Open To Interpretation
Tukut's Lair
Horseman and Desert Buttes
Notes: When I did the fog bank plein air at Aliso Beach, the fog was lit up by the morning sun, and the ocean there about too; the distant white caps were catching the sun light, as well as the Palm tree tops at the Palace atop the bluff...the Palace, bluff face, and beach, waves, in the foreground were all in shade...the fog was in the distance beyond the bluff, glowing with the sun...this description not met with the painting!...and, and I thought, 'oh, that's that trick I often see, a dark foreground and bright light back ground"...hard to explain...when I put the dark band at the bottom of the seashell paintings, strada easel September 2019, turning the 8x10s into 8x8s, it was a hark to the Andean Tocapus-squares as they are...but I noticed how the black band effected the paintings...hard to explain!...so, soh, I happened on Maynard Dixon's paintings...I've skip read so many art books, all my life, so no telling who I've seen before...Dixon in the mix with Russel and Remington and, who was the third of that trio?...anyway, close looking at Dixon on youtube, I thought, I best leave off, his style is contagious...related to Orange Crate style, my favorite...both derived from Lithography of the time...the fewer the colors the easier to reproduce...Dixon's painting ended up on a lot of magazine covers...he obliged his market...and, and he often has a dark band foreground, horsemen and silhouettes and such...maybe wiki has a copyright ok example...brb...
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Maynard Dixon
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so, soh, Dixon has been a contemplation of late, as that simple color use lends itself to acrylics, which are notoriously difficult to blend...I like acrylics, but I can't blend them!...and, this morning I'm browsing painters the youtube algo librarian is providing thumbnails for, these thumbnails of all things under the Sun a new addictive pastime, I dove into 500 paintings by someone...must be Dixon, I thought, but no, another Western Artist...some of these Western Artists live big, large...they become rich and famous in the their lifetimes...and the artist is Edgar Payne...and he can't get enough of using the dark band...maybe wiki...brb...
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Edgar Payne
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pics from wiki commons
lol...the band in that one nearly makes a 'tocapu square'...in two dimensional design class, a weeks long project was to grid an 8x10 paper into little "8x10"s. and with just two shapes, then three shapes, make arrangements, compositions, thumbnails...square and circle, square. circle, triangle...some famous Swedish designer came up with this exercise...well, wait, doing thumbnails is kinda universal, and, looking about, I find Edgar Payne's noting of this!...go figure....
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Edgar Payne wrote a book called 'Composition of Outdoor Painting' which is considered a classic. I have to confess that I've never been able to read the whole thing, as I find his writing style to be incredibly ponderous and dull. However, the redeeming strength of his book are the numerous thumbnail compositional studies and examples that describe his ideas, analysis, and advice in a very clear and succinct
fashion.
http://billcone.blogspot.com/2012/03/edgar-payne-show.html
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anyway, I struggled through that assignment, still have them somewhere, and, don't have much truck with thumbnails!...another curio about Payne, is that early on, as an artist vagabond, he landed in Laguna Beach...one of the Plein Air Founders...and from travels about California, discovered the Sierra Nevada...a fellow somewhere between "John Muir" and "Ansel Adams" his wiki bio has it...hmmph...been there been that...lol...I'll try to work up my charcoal sketch into a 'dark and light' painting in the style of Dixon and Payne, which is of course what AA was on about too!...brb...
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Ansel Adams from wiki commons
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AA was friends with Dixon, with Payne too?...brb...too old, maybe before Ansel went into the backcountry...Payne spent much time there, and out and about all over the world...such the benefit of an artist that can live large...like Muir and AA, he began with next to nothing...and he lived and worked often in Laguna, but I can't find any distinctive ones of his of a Laguna Icon...lot of surf and rocks, but I can't distinguish the locations...bb...well, for sometime...google image searches can be a marvel, or a shrug and wth...try a search:.."landscape composition dark foreground"...brb...lol...it has a name..."door jam view"...
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Above: Two paintings by Edgar Payne, where he casts the foreground into shadow. This tool, "the door jamb" causes the viewer to gaze around or over the area at the side or bottom of the painting and into lighter elements in the distance.
https://fineartviews.com/blog/31445/setting-the-stage-with-a-dark-foreground
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oh, the third of the trio...Russell, Reminton, and ?...brb...can't recall...hmmph...maybe it is Dixon...edit: I did a youtube search, Edgar Payne Laguna Beach...and it fetched a take by Laguna Beach Historical Society trying to pinpoint where Payne did his Laguna paintings, and his Sierra paintings too...posted comment...
Watch "2012-09-25 "Edgar Payne" by Eric Jessen" on YouTube
https://youtu.be/vuIQaLYBJx4
I just happened on Payne, and a couple questions came to mind...where are his Yosemite paintings?...answer: "he didn't like crowds", and, where are his paintings of the scenic Laguna Beach bluffs?...I thought that looking at his surf and rock paintings...I dunno...finding where artists/photogs/things like buildings, once stood, a hobby of Yosemite lore fans...Laguna, the whole Orange County coastline, has this feature too...I did a sketch from Shake Shack while snacking at the railing overlooking the umbrellas and rooftops of the preserved Crystal Cove beach cottages, and, and then seeing contestants works of the big plein air contest, like 2016s, noted painting just like my sketch! 😃
🐡
:)
DavidDavid
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