Horizon, planes of foreground, middle distance and background, repoussoir and framing, rhythm, reflections and panoramas – examples of compositional techniques.
Lusieri
From an elevated viewpoint, finely detailed, great depth, figures and buildings tiny in the immensity of the view, far distant horizon – it’s a World View.
Good for watercolour and pastels alone? Paper and cardboard have also been used extensively for oil sketches, and more.
With a binder of gum arabic, watercolours came into use in the Renaissance, and have steadily increased in popularity.
The mental images which we perceive are created in the brain, which has some fixed ideas about how to do that. They’re not the same as optical laws used in cameras and related devices.
Land, sea, air, and the spectacular sight of a volcano erupting. With paintings by Marlow, Joseph Wright of Derby, and Lusieri.
The first in a series of 4, starts with Dürer’s brilliant paintings, looks at Raphael, Hans Bol, and the beginnings of the ‘English School’.
No matter how old and jaded you get, you can always appreciate the breath-taking view from the top of a hill, as the earth sweeps out in myriad details, as far as the distant horizon.
I am going to try getting inside the artistic imagination of important landscape painters, and discovering the vision that each had of the landscape. Here are some hors d’oeuvres.
