and I was wet, but the sight was inspiring. My sketches show large dark shapes of the foreground arranged in strong patterns against the background. The flat rocks I stood on slipped towards the ocean with the Converging lines helping to lend depth to the foreground, the dark upright planes of the outcropping rocks reflecting across the wet surfaces of the foreground. If there IS anyone thing this picture will demand, it is the feeling that everything is receiving a complete soaking and that nothing is escaping it. The use of one object reflecting upon another and the foggy sky reflecting on the whole picture must be ·an integral part of this painting.

The palette for the painting of “Fog” was Prussian blue, yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt sienna, Venetian red and Mars violet. Zinc white was selected for its property of staying wet for an extended period of time, allowing me to work wet-in-wet until the picture was completed. A small amount of poppy oil was added to the white paint with a spatula to slow the drying time even more. Prussian blue was selected because it tends to the green of the spectrum. It is very dark and rich and when mixed with the above earth colors (except Mars violet) produces varying shades of greys and grey greens. Mars violet, when mixed with Prussian blue gives the artist a soft grey and grey-violet.

There is a lonely, intimate feeling as you stand alone in the heavy fog, watching the half-seen ocean with the slippery, wet rocks beneath your feet. I felt in the painting of the picture “Fog” that I should keep my foreground rather fiat, with a few, large upright planes of massive rocks outcropping. The rocks would provide me with the necessary dark reflections, to create a wet feeling in the foreground. I selected my vantage point close to the ocean, in among the rocks to give full impetus to the wetness and intimacy of the composition.

The washing in of my canvas was basically one large area of light grey sky against the dark grey rock patterns of the foreground. Further development of the painting would see the introduction of half-lights and half-tones for the emergence of the wave in the middle distance. The edges of the wave and its surrounding water should be kept soft so as to half-lose these forms into the sky and fog.

The foreground rocks should be held dark and rich in color, the upright rocks reflecting their color and tones across the flat rock surfaces. The sky colors and values should make their presence felt on the flat wet surfaces where the upright rocks are not reflecting. In this manner, dark passages meet light, and a feeling of wetness may be achieved. The very subtle modeling of the dark, foreground rocks slowly merging with the lighter, middle distant rocks and then disappearing into the fog-this was of paramount importance to convey to the observer my impression of that wet, spring day on an offshore island in Maine.

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Step 6

The final touches are done with the palette knife. They can be just as important as the preceding steps, but they are somewhat easier to do and, for many people, a lot more fun. Thus far we have learned how to paint a competent landscape. Now, if you can manage to introduce an utterly original or utterly exquisite little highlight, your finished product will be all the more effective.

The most important thing to remember is that if you decide to include a little animal or a person, not much in the way of detail is required. To put in a human figure the merest of outlines will suffice. Simply sketch in three lines with your knife edge. One vertical will do for the body. Jutting out from this vertical, two more lines at opposing 30° angles can represent an arm and a leg. It’s just that easy to render an effective profile.

And yet these modest little highlights can make all the difference between a mediocre painting and a great one. It’s not what sort of highlight you include, but how and where you include it. Let us assume that there are trees on either side of your landscape. Both trees seem to dip in towards the middle of the canvas. If you’ve placed your person squarely between them, a most dramatic symmetry may be achieved, regardless of-how crudely drawn the figure.

We have already made the point that there is really no limit to how much depth a good landscape should contain. Look carefully around your painting. Does any stretch of sky or grass or water still seem dull? Is any of it sickeningly reminiscent of a kindergarteners finger painting? After all your work and enthusiasm is your masterpiece as flat as a pancake? In other words, does it stink? Don’t despair! There is always time for last-minute touch-ups. Perhaps all that dabbing we did with knife and toilet paper was ineffective. So then do some more! Lightly apply the tips of the toilet paper, just as before. A little yellow here, a pale red there and-poof!-our wan damsel’s a ravishing beauty!

These then are the steps by which any reasonably competent student can complete his or her own landscape. Before I recapitulate these steps in brief outline, I would like to make a few final points.

