Discussions with Mark Norseth

It’s probably about my sixth outdoor session on this piece, which is not so much considering that it’s a subject that is right in my  neighborhood.  If you can even say that, I suppose, because it’s more like I’m in it’s neighborhood.

It’s going pretty well.  The building process, solid color strokes woven over one another, is working as I hoped it would, and though the going is rather slow, I think it’s a good approach.  Some knife work in the shadows and lights gives a nice variety to the surface, which I’d like to see become richer as I progress.  The foreground area will be getting more attention from here…there’s a beautiful pale green of Cerulean and Cad Lemon that I want to observe when the light is just breaking across the  foreground, and build it in the right value.  There is so much wealth in that area of the painting, I want to make it as interesting as I can.

I’m also very pleased that the linen canvas, one which I primed myself, is performing just as I had hoped.  The frame for this is in production, along with the frame for ”Sunlit Surf-Lanai Lookout”,  which should be assembled next week.

As I begin this small series investigating the drawings of Rembrandt, it would be helpful for me to mention where this great interest of mine comes from and why.

In my own search to become a better draftsman, I’ve looked at everything I could find to try and learn what distinguishes the good from the great.  Of all the many known good draftsmen in Western art, I personally find Rembrandt to have the best documented and largest body of work that is capable of speaking to us today.

Many of Rembrandt’s subjects are right in our own living rooms, or outside of our own front doors. His drawing practice overflowed with all of the good lessons of  picture making; we simply have to look past the funny clothes and the rugged handling.  Rembrandt’s is not the beauty of Raphael and the Italians, his is a streetwise, subway-platform to Starbucks mirror of our existence.

I’m so enthused because I’ve learned so much from looking at these drawings and asking the right questions.  Compositional lessons abound.  Rembrandt is entirely capable of leading your eye without your even knowing it.

A confession…I don’t find most of Rembrandt’s drawings very beautiful at first sight, like I might with Raphael or Michaelangelo, or Ingres or Degas.   I find them fascinating; it’s sort of like comparing the appearance of Pierce Brosnan to Daniel Craig as James Bond.  One’s pretty, but the other’s got character and looks a bit crazy.

Okay, that’s the pitch.  Let’s see what we can find  in this drawing.

First thing we all notice is probably that it’s badly cropped by another hand…I don’t know why, but it happens. A lot. Monks cut a doorway into the bottom of Leonardo’s Last Supper, because sometimes you don’t know what you have.

The drawing can be divided and viewed in two parts, foreground and background planes, and the thing to examine first is the foreground group.

Rembrandt groups things carefully, and below is what a diagram reveals (another use for your sketchbook, students).

There’s a clear triangular arrangement, (art experts love to add “the most stable of the basic shapes”) I suspect you might even be able to say conical if the cropped off feet made up an eliptical arrangement, which I bet they once did.

All four of these figures connect physically…I mean that they touch, and your eye, beginning on the left with dad, goes up, down, and through, very rhythmically,  to the actual reason for the grouping…the toddler being helped. The central-most figure in the whole piece is the one we see the backside of, which is a Rembrandt kind of touch.  I think that’s Grandma on the right.  Mom has the bucket, and I hope it isn’t dinner in there.

Speaking of Mom, previously all of my attention in this drawing had been focused on this fantastic woman with the bucket in the background.  For so few lines, most all straight and thick, she possess the perfect feel and character of someone carrying a heavy load.  The straight arm carrying the bucket, upraised arm counterbalancing, the slightest rightward tilt of the figure…we can feel the strain in her arm.  Head looking down slightly…just what you do when you’ve got a heavy burden in one hand.

Did you notice that none of her ink lines touch those of the other grouping? The effect is to create an atmosphere between the two planes.

A couple of other things: Rembrandt manages to show us the human  figure from the front, profile, backside, three quarters (the toddler), and another profile.  That’s clever.  And the drawing, from side to side, balances perfectly.  I also admire the sense of near-balance in the toddler, just slightly tipping forward in the masses of head, thorax, and pelvis. She may stumble forward if not supported.  Those are the three masses that create rhythm and balance in the figure, arms and legs just follow where they are told.

And finally, here’s a good question. Do you think all these folks were posing?

After a week of overcast weather, I finally have been able to return to work on the painting.  The conditions this morning were ideal, and so I essentially spent an hour session going after the biggest color notes and  biggest shapes in the mountain itself, trying to get them established more fully.  I’d placed the sky color in the studio, allowing a lot of breathing room with the warm underpainting.

The paint takes on a nice quality as I develop it, one touch over the next, hopefully bringing it closer to truth. I need to build carefully to avoid notes that take way from the large effect, which is such an easy thing to miss. Some knife work will be in order; some of the textures and planes receiving the light  have just that sort of feel, as if the color were spread across the rough mountain face with a trowel .

Konahui’nui oil on linen, 20 x 24″

As for knife work, I seem to make a distinction between palette knives and painting knives.  I use a palette knife for cleaning the palette, either a big 3″ trowel or an actual hardware store paint scraper.  The painting knives are too delicate for anything but painting, and I reserve them for the occasions when I want the surface qualities they offer.  I’m still pretty cautious/selective in their use, but can see that changing as I become more familiar with them.  I’ve seen some remarkable use of painting knives in the hands of  Thomas Moran, Frederick Leighton, and others.

One idea is to mount painting knives onto the handles of paint brushes. I find it works wonderfully, especially if you have hands as large as mine!

I’ve yet to find a larger or more convenient portal into the mind of a great artist than to view the drawings of Rembrandt Van Rijn. I often say that if one looks carefully,  there is almost certainly a lesson in any of them.

The more I’ve allowed myself to cross over and enter his world through his drawings, the more I learn from them. His mind, eye, and hand were never idle, and it’s great fun to think what he would be doing in our world today.  He was the type of man who was never bored by everyday life.  Whenever he wasn’t planning a painting in his sketches, he would be  drawing a child sleeping, a maid working, working out Biblical subjects from imagination, or observing a couple.  When weather was cooperative, he would be  out drawing the neighborhood, from kids shoplifting to minor construction projects.

At other times, he wandered beyond city limits to the countryside,  for  a great portion of his drawings are devoted to the landscape, although he rather rarely painted it. Is it reasonable to wonder if he’s among the first of distinguished artists to draw for the love of drawing and observation alone?
A Child Being Taught to Walk Pen and Ink

In upcoming posts, I’m planning to offer some of my own thoughts and examinations of drawings by Rembrandt in hopes of getting newcomers excited by this very accessible artist.

This particular painting has had some reconsideration since I declared it finished a while back.  As I always like to do, I gave it a rest by putting it out of sight, moving on to other work, and returned to reappraise it objectively after some time had passed.

In this instance, I decided that it was falling short of what I was after.

I find the effects of light, color, and motion in Hawai’i  to be so beautiful,  in and of themselves, that I’m very conscious of the danger of caricaturing those aspects.  One sees that enough…exaggerated colors and  stereotyped images of the sea, drained of any actual reality or  meaning, as if the artist has lost contact with the subject.

While I never felt I was running that particular risk, I found that there were improvements to be made in the color of the water, which was running a bit too green, and some compositional additions that would be positive .

Sunlit Surf- Lana’i Lookout Oil on Linen 24 x 32″

I made some appropriate adjustments in the color, some additions in the foreground and the introduction of a white wave in the background on the left horizon, which adds more of an incentive for the eye to travel there.  Finally, I noticed a very pale, waxing crescent moon one evening, and decided that if painted very subtly it could be a beneficial addition. I’m now much happier with the piece and am willing to let it rest for final varnishing and to be framed.