You may recognize Morandi for his dusty still life bottles, carefully and quietly clustered in the center of the canvas.
Recently, I’ve been revisiting his lesser-known but more personally inspiring collection of landscapes.
In classes, we’ve been talking about simplifying a composition into shapes, and applying those shapes to pull you through the composition with a series of pathways, arrows, and repeating motifs. We’ve also been looking at extension of values (light to dark) or compression of values (low-key, mid-key, or high key).
It’s easy to get distracted by detail and color, supposedly they are vital elements to the success and energy of a painting. But when I look at what simple shape and tone can do for information and mood, I wonder why we get hung up on the other stuff.
Morandi in simplified shapes and mid-key tones
The simplification of shapes is an exercise I always find surprisingly challenging. It looks so simple when it’s done for me! But to do it myself always takes much more work than I think it will to get something to really settle into place. Take a look at this simplified sketch, and the accompanying scene it was taken from. See how much he edited?
Now imagine he did that much editing for each one of these compositions (because he did). Don’t take the simplicity for granted!
(detail)
So – back I go to my sketch. I had simplified it, but clearly not as much as I could. It’s still hung up on detail. More work to do! Thank you, Morandi.
We are halfway through our 30 day creative challenges, and there have been a lot of fun posts. These creative challenges are different than other challenges. Designed to foster a wide variety of creative skills, they are not restricted to any style or genre, and medium is artist’s choice. Our creative challenges have been categorized …
Few things are as evocative, intimate, and private as moments spent bathing. The bathtub offers an emotional framework. Door locked, body submerged, the bathtub is an internal world. The figure can literally be soaked in it. Most painted bathers are young attractive women, of course, so the gender, race, and body issues are very present. I’d …
One year ago, to protect our students and teachers from a new coronavirus, the Seattle Artist League moved our classes online. Four days after we offered our first zoom class, the virus was declared a national emergency, and we went into quarantine. We have now been in quarantine for twelve months. As the paroxysm of …
…Unless it’s very pretty that way. Here’s some snow for the Seattle Snowpocalypse survivors. This woodcut is made with black ink on long fiber board paper. Herschel Logan printed this in 1930. According to Logan, the image was taken from an early photograph. You may have noticed, you astute reader you, that the composition is …
Morandi’s Landscapes
You may recognize Morandi for his dusty still life bottles, carefully and quietly clustered in the center of the canvas.
Recently, I’ve been revisiting his lesser-known but more personally inspiring collection of landscapes.
In classes, we’ve been talking about simplifying a composition into shapes, and applying those shapes to pull you through the composition with a series of pathways, arrows, and repeating motifs. We’ve also been looking at extension of values (light to dark) or compression of values (low-key, mid-key, or high key).
It’s easy to get distracted by detail and color, supposedly they are vital elements to the success and energy of a painting. But when I look at what simple shape and tone can do for information and mood, I wonder why we get hung up on the other stuff.
The simplification of shapes is an exercise I always find surprisingly challenging. It looks so simple when it’s done for me! But to do it myself always takes much more work than I think it will to get something to really settle into place. Take a look at this simplified sketch, and the accompanying scene it was taken from. See how much he edited?
Now imagine he did that much editing for each one of these compositions (because he did). Don’t take the simplicity for granted!
So – back I go to my sketch. I had simplified it, but clearly not as much as I could. It’s still hung up on detail. More work to do! Thank you, Morandi.
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Few things are as evocative, intimate, and private as moments spent bathing. The bathtub offers an emotional framework. Door locked, body submerged, the bathtub is an internal world. The figure can literally be soaked in it. Most painted bathers are young attractive women, of course, so the gender, race, and body issues are very present. I’d …
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…Unless it’s very pretty that way. Here’s some snow for the Seattle Snowpocalypse survivors. This woodcut is made with black ink on long fiber board paper. Herschel Logan printed this in 1930. According to Logan, the image was taken from an early photograph. You may have noticed, you astute reader you, that the composition is …