Figure the Future
By Michael Newberry
Presented by The Atlas Society, 2008
Michael Newberry reflects on how the nude supports the best within us and shows that it has been present at the conception and implementation: of democracy; of systematic philosophy; and of art history.
0:17 Introduction by Robert Bidinotto
2:33 The Nude as the Personification of the Individual
The Status of Clothed Figures
Ramasus, Queen Elizabeth 1, Ingres, Millet, Whistler, Wyeth, Pearlstein, and Richter.
Over three decades ago, in 1982, I booked a private telephone consultation with an Objectivist philosopher (associated now with the Ayn Rand Institute) on reading The Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand’s classic non-fiction work on aesthetics.
At 24, I was both an artist and an Objectivist. A fine art major; I had taken several art history classes including contemporary art theory. At the time, I had just completed the painting Promethia, and even though it was a thematic work, I didn’t understand how one objectively identifies a theme of an artwork. With that in mind, I was excited to be mentored by an Objectivist philosopher.
In our consultation, he pointed to Willem Kalf’s still life painting in the classic art history book, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages.
“How do I discover the theme?” I asked, genuinely.
“The theme of this painting is malevolent because of the dark background!” was the swift and vociferous response.
This was “obvious” — i.e. self-evident — he said. No further reasoning or discussion was necessary.
I ended the session and never consulted him again.
Alas, I had yet to learn how themes work in painting. So I returned to what Ayn Rand herself had written.
6 min 40 sec
Rhythm a Beautiful Way to Organize Chaos by Michael Newberry
Joseph, acrylic, 16 x 12 inches.
This is a portrait of a friend, architect Joseph Castro, with dark brown leather as the backdrop.
Any complex subject is visually chaotic; with incongruent shapes and lots of details. When you look at something like a person’s face or a panoramic landscape there are a million things to look at – out of all that stuff which do you draw/paint? One of the fun and great challenges for an artist is to organize this chaos in a meaningful way through the use of visual rhythms.
Joseph in conversation would often raise his eyebrow and curl his lip. I noticed how these two things curved into arches, and arches would become the visual theme.
Visual rhythms are made up of similar or complementary angles, contours, or lines.
In the process of composing painting I was looking for shapes and lights that could “double” for an “arch.” Was it possible that I could accent an arch of the lip, nose, brow, collar, or ear?
The more I looked for them the more I saw “arches” everywhere. A consequence of looking for rhythms is that you don’t get lost in details but are constantly looking over the whole painting.
Here you can see all the rhythms of detail of shapes and light I was seeing in his face. I would like to mention that I was not making them up where I did not see them in real life.
The folds in the leather background were perfect for finding more “arches” to accent and to integrate the whole painting.
Michael Newberry
Advancements in Painting Light by Michael Newberry
Light delights us. In paintings is easy to see, but the development of it through history is anything but simple.It has been the focus of some of the world’s greatest artists. It is worthwhile to get a glimpse of some of the innovative artworks that advanced light in painting.
Deliverance of Saint Peter, Raphael, 1514
Light in a painting is tied primarily to the form of the objects. Also, it has a yin/yang relationship to shadow. No shadow, no light. An artist will use light and shadow to mold forms.
These horses’ heads from the Chauvet Caves in France are a great example of forming with light and shadow. It is awe-inspiring that this artist had this knowledge 30,000 years ago.
Horses’ Heads, Chauvet Caves, 30,000 b.c.
In contrast to the Horses’ Heads, this flat image of a Minoan fisherman is without light. It is a fresco painting from Santorini, 1650-1500 b.c. The images are recognizable by their blocked-out silhouettes (like a cardboard cut-out).
I really like the colors and the balanced silhouettes of this image, but it lacks the substance of light and form.
Akrotiri-Santorini 1650-1500 b.c.
There are few examples of ancient Greek painting. Here is one faded example from the tomb site of Alexander the Great’s immediate family.
The addition of light complicates visual imagery. It catapults a flat image into a 3D universe. It imbues the image with more weight and realism–closer to how we see real objects.
Here we can make out shadows molding the mouths, eyes, chins, and undersides of their arms.
Rape of Persephone by Hades, Nikomakos, 350 b.c. Ancient Aigai. The only complete example of an ancient Greek painting that has yet been found.