First, don’t be afraid if your wrists ache for some time afterwards. I’ve been painting for decades, and to this day I still cramp up. To ease the pain, pretend you’re a famous baseball player and your hamstring hurts you. In other words, take pride in your pain, as if it’s an outward sign of your professional accomplishment. Besides, haven’t I told you that the world expects you to suffer for your art, or else you won’t be regarded as much of an artist? Well, tell your friends and customers what hell it is just to pick up a palette knife after our muscles worked so hard painting.

Second, don’t forget to sign your work. But think twice about how you want your signature to look. Toulouse Lautrec used to draw his name as if it were a Japanese pictograph. In fact, I’d go so far as to say his signature vas a work of art in itself. But if you’re also interested in money-and Toulouse-Lautrec, for one, never had any-I suggest a bold hand that leaves no doubt as to who you are. V1y own signature usually covers a full eighth of the canvas on the lower right. My customers find K-A-T-Z spelled big and clear. Of course, if your name is longer, your signature will have to be smaller.

And third, after you’ve done a landscape or two, go to the museum and compare them to the masters. You’re liable to be surprised by how well you’ve done. No, you’re probably not as good as Monet, but you’ll see that you’re at least good enough to learn from what he’s done.

Notice Monet’s use of light, for example. See how the very substance of his massive solids seems about to evaporate in the atmosphere. Or study the great American landscapist George Inness. Concentrate on his greens. Stare at them as long as you can. The more those amazing shades he uses glue themselves to your consciousness, the more chance you’ll have of someday being able to recreate them yourself.

Then look at the way Claude Lorrain or the Dutch masters insert small people or animals. Often they’re incredibly inelegant, perhaps no better than the ones you’ve painted Yet see how those faint creatures can transform the vast terrain.

Every time you paint a picture you add something to the great tradition. And that tradition exists for you to learn from. It can have no greater or more important purpose f than you.

Finally, for your convenience, here are the six steps for painting a landscape:
1. Use the flat of your palette knife to coat the whole canvas with an over-all abstract schemer. Greens and blues should be prominent.
Using the tips of a piece of toilet paper dab up and down lightly to lend this abstract greater depth.

2. Use the flat of the palette knife to spread a horizontal schemer of black or dark paint across the middle of the canvas.
Soften the color of this schemer by flecking its edges with bright colors. Use the tip and edge of the palette knife.
Use the palette knife to add specks of yellow and ochre to the interior of the schemer.

3. Dip the tip of the palette knife in a dark color. Draw 4-or-5 inch squiggly verticals both below and above the horizontal. Maintain a loose grip as you draw these trees so that they will not appear rigid. Use only the tip of the palette knife throughout the rest of this third step. Break up the middle group with other colors or add warm color to right or left to create balance.

To draw branches, sketch in similar, equally squiggly lines at horizontals of about 30° from both the upper and lower verticals.
For shadows, draw in small dark lines at an angle of about 25° from the base of the trees. Draw them downwards from the trunks in a left-to-right (or right-to-left) direction.
Touch up the edges of the trunks with a light color.
For the roots draw in small squiggly lines just below the trunks. If your trees are especially dark, use a light tone for the roots.
Touch up the upper portions of the trunk and/or branches with a dark color. Use a thick blob of paint.

4. Using only the tips of a light wad of toilet paper, dipped lightly in white paint, swish it several times across the Ie water to create sparkling ripples. Use a loose wrist movement. If you can’t get the right effect this way, use the palette knife to crease the surface of the water with light blue paint to represent ripples.

5. Dip the tips of a strip or wad of toilet paper in bright colors. Press the paper gently against the treetops to create spangly clusters of leaflike circles and other shapes.

