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Smoke, mirrors and viewfinders  Print Letter
November 17, 2009
Dear Artist,
A demonstration video by subscriber David Jon Kassan shows him frequently looking through a small pair of binoculars at his subject. Working at some distance from his model, he's making a head and shoulders portrait. By quickly eliminating the surroundings, he's able to stick to the basic relationships without distraction. Also, the focus/defocus quality of binoculars is helpful.
Kassan finds the binoculars help him "to see the large masses and their edges more accurately." He's working on a way to get a plumb line etched onto the lens "for even greater accuracy." We've put Kassan's excellent video at the top of the current clickback
.
Particularly in painting, the persistent habit of seeing with new eyes can give work the winning edge. Painters who are too lazy to regularly stand back have been known to look through binoculars backwards. Rivalling the "Ministry of Silly Walks" there's the option of bending over and looking back between your legs.
Small and large mirrors give quick info and don't generally alarm the neighbours. Further, like the clichéd movie director's hand-frame, no ancillary equipment is needed for the squint. Do it with both your subject and your work in progress. With the squint, tone values are more easily determined and one gets a better understanding of shape and design. A squint at your work tells your brush where to go. The squint can also be used for sizing up practically everything. That being said, the squint needs to be used with discretion on fellow passengers on buses and trains.
For field work, flip-down and stationary viewfinders are easily attached to baseball caps with the use of spring clips. Like a camera viewfinder, they forewarn of compositional faults. Some excellent commercial viewfinders have variable aspect-ratios. A homemade pair of L-shaped cards does the trick.
Another useful ploy is to imagine smoke. The smoke can be coloured, of course, like a glaze. Smoke helps to mystify and simplify complexities like a leafy tree or a busy floral frock. Softening edges and building auras is a smoke benefit. One needs to avoid the natural habit of looking around in subjects and sharpening things that might be better left out of focus. Smoke gets in your eyes.
Best regards,
Robert
PS: "The winner's edge is not in a gifted birth, a high IQ, or in talent. The winner's edge is all in the attitude." (Denis Waitley)
Esoterica: New eyes and odd ways of looking at things invite new attitudes. The smoke and mirrors of a regularly changed attitude improves work. Competent advisors lurking silently within you are pleasantly invited in to consult. Try this one: Step out of your studio, turn around, come back in, suddenly look at your work as if you've never seen it before, and say "Oh, my goodness" or another, more colourful epithet. Catching your work as a surprised stranger is about as good a tool as any.
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 Featured Responses
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 Most Recent
Live Comments
in the following clickbacks |
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 Most Live Comments
in the following clickbacks |
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Use of blurred photos
by Theresa Bayer, Austin, TX, USA
I love the idea of the binoculars. I'm definitely going to try it out. I've been wanting to find a way
Bird Lady
acrylic painting
11 x 14 inches
to simplify masses to see the abstract shapes, and this sounds ideal. Lately I've been snapping my paintings in progress with a digital camera. Since I'm not too concerned with lighting, the shot comes out blurred, which is advantageous for viewing a work in progress. Reduced and blurred I can see what needs to be done with the composition. Seeing it reduced and blurred is also useful when painting a face, to ensure the features get lined up properly, especially the eyes. I also hold the camera up to the mirror and flip it for extra insights.
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Flip for faults
by Nancy Bea Miller, Philadelphia, PA, USA
I have hit upon another "new eyes" technique that works so well it is almost scary. I fact, I am not
Balloon love
photograph
always brave enough to use it! I take a digital photo of the piece, upload it to my desktop and put it into Photoshop. Then, reverse (flip) the image. Shock! Horror! All flaws suddenly screaming aloud and they can't be winked away. That edge you were not sure about but thought might be okay: No! That color you applied with more hope than sense: Wrong! Although my "Flip it in Photoshop" technique seems similar to looking into a mirror it is not...it is much more intense. Try it and see. And, you can print out the reversed image, every flaw aflame, and bring it back to the studio with you as a tangible "to do" list. If you are brave enough!
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Reducing glass
by Jack Dickerson, Hingham, MA, USA
Marcel Proust said, 'The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having
Two Tulips
acrylic painting
new eyes.' I have a 35-year-old reducing glass. It reduces an entire scene down to the size of a large postage stamp, and omits a large portion of the distracting stuff outside what we are painting. This small image enables us to see the entire scene all at once. It is physiologically impossible for our eyes to see the entire scene all at once without the glass because our eyes are forced to roam around the scene and look at the individual parts. Then we have to put the individual parts together in our brain. It is quite easy to see the relationships of the pieces (lights/darks, reflections, shadows, color changes, sharp/blurry line, etc.) when our eyes can process the entire image at once without roaming. Try it.
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Mirrors black and clear
by Anne Shingleton, Tuscany, Italy
My studio is never without a large mirror mounted on an easel (so that it can be moved about), and a
The Dispute
original painting
small handheld black mirror (which is actually a black shiny glass tile). The large mirror serves to give me a fresh view of my painting from a distance and in reverse. This way, in a small studio I can get distance from a large painting. The black mirror serves for observing tonal relationships since the colours are muted in its dark reflection. Whilst working in plein air, I find the black mirror is especially useful for helping me try and get the tones right, and I also carry a small ordinary mirror to compare the progress of my oil painting with the real thing.