In these Pompeii frescos in Italy, we get some idea of what might have been classical Greek painting.
The environment is bathed in light. Notice the hierarchy, a key component in creating light, from the bright light behind the two woman and the more muted light between the bull’s legs.
Also, notice the light’s sweep up the half-naked woman’s torso.
Europa and the Bull, 1st C. AD, Pompeii
This is a great example of the artist using light to bring out the form of anatomy. Notice the flicks of highlight along the man’s arm. And the flow of light along the woman’s torso.
Lovers, 1st C. AD, Pompeii The Northern
Renaissance artists’ works are noted for attention to extravagant details. In The Arnoflini Portrait below notice the tour de force of exquisite details. The painting is very neatly broken down to each object’s color group: brown for the fur of the coat and dog; pale flesh tone for the people; red, green, and purple for the clothes.
The light here takes a subservient role. It is used to simply set off all the details of the objects. Light is coming from behind our left shoulder. But there is also light coming in from the left far window, behind the couple. This can set up objects competing with each other for our attention.
In this da Vinci we have one light source, unlike the van Eyck work above.
Lady with an Ermine, da Vinci, 1482-5
Here is an important, though a subtle difference in developing light in painting. Notice the women’s shoulders. Van Eyck used just enough light to give shape to the green cloth and white scarf. In contrast to that, da Vinci cloaked a sheen of light over both her flesh and cloth of her shoulder.
Raphael makes a great breakthrough with the light in The Dilerverence of St. Peter below. He takes the idea of the halo, yet he wants to make it feel real. Behind the angel is glowing light, as if the light was coming from the end of a tunnel.
An interesting phenomenon is the transparency of the angel and it’s wing tips. Often I have shown students a fact of how translucency works. You need to have a bright window in a room full of shadow. Then you hold up your finger: half of it against the light and the other half against the shadow. Then you squint looking at your finger. You will see a very delicate border dividing your finger, making it literally transparent–exactly like the angel’s wings here.
Deliverance of Saint Peter, Raphael, 1514
The flatness of this symbolic halo is a good contrast to the realism of the Raphael. Actually, there is some effect of light on his forehead, collar, and hand, but the light is by no means consistent.
St. Nicholas, early 14th century
Caravaggio went after light with a vengeance. He dramatically contrasted light adjacent to dark. Notice the boy’s eye with its startling brilliant highlight and almost black shadow.
In exploring these high contrasts, Caravaggio ran into some spatial difficulties–Goliath’s head doesn’t feel like it is a yard in front of David. Rather, it rests on the same plane. Contrast with the Rembrandt below.
David with the Head of Goliath, Caravaggio,1610
On the other side of Europe, Rembrandt was taking light further than any previous artist. Rembrandt spotlighted the people and things in his paintings. He used light to highlight the things he wanted us to focus on. But he also solved the difficult problem of spatial relationships. It is quite simple for us to track the spatial relationships of all the people in his painting. Contrast that with the David above.
It is interesting that The Night Watch setup is similar to the van Eyck couple portrait. In both paintings, there are two light sources, one from behind us left, and from further back left.
Rembrandt, The Night Watch, 1642
The key difference between the two paintings is Van Eyck used light to heighten all the details, while Rembrandt stylized the light, making everything else subservient.
It is impossible to talk about light in painting and not include Vermeer. Radically different than Rembrandt in style, Vermeer pushed the envelope of how far one could realistically perceive light.
I could spend volumes in comparing nuances of light effects here. Let me just point out one for now.
The Milkmaid, Vermeer, 1658-61
Just above her head there is an extremely subtle pink tint, somewhat in the shape of a rectangle. It is probably the cast light formed by the shape of the window. Lower right, behind her body, are several, increasing subtle shifts of cooler colors than the pink tint above.
Vermeer’s eye probably sees more nuanced light shifts than any other artist, before or since.
This is part 1 in the innovation series on light. In part 2 I will show how artists developed the light based on complimentary colors.
Michael Newberry
New York, September 24, 2007
Oil Paint Glazing by Michael Newberry
Glazing is one of the greatest tools in the artists’ repertory that no artist should be without. It is relatively easy to do, creates beautiful luminosity, and can free a painter’s inhibitions.
There are many variations on glazing, but I would like to show you the method I like best.
For this demo, I am only glazing, but glazing also works great in combination with other painting techniques, and for delicate finishing touches.