6. If you’d like, add a stick figure of a person or animal. Place it in as subtle or as dramatic a position as possible, vis-a-vis the trees or water.
If not, touch up with yellow or ochre wherever you need emphasis. Use more toilet paper to add light colors to any spots on the canvas that still seem flat. ;

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Step 5

For the fifth step-finishing off the treetops – fold the paper until you can hold it firmly. Again, dip just the tips of the paper in the paint on your palette. Choose light colors. Our most important consideration is that we want to create a representation of leaves, but don’t just rely on green. Light red will accomplish the same thing. We’ll really see what light can accomplish when you let it dance to its heart’s content. Light will illuminate and exalt even a portrait. How much more will it do when your subject is an organic miracle of nature that lives and dies with the sun! So put on l a little red with your green or pale blue. By the time you’re done, the tops of your trees can be crazy quilts of color, a lovely swirling hubbub of leaf and sunshine with tiny patches of sky peeking through. The novice just paints an object, dull and alone, but a good artist paints it in the full complexity of its relationship to the forces around it. He knows that when you look at a leaf, a good percentage of what you actually see are other elements that are forever playing upon it.

There you are in front of your easel with a wad of toilet paper dipped in light, spangly colors. Now press the paper gently against the canvas so that you cover the upper limbs of each tree. For all intents and purposes, the relatively large circles of thin bright paint that you create this way will complete the essential part of your landscape painting.

Using the same sort of easy wrist movement, drag another wad of toilet paper, also dipped in light colors, against your sky. The more interesting the color scheme, the more vibrant and convincing will be your background.

Again, I would advise that you spend a few moments I looking at the sky. Study its dynamism. The clouds pour I into the blue, while streaks of color from God-knows-where stretch across the horizon. So for goodness’ sake don’t hesitate to be creative with your color scheme. You’ll surprise yourself with just how new and delightful an unexpected burst of orange or pink can be. Naturally, not all your dabs of color will be equally pleasing. Often you’ll be disappointed by a blue that’s too pasty or a yellow that’s too deep. It’s a lot like cooking. Even the best chef puts in too much paprika once in a while. Fortunately you don’t have to eat your art, so the situation is considerably less critical.

To start the lesson follow the steps below:

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Step 4
If you look at what we have done so far, you’ll notice that the first three that an extremely talented child of about eleven might do while waiting for recess. You have the trees, the water, the sky, the reflections, the shadows. You can see where the land ends and the water begins. But you don’t have a painting yet. It’s just a picture.

The next step-using toilet paper-will make it a real painting. It’s my piece de resistance, the real trademark of my method of Instant Art. Just as Marconi had his wireless and John Wayne had his horse, I have toilet paper dipped in paint. Here’s how it works.

In the first step, we used toilet paper to add to an abstract schemer of paint. As I have said, toilet paper is not just a joke. Among other advantages it makes it a bit easier to keep a light touch, and that is very important for composing those subtle contrasts and vibrations that make a painting seem truly alive. Even some experienced artists using brushes have a tendency to belabor their canvases with too much paint. That’s less likely with something as thin and wispy as toilet paper, even if it’s folded over a few times.

At this point when we need to make the water sparkle, we must be able to drag a wad of toilet paper dipped in paint across the water to create the illusion of sprightly dancing ripples. The light that plays on water is an exquisite convolution of colors. It is very difficult to capture it with a brush or a palette knife. The tendency is to paint too thickly.

You can coat the thin edge of a palette knife with light blue or even white and crease the surface of the water for a ripply effect. Thin lines of creamy blue will serve to represent the ripples reflecting the sun.

But the far better way is with toilet paper. It will more easily capture the buoyancy of light playing upon water. Dip the edges of your toilet paper wad lightly in white paint and, with a loose wrist movement, swish the paper across the surface of the water just once and then step back and observe what you have done. If you’ve achieved what you ant, make another swipe below the first one. That’s about all you need to give the effect. Practice the wrist movement for it’s the secret to creating a light touch.

To start the lesson follow the steps below:

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Step 3

Dip the tip of your palette knife in black or a dark color, while allowing some of the paint to c08t the upper edges of the knife as well. Beginning from just about the center of your horizontal schemer draw 4- or S-inch verticals both above and below the median. The verticals on the top half 0 the canvas will be our trees. The lines below the horizontal will serve as the reflections of these trees in the water. If you want to add large branches do so with identical but smaller movements of the palette knife at pronounced horizontal angles, on the upper portion of the canvas.

