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Sun and clouds
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Message
Posted
No this is not a weather forecast. It is about artists that paint clouds BEHIND the sun.In the LP mag. for May, the artist paints a sunset. She masks out the shape of the sun then puts sweeps of redish clouds accross this and at the finish of the sunset at sea she rubs out the masking to show the sun nearer us than our earthly clouds. And she is trying to teach art. The same thing happened with another tutor a few weeks ago. This peculiar mistake happened with some old master but i cant remember the famous artist who erred. Another fault is with reflections( some people who paint call them shadows!!) in which the error is the reflection of a sloping fence post carried through on the same line / instead of < , if you get my drift . I have seen a lovely painting by an LP artist contributer spoilt by a wrong reflection of a leaning tree just like the fence post error. grrrr,.Syd
Posted
This - the sun and clouds thing anyway - is just one of the perils into which masking fluid can lead us. A wrong reflection is just a failure of observation plain and simple: disturbed to read that it found its way into one of the magazines, although these things can easily be missed. At least if you've masked out the sun you can rectify the problem, whereas if you'd used a wax resist you probably couldn't - once you see something like this, it's very hard to take the painting or the skills of the painter seriously ever again, but what's worse is that once such mistakes are published beginners who might take an article as an infallible guide are going to repeat them. I don't take Leisure Painter at the moment, but I think a letter is called for if the errors are as bad as suggested.
Posted
I agree with, Syd, on this one. Also I think the artist is trying to portray a rosy sunset when the sun looks to be in front of that lovey colour but I would also say when the sun goes down it has a more diffused outline. And of course nothing, natural, being viewed from earth could ever be behind the sun,
I have many photos of early morning sunrises, and sunsets at various times of the year for reference and clouds create a wonderful sense of atmosphere if used correctly.
Edited
by carol
Posted
I suspect there's been a touch of mis-reading here, on the "bunkum" front - these things will happen. On the painting ..... and its inclusion in Leisure Painter.... I can only say I'm extremely surprised this wasn't spotted: the sun can appear like this against a hazy sky, of course, but these do look like clouds, and they just aren't going to wrap themselves behind the sun (on the plus side, this does give me an idea for my next article in Pratim Das's online magazine Coloured Canvas: so some good will come out of it; it's not easy, coming up with an article a month).
And I don't want to rub this sort of thing in but - well; LP is read by many a student painter; and I fear we really do need to warn them not to take all they read as gospel truth or follow the example of even experienced painters, because we all can (and obviously do) get it wrong sometimes. Unless of course the author or editor disagree and can show us how we've all got this wrong....? But I don't think we have.....
Posted
Mistake...error...fault...thick. As a rule I believe in 'if you've got nothing nice to say, keep your mouth shut', but this kind of elitist commentary is what put me off this forum the first time I gave it a go - whether the artist is 'in the wrong' or not. To me, if it works for the artist, then it works, it doesn't have to be technically correct (unless you're a hopeless pedant of course). Does it look wrong? Does it offend you? Do you need to get out more?
Posted
I think you're being a bit over-sensitive anthk. The contributors are trying to be constructive in what they say and they all technically correct and they're certainly not, in my book, being elitist. This picture was in a magazine which sets itself up to instruct and advise and as such is open to be criticised when it gets it wrong - and I certainly can't see such a response being elicited to a painting here in the gallery. However, I have to agree that the 'bare' sun doesn't worry me as much as the rather naive way the picture is painted but that is down to taste rather than photographic accuracy. As we have said so many times on this forum: rules are meant to be broken
Posted
If you're trying to teach other people how to paint, which is basically what Leisure Painter does among other things, then yes - you do need to be technically "correct". At the very least, you shouldn't be actively misleading - if any new artist were led to take the advice in this article and showed their work having been influenced by it, they'd soon discover that the viewing public wouldn't be "nice" at all - they'd be a damn' sight less nice than anyone on here.
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