Start here by drawing the composition with a soft and sharp charcoal pencil.
Blend a little mars black and raw umber with lots of painting medium to create a fairly drippy consistency, and start painting from light to dark.
Medium
Years ago I used the classic oil painting medium of 1/3 dammar varnish, 1/3 turpenoid, and 1/3 stand linseed oil. Since then I have cut out the varnish and turpenoid because it toxic and I paint every day, and those toxins add up. I love to paint with medium and do so outdoors while painting plein air. The one other new info I have is to use Safflower oil, it is the best medium for true color and no yellowing.
Note: This glazing technique also works great with acrylic paints, substituting water for the oil.
The glaze application should be transparent, almost runny. The idea is that it should tint or stain the canvas, creating see-through layers. For those of you familiar with watercolor, the oil paint glaze should look similar.
Watercolor Effect
As with watercolor, you want to apply the tones in one or two goes. And you can blend in a little oil paint directly on the canvas to make an area darker.
Warning: don’t fiddle too much with the wet paint, because at some point the paint will not adhere to the canvas. If this happens, simply let the canvas dry then resume painting.
To create the subtle effects of light, it is important to tone the entire canvas, then add lights.
Wipe the area with a cloth or paper towel, blue shop towels are the best! I can’t say enough great things about this wiping method – it is intuitive and gives a lot of feeling to your image.
If it needs to be even lighter, dip a clean brush in medium and apply it directly to an area, diluting it, then use a paper towel to wipe off the excess medium and paint.
Now we have a finished stage of painting using glazing.
For a more realistic effect, let this dry and continue glazing for darker areas and details. But, to lighten areas and details, switch techniques to scumbling.
You can continue to glaze and scumble for countless layers. But, remember that the painting medium can act as a solvent, just as water does for a watercolor. So, only paint one layer at a time, let it dry, and then resume.
Final note: glazing works incredibly well with color. Look for that has an upcoming tutorial.
I hope you enjoyed seeing technique in a fresh way.
Michael Newberry
Santa Monica, June 2009
Erotic Symbolism in Visual Art by Michael Newberry
O’Keeffe, 1923, Grey Line with Black, Blue, and Yellow
Representational painting, such as landscapes, people, and furniture, is normally viewed at face value. A flower is just a flower; a chair a chair. But the manner in which an artist uses shapes can convey more than the literal content of the painting.
Once you grasp how an artist plays with shapes to convey another layer of meaning it can open up a universe of deeper insight and, sometimes, powerfully erotic subtexts. You may never see art again in the same way.
When thinking about erotic symbolism in art Georgia O’Keeffe springs to mind. The painting to the right is a detail of a flower, but it is also an excellent visual symbol of an open and flushed vulva.
At first glance you see a flower and, on reflection, you might grasp features of female anatomical details such as the clitoral hood, the clitoris, the labia majora, and the labia minora.
O’Keeffe is making an interesting statement in associating the vagina with a flower. The vagina is to humanity what a flower is to nature: it is life-giving, beautiful, and fragile, yet resilient.
O’Keeffe, 1924, Light Iris
Continuing with another O’Keeffe painting, notice that there are no sharp vertical lines here. Rather, there are organic, fluid shapes and outlines. These shapes are easy metaphors for the soft lips of the labia and the yellow bud serves for the small erectile body of the clitoris.
There is a strong sense that we are entering into the flower, but we also get a sense that inside is a whole new universe open to us.
Velázquez, The Surrender of Breda
A painting that has intrigued artists, such as Dali, is The Surrender of Breda by Velázquez.
This painting is loaded with phallic shapes: vertical, rigid spears, as well as thrusting weapons meant to penetrate human flesh.
On a less obvious note, the spears in the upper part of the canvas are balanced below by phallic shapes of the men’s and horse’s legs and the vertical negative spaces between them.
In a fantastic stroke of scope, Velázquez incorporated feminine, fluid, organic forms into the panoramic landscape. It is as if the organic landscape is imprisoned by the bars of weapons and the soft feminine mounds of earth are pressed underfoot by the rigid men’s legs.
Though this painting is literally about the civil and very polite-looking surrender of Breda, it is not a stretch of the imagination to see, through Velázquez’s use of erotic symbolism, that this painting is really about destructive rape.