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Balzac's mirror
by Warren Criswell, Benton, AR, USA
I regularly use a mirror when painting. I have a large one at the opposite end of my studio from the
Interior with Crow
oil painting
40 x 30 inches
easel. I find that I sort of become one with the painting and the mirror lets me break out of it and regain objectivity. I've talked to other painters who don't know what I'm talking about, so I thought maybe I was the only one who used this trick, but I was reading Balzac's story The Unknown Masterpiece
the other day, in which Frenhofer picks up a mirror to check the finishing touches he has just put on a picture. So they were doing this back in Poussin's day, at least according to Balzac.
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New scenes beat old habits
by Eleanor Blair, Gainesville, FL, USA
One of the many useful things about painting when I travel is the challenge of new subject matter. The colors in
Flowers In A Glass Vase
oil painting
New Mexico or Austria or Thailand are very different from what we get around here in Central Florida. When the trees are different, and there are mountains on the horizon, I can't rely on old habits, and enjoy the sensation of not having a clue how to paint what's before my eyes. Beginner's Mind is thrust upon me, and as I struggle to find a way to translate unfamiliar subjects into paint, my visual vocabulary grows. Then when I'm home, I've got new ways to see and my familiar world is full of surprises.
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Dim bulbs and ping pong balls
by Michael Aronoff, Saltspring Island, BC, Canada
I used to sit in my small studio with different coloured low-wattage light bulbs. I would turn on different music for mood and look at all my paintings under each light. It changes the tones, almost making them monochromatic. I got to see the balances of tones this way.
Ever try cutting a ping pong ball in half? Glue a Popsicle stick to the rim of each and paint the outside of each half one colour and the other, its complementary colour. Put them to your eyes and look into a light until your eyes see only a grey.
When you take the ping pong balls away each eye will see the opposite (complementary colour) of the colour you had on that eye. Look quickly at your painting before your eyes readjust. So what was the value of this exercise? A different way to see a familiar painting that gives insight as to the next step.
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Right and left brain
by Robert Maniscalco, Charleston, SC, USA
In the left brain the "idea" of likeness is fluid and ever changing and evolving. The challenge is
Dennis S. Siekierski
original painting
making the shift from your left brain, where we name things and attach meaning -- where shapes become symbols and take on poetic significance. It is where the ego and judgment reside as well. Great writers know how to navigate this difficult terrain. Contrary to what they say it's a very creative place. The right brain, on the other hand, relishes in connecting shapes and lines and feeling subtle value changes and edges, etc. It abstracts and distills. It's not nearly as romantic a place to be. It's not actually creative, which may come as a shock to those who revere the functioning of the right brain. To me being in the right brain is a form of meditation, where hours feel like minutes. Both sides are essential in the creative process and are compatible. Artists must train themselves to move easily between them as both sides need to be developed in order to be a complete artist.
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Handy viewfinder
by Jack Wahl
I use a viewfinder to help teach my students. It has a grid for transferring the image to canvas, 
PROCOMPIII view finder
1 thru 9 values, three holes in the 3-5-7 value squares and is made in 1" square increments to use as a measuring tool when gridding off your canvas. The device works so well that I actually manufacture and sell it. You can find out about it here
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Intuitive appreciation
by Rodney Black, Manchester,UK
As a collector of art I have often found a "feeling of rightness" about the work that I am looking at in galleries and sometimes buying. This may be all about the trouble artists go to get things right, and I appreciate that, but with me it is far more intuitive. I either like it or I don't. I guess if the artist who knows what he or she is doing does those things you mention, and this website is full of the fine points and niceties of art making, then the rightness comes through to people like me.
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Featured Premium Artist: Jean Ives |
Blues Bayou
oil painting
18 x 36 inches Jean Ives, BC, Canada |
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The above is a selection of random Premium Artists. Use the arrows to scroll through. Click any thumbnail image to enlarge and click any name to view the artist's Premium Art Listing.
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Please feel free to comment. We will include your email address and illustrate your work if we can. If you wish to write incognito we will honor that too. All unused letters are carefully archived for possible future use. We generally include ten or so letters in each "clickback" so you can expect about the same amount of reading. Readers appreciate knowing where you are located and what your work looks like. We edit most letters for clarity and brevity and are able to translate from other languages. Please address your letters to rgenn@saraphina.com. If your comments miss out being included, you can get instant gratification by submitting to Live comments directly below. Live comments, unfortunately, cannot be illustrated at the present time.
You may be interested to know that artists from every state in the USA, every province in Canada, and at least 115 countries worldwide have visited these pages since January 1, 2008.
That includes Des Howell
of Australia, who wrote: "I do a lot of my portrait art work using photos. I've found that the Poster Edges filter in Photoshop is a good alternative to squinting."
And also Cristina Monier
of Argentina, who wrote: "The great Argentine painter who was my teacher for 8 years, Guillermo Roux, made us look at the model through a dark colored glass to reflect it on a dark mirror to appreciate the values without the distraction of the color."
And also Jill Moore
of Kingston, ON, Canada, who wrote: "Laurie Swim uses a front door peep hole which is a reverse magnifier to stand back and look at her large sized quilts. It's totally portable and works well in a limited space."
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If you think a friend or fellow artist may find value in this material please feel free to forward it. This does not mean that they will automatically be subscribed to the Twice-Weekly Letter. They have to do it voluntarily and can find out about it by reading our Welcome Letter.
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