You do not, of course, want to be drawing straight lines. Even pine trees have subtle contours for which such rigid lines would be inappropriate. How then should you draw these trees? Imagine the skinniest US” in the world. Duplicate that shape with your hand. Do it a few times without he knife just to get the feel of it. Then take your knife and draw the trees with just that motion.

A common worry among beginners is whether the reflections will accurately mirror the shapes of the trees. Again, hink of how it works in nature. The ripples of the water invariably fuzz the reflections. Or the sunlight dances cross the surface, bending and reshaping the trees in every possible configuration. What you see in the water is, at best, I ambiguous. The fact is, you thus have enormous freedom when painting the reflections. Just follow your common sense, but don’t worry if you .can’t render a precise mirror l image. If you have drawn large branches and now want their reflections as well, merely squiggle them in on the flower part of the canvas. Once again, rigorous precision is simply not necessary.

The next question is, how many trees should you draw? Basically, it doesn’t matter. We have already made the point that the landscape is an exciting genre simply because there are so many different routes you can follow. If your canvas is 18 inches across by 14 inches deep, a typical route would be three or four trees spaced at logical intervals. On the other hand, there are many effective paintings in which just one lone tree leans eerily off to the left or right.

There is, of course, the aesthetic issue of balance. This is almost complicated subject and we certainly don’t have the space here to explore it thoroughly. Suffice it to say that paintings should be balanced like anything else; an additional weight on the top or left should be compensated for by an analogous mass on the bottom or right. Sometime however, intentional imbalance can be very effective. A single tree all the way on the left may gain in power simply because it introduces a striking asymmetry into the proceedings.

The problem of balance can be approached in many ways, and it will be helpful to mention just one for your future experimentation. Through many centuries of trial and error, artists arrived at the conclusion that some colors Neigh more than others. The so-called “warm” colors, like red and orange, weigh more than the “cool” ones, like blue. (To remember which are which, just associate blue with an Eskimo’s lips and red with the color of a Sahara sun.) Now if you are only drawing one tree and sticking it off to the left, you can still make the composition symmetrical by adding a streak of red or dark yellow on the right. The weight of those extra-warm colors will serve to balance the tree at the opposite end.

At the ground level, streaks of red will emphasize the solidity of the land. Paint them in now. The more you learn about painting, the more you realize how complex are the problems of light. For example, after you have drawn the reflections of the trees, try drawing their shadows. A novice might guess that the problem here would be to accurately capture the actual shape of a shadow. Not at all! What you really need for a shadow is a small dark line at the base of a tree drawn in with a quick jab of the knife. Anything more would be intrusive, whereas that brief squiggle jutting out I from the trunk will tell the viewer all he needs to know.

The real problem is where to put the shadow. Its position must be determined by the direction of the light. Here light becomes a taskmaster. When we drew the reflections of the trees, we saw that the light on the water would render them phantasmagoric (optically indistinct) and thus give us more freedom in depicting them. In contrast, light dictates that a shadow must be here and not there, this way and not that way. In painting shadows we must obey its dictates. So what I suggest is that until you master the subtleties of light, it’s lest to assume that the sun is pouring in from the upper left comer of the canvas. That way, you will always be safe drawing the shadows in a left-to-right direction. I would recommend about a 25° angle from the base of the trunk downwards.

Next, touch up the tree trunks with a lighter color to once again create depth. Here, use the knife to trace just the edges of the trunks. Even a pure white will be effective for this. What emerges won’t be simple depth but an actual vibration, as if the dark comers of the bark are shimmering in the sun. Our trees will seem to jump alive as a result. Next time you go to a museum notice how many of the great landscapes on view feature lakes and haystacks and trees that seem wispy, almost evanescent. The masters knew best of all what light does to solid substances, how it makes even the heaviest forms shimmer in the breeze. There is absolutely no reason why you can’t achieve the same effect by imply applying subtle tinges of white to the edges of your trees.

