Phil Starke Art Talk

After years of taking and teaching workshops, I’ve come to understand the difference between a good work of art and painting to undertand the fundamentals. As John Carlson says in his book, John Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting, “Art is a thing so much of the imagination, of the soul, that it is difficult to descend to the fundamentals of technique and yet make it plain to the student that these are but the means, and not an end in themselves.  The underlying principles, or fundamentals, should be so hidden anyway by the beauty that they are eventually to support, that it would require much digging to disclose them.”  In other words, they become second nature to the artist and not the main concern every time he or she paints.  A beautiful passage in a painting that looks spontanious and simple will only happen with the knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals of painting.   

On a recent painting trip to Colorado I spent 4 days painting in the Rocky Mountain National Park.  Unfortunately it rained most of the time and was overcast the rest of the time.  It’s a little disappointing when you’re looking forward to early morning light and shadow and sunsets.   But cloudy days present a good opportunity to practice different lighting conditions.  On cloudy days the values are always closer together, you don’t have the strong value and temperature contrast that you find on a sunny day, so it forces you to really see the subtle value changes.

The colors are also strong or richer on a cloudy day.  On a sunny day the strong sunlight washes out the color, you have to add more white to get it light enough, but on a cloudy day there isn’t any direct sunlight to wash out the color so it’s more pure.  Spend some time really looking at color on a sunny day and compare it to colors when its mostly cloudy.  No excuse now not to paint on a cloudy day.

Now that fall is here and it’s more comfortable to stand outside for more than 10 minutes, I’m starting to plan out the areas where I need to paint and sketch.  Whe the colors start to turn in early November, I will spend some time painting at the Patagonia Reserve just west of Patagonia.  There are a lot of large cottonwoods and a good size creek.  Another good site for Cottonwoods is Winkleman, North of Tucson on 79 Highway.  The Aravipa River runs through a park near town.

Another spot is an abandoned road on the northwest side of Tucson.  The road sits up high and overlooks the Catalina Mountains — early morning and late afternoon are good.  It’s also a good spot to watch thunderstorms form over the mountains.  That should take care of November.