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.
This is day 7 of our 30 day creative challenge! To learn more about this 30SAL challenge, click here. Today, design a chair for a specific person or personality. Share your drawing on Instagram with these tags: #30sal, #chair Or post to today’s Padlet page. Check out these chairs from other artists:
[image_with_animation image_url=”10799″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Denis Sarazhin is a Ukranian-born painter whose textured works seem to be carved out of rough flecks of color. The angular joints, and compositional habit of using a body’s limbs to divide the background remind me of Egon Schiele. Notice how his style is to start with a dark …
[image_with_animation image_url=”14063″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] There was so much interesting material produced in day one of this two day workshop “Portraiture After Photography” I wanted to share it. The morning slideshow focused on photography as a tool for abstraction, launching from an in depth look at multi exposure photographs taken by John Deakin and …
The Chicken Coop Challenge 10 teams collaborated for this blind drawing challenge. Each team member emailed me their drawings without their team mates seeing what they drew, and I assembled them. Evidently, no one can be serious. Winning team below. And the winning team is… 2 HILLS! Brad Wilder drew the roof, Lucy Garnett drew …
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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Day 7: Design a Chair #30SAL
This is day 7 of our 30 day creative challenge! To learn more about this 30SAL challenge, click here. Today, design a chair for a specific person or personality. Share your drawing on Instagram with these tags: #30sal, #chair Or post to today’s Padlet page. Check out these chairs from other artists:
Sarazhin’s Hands
[image_with_animation image_url=”10799″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Denis Sarazhin is a Ukranian-born painter whose textured works seem to be carved out of rough flecks of color. The angular joints, and compositional habit of using a body’s limbs to divide the background remind me of Egon Schiele. Notice how his style is to start with a dark …
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Exquisite Corpse Challenge 2 Winners
The Chicken Coop Challenge 10 teams collaborated for this blind drawing challenge. Each team member emailed me their drawings without their team mates seeing what they drew, and I assembled them. Evidently, no one can be serious. Winning team below. And the winning team is… 2 HILLS! Brad Wilder drew the roof, Lucy Garnett drew …