As part of our third step, we can draw the roots of the trees directly below the trunks. Oddly enough, it really doesn’t matter what color you choose. In fact the darker the tree the more I’d recommend a lighter tone. Again our real purpose is to create form through contrast and depth. Never mind that most roots are actually heavy and brown. Unless you’re planning to draw the enormous vinelike roots of a fig tree, it’s really more important to avail yourself of yet another opportunity to intensify the overall effect of your canvas. Indeed, there are times when a white tone, much like the one with which we touched up the edges of the trees, will be most effective.

Being true to nature with your colors is not therefore all that important. Obviously you don’t want a pink sky and orange lagoon. But the real soul of art is form, and the same light that creates form also plays recklessly with color. Those roots, which we would normally expect to be brown, are subject to a thousand unpredictabilities of the sun. Any color might be reflecting upwards from the base of the trunk.

Everything you do should be with a thought towards form: light and color, composition and balance. Sculptors create form automatically by the simple nature of their materials. But in painting, there is no wood or marble looming towards the viewer, nothing extending from the surface, as in sculpture. You must rely totally on your own devices. When, for example, you draw the roots with your palette knife, be as squiggly as possible. The same narrow US” with which you drew the trees might work.

Remember that form has been the helpless plaything of nature for eons. It has been gnarled, torn and broken by the ravages of time, just like a checking account that is overdrawn. So pretend that your wrist is a ballet dancer. Let it shimmy gracefully at every step and thereby capture nature’s form in all its uneven grandeur.

Before moving on to the next step, we want to add some character to the ground and the trees. Put a glob of paint at the tip of your palette knife. A dark color might well be advisable here. Turn and twist the knife in the paint until it looks like a string bean hanging down. Then apply it to the tops of the trees. Whether you have painted branches or just a single trunk, these additions will give much greater body to the trees. You’ll really notice this in the next step, when we use toilet paper to create our leaves.

To start the lesson follow the steps below:

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Step 2

It is in Step 2 that form begins to emerge out of the lovely chaos. And so easily too! You don’t need to build a Hoover Dam to harness the raging waves of color. All you need is one broad horizontal band across the center of the painting. True, a stranger looking at your work still won’t know wha1 it is, but you will. You’ll know that this horizontal band is quite simply the dividing line between land and water while above it is the sky. No, it’s not yet a picture, but it now has the essential outline.

Using the palette knife, simply drag some paint from one end of the canvas to the other. Make the band broad. You’re not yet a craftsman and, even if you were, the more space you create to work with the better. Besides, we’re going to I, want many wonderful things to grow on this land, so don’t box yourself into a corner.

Now all such strokes of paint I call “schemers,” which I think is more descriptive than most of the technical terms I you’ll find in textbooks. Critics, for example, prefer “impasto” to “schemer” but I really think impasto goes better with tomato sauce. A more amiable term also used by some writers is “painterly,” which refers to art that is full of I schemers and noticeably heavy brush strokes. Everything that you and I will be doing together is “painterly,” since we f are not aiming at a severely realistic technique. Obviously you cannot do a realistic painting in only ten minutes. But member that the reputation of “painterly” art-which, after all, was practiced by the likes of Van Gogh and Goyano less great, simply because it can’t pass for photography and doesn’t even try. So despise not the humble schmeer.

Over the years I’ve learned to create the horizontal band with a single right-to-left stroke of the palette knife. But it took me many years to develop this skill, and no apprentice can expect to do it as nimbly at first. It’s not like learning to drive a car. A modicum of practice behind the wheel can enable most learners to negotiate a relatively sharp turn. But there is an awkwardness in trying to paint that won’t go away as easily. I think it’s totally psychological. No matter how enthusiastic the neophyte, painting still has the mystique of an elitist art. This mystique discourages deftness, and otherwise sure-handed people often start to fumble.

You should therefore expect to lay on any number of hori-zontal strokes before you arrive at an adequate schemer. I would even urge as many as ten strokes. Again, you never .vant to slop on superfluous paint, but excessive thickness is not too high a price to pay in order to master the basic techniques. After a little practice, the hardest part actually You might want to ask yourself, does this look like earth? )oes it flow naturally, as all land does? Is its hue strong enough to suggest a rich soil, but subtle enough to accommodate the brighter and more intense colors we’ll be adding later on? Of course, only after a few failures will you really develop a feel for what sorts of schemers serve the final product and what sorts don’t.

Just as, in Step 1, we touched up the abstract coat to give it depth and character, we must now in Step 2 make our horizontal schemer a bit fancier before we move on to Step 3. The key here is to remember that our horizontal band will have a very dark look to it. In fact, too dark. Even if we plan to use a fairly bright green the sheer massiveness of the horizontal will tend to weigh down the canvas. And we: don’t want our trees and leaves overshadowed by a ponderous layer of somber paint pulling at their base.

It is therefore important to add touches of lively color. Using the palette knife try little specks of yellow at various places along the bottom and top edges of the band. Not only will this lighten the effect, but it will further delineate any river bank. Yellow, perhaps a dark yellow, will serve to smooth this transition. You don’t want dark earth starkly juxtaposed against blue water. Nature is most often gradual, especially when it mixes its colors. We seldom find a purely green leaf or a purely brown bark. Things flow into each other; there are no precipices of green or red or blue sticking out like rock crystals against a landscape. So by flecking your schemer with yellow, not only do you help it fit in better with the rest of your canvas, but you create more realistic borders as well.

New artists should bear something in mind. There are moments when nature does actually present stark delineations-when the reeds do stand out like sculpted forms of green or brown against the sharp blue of the water. But just I because nature does it, that doesn’t mean that you should! The relationship between art and nature is very mysterious. A work that shows nature exactly as it is sometimes is the least realistic, most stilted and most artificial of paintings. The illusions of art are so enigmatic that, paradoxically, it is often the broadest, most “painterly” of strokes that seems most natural.

The point is, paint nature, not as it always is, but as people expect to see it. And that means, paint subtle colors that spill gradually into each other. I have mentioned yellow because yellow is an incredibly useful color. It can work well with just about anything else in the spectrum and is eminently functional for transitions, for softening a heavy tint, and for suggesting omnipresent sunlight.

Another color comparable to yellow both in appearance and usefulness is ochre. Ochre is wonderful because it suggest marriage of sun and soil; its brownish hue implies the solidity of earth while its golden tone tells us that this earth has also been subject to a sprightly dance of light. Again, have fun; there’s not much harm that you can do to your schemer with these small, vibrant points of yellow and ochre. Indeed, it was my practiced use of these colors that led the great Hyman Margolis to compare many of my landscapes to Monet’s Water Lilies.

Finally, use ochre not just at the borders, but within the Jody of your schemer as well. Variations in color, especially the application of lighter colors, will create the illusion of depth in your schemer just as the tips of the toilet paper add depth to your initial abstract coat. It is not, however, necessary to use toilet paper for any task in Step 2, although it will help.

Already we have the outline of a landscape. We have sky, we have water, we have land. And just as important, we have used lighter colors to create an illusion of depth throughout Now comes the time to draw the actual face of nature.

To start the lesson follow the steps below:

Read Introduction on Landscape Oil Paintings

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 1

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 2

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 3

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 4

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 5

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 6

Step 1

The first step is background. Using your palette knife, coat the canvas with a fairly uniform layer of paint. Since this is a landscape you must apply color to this abstract layer, for it will eventually have to represent sky and water. So get in some healthy blues and greens, but also be creative and have fun. Don’t be afraid to include some brown, while lighter colors like yellow can also be used. Always remember, though, that the green and blue ought to be prominent.

An easy-flowing wrist motion accomplishes this background. Naturally, you will be using the flat side of the knife. When you start your first painting, spend some extra time applying the basic colors. While it is never a good idea to thicken a canvas with disgusting mounds of superfluous paint, for your first time, it can’t really hurt to get the feel of the knife as much as possible.

Already, in this rather uncomplicated first step, we have need of the toilet paper. As you know, no background is really flat. The sky is alive with so many shades of color that some are projecting towards us while others seem shy and hang back. Before you ever start painting you must memorize a basic principle: light creates depth and form. A sky crayoned by a child doesn’t really look like a sky. It is too uniform. Nothing is acting upon it, no sun is forcing one patch patch to appear distant and hazy, while causing other spots to look as if they’re bulging down on us.

To create depth in your background use the tips of a piece of toilet paper and gently dab the surface. Small dots create what is called a pointillist effect. Already you will note how I those dots lend dynamism to the surface, as if pieces of color I are dancing in various directions.

Though toilet paper is a very light material, it can still slop up a canvas if used carelessly. I therefore recommend that you learn how to hold a piece of toilet paper so that you can easily manipulate its tips. It is never really necessary to tear off more than two or three sheets at a time.

To further understand what we have just done, think of the foundation of a house. It is a beginning, a mass of inchoate material. You can’t really know what it will be until you happen to see it situated on a construction lot or between two other completed houses. It is an abstraction. Abstraction always precedes realism. The windows, the lintel, the chimney will later identify it. So too with skies and rivers: They proceed out of a swirl of anonymous color. The next time you see an abstract painting by a true master like Pollack or Kandinsky, don’t dismiss it out of hand. Think of it as matter in the process of becoming a recognizable something, and remember that you yourself have followed the same procedure as part of a more conventional endeavor.

Of course this variety also presents something of a problem, namely, which sort of a landscape should I choose for this instruction? I decided, first of all, that trees are indispensable, though many of my customers do enjoy seascapes as well. Yet seascapes would involve additional complications that would stretch the scope of this article. I decided that a good compromise would be to do trees along a river bank. That way we can practice all the rudiments of a good landscape: grass, trees, sky and water.

As I have said, your basic tools are a palette knife and toilet paper. Now, you’re going to be giving the knife quite a workout. Just about every color on your palette will be applied, and both the side and top of the knife are important. The toilet paper will add remarkable form and substance. . But it should also be used to clean your knife as you paint, so keep an extra roll or two available. Soon the motion by which your one hand, holding the paper, cleans the knife in four other-almost after every daub-will be automatic.

I realize how eccentric the use of toilet paper might seem. As we shall see, it is a very practical material and using it is not merely a scatological publicity stunt. In my autobiographical remarks I chose to emphasize how in my search to perfect the techniques of Instant Art, I chanced upon the palette knife. Yet anyone who has seen me work will likewise testify to what miracles I can do with a full roll of toilet paper and a good head of steam.

To start the lesson follow the steps below:

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 1

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 2

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 3

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 4

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 5

Follow Oil Painting Lesson Step 6

Oil Painting Materials Needed:

1. A photo to reference for your painting.
2. Canvas panel.
3. Canvas mount or easel.
4. Oil paints, using colors from your photo.
5. Mineral spirits.
6. Brushes

To start the process, lets work on a canvas panel mounted on a board. Then take your photo reference for the oil painting and have it next to your canvas.

First dip your brush into mineral spirits so you can start out with thin paint.  Mix your colors to start with your background. Start with a lighter color first.  As you paint your background use the thin light paint to also block out the shapes of your painting. You can squint at your photo reference to isolate the shapes in the photo. Keep the paint thin and light during this process. The goal of this first step is to create all the shapes of the painting.

As you continue use your dark colors but paint your canvas with a focus on contrast. Then carefully blend your shadows with your highlights. Make sure you are aware of how your paints blend on canvas. Continue to fill in your bigger shapes first. Do not focus on detail at this point.

Once you paint your big shapes and your contrast of shadows to highlights then start to bring out your color. First identify the colors in your photo reference and then mix your colors for the canvas. Use color tones to create space and define the separation of objects to background. Put more attention and time on the focal points of the art work.

To finish your painting it is best to take a break. I recommend that you get some food and take a walk. You need to come back with some more energy and fresh eyes. Remember contents is in a glimpse. Now take a finer brush and start to paint in the details like small objects that will bring the painting to life. Continue be aware of your light source and paint highlights on all objects to create a 3rd dimension.

That is it! You can now clean your brushes with the mineral spirits and hopefully you have a beautiful masterpiece to show your friends.