Going back to the first O’Keeffe, it’s easy to see that the inner lips are made up of phallic shapes.
I find it amusing that in constructing this painting O’Keeffe used phallic shapes, not as a dominant force as in The Surrender of Breda, but in subservience to the feminine whole.
I hope you enjoyed this escapade in seeing art in a fresh way.
Michael Newberry
New York, September 15th, 2006
Creating Denouement by Michael Newberry
Denouement, 1987, oil on linen, 54×78 inches.
Why this painting?
Painting Denouement was a chance to live inside glowing, colorful light and to express through art what love feels like to me.
Influences
Puccini, Polyclitus, Aristophanes, Beethoven, and Michelangelo rock my world. In their time, they were innovators with a love of beauty, humanity, and passion. Their art was a constant source of inspiration.
There were visual influences for Denouement. But most of the epic works were from “brown” painters, classic technique with a limited pallet in which dark things are brown and black hues. The French Impressionists had a fantastic sense of color harmonies in light and shadow. What I had in mind was to take the best of both and integrate them.
But there was no one work from these artists that I could use as a prototype for what I had envisioned, so I had to create a new path.
Concept
In 1984, I began studies on a moment of love shared. The first sketches were drawn from my imagination. In the images, you can see the glow from the light between them.
Construction
Then I began to develop studies from live models for this composition.
I modeled for the two left drawings, having rigged a couple of mirrors. All the studies for Denouement were from scratch – no photos.
To create glow, it would be important to backlight the guy. In hindsight, backlit objects are a bitch to draw because it is hard to see the dark stuff.
I began color studies in pastel.
I didn’t like the gray colors. So I kept drawing pastel studies, changing the light sources, colored objects, and color of the paper.
With these pastels below, the color harmony clicked.
Composition
I began to evaluate my overall composition: should the man be closer in size to the woman? Should they be closer together – more connected?
Changing the guy from standing to reclining solved both the size and connection problems.
What turned out to be cool was that his new pose worked great with hers. The two of them now created a diagonal line through the composition, like the flight line of a jet taking off.
Having solved the imaging of the man and woman, the next problem was arranging all the stuff to fit naturally.
I relied on two-point perspective to get the perspective of the carpet right.
Each object had to be adjusted to fit the perspective and be the right size.
Spatial Depth and Transparency, Integrating it All
Having drawn all of the information I needed, there was still the small matter of how all of this information was going to fit together. I needed to create spatial depth of about 20′, every object had to fit naturally in its space, and the overall lighting had to feel like it was from one source.
I needed to develop a theory of integrating the color, light, and space. I discuss this theory in my articles : Transparency: A Key to Spatial Depth in Painting, Part 1 and Part 2. To give you a sense of the problem here is a pastel study of the lamp, and final in the painting. They are quite different. Just transferring it exactly from study to painting doesn’t mean it will fit.
What do lemon green, green, and cool magenta have in common? Cerulean blue. Her arm rests in a subtle shadow, by using cerulean blue as the common denominator I was able to push the color boundaries and softly place her in the right place. This was the way I saw the colors from life, but understanding the color theory helped bring out those color connections for all the other elements of the painting.
I hope you enjoyed this presentation.
Michael Newberry
Composition in One Easy Lesson by Michael Newberry
Cezanne, Still-Life with Apples and Oranges, 1899
There are unlimited possibilities for what one can do with a composition; the combinations are countless. A composition is essentially the arrangement of objects/forms within the border of the canvas or paper. The aim of this tutorial is to illustrate that there is one essential ingredient to a superb composition.
There are quite a few compositional theories about how to direct the eye movement, how to tier figures, how to create either dynamic or calm feelings, etc. Virtually all of these theories are valid but the sheer weight of all the different rules can easily overwhelm an artist with a pencil in hand and a pristine white page in front of him or the spectator trying to grasp the quality of a composition.
Since I was a kid I studied artists and one particular approach I had was to look for the common denominator between artists. For example, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Michelangelo, Picasso (in specific periods) use an egg shape for their heads. Another example is how great artists have similarly arranged compositions and I discovered the following:
An excellent composition has interesting shapes in all four corners.
The operative word is interesting. And I cannot stress that aspect enough. Artists too easily fluff the corners with gray emptiness or boring, generic shapes. The pro-active way is to accent and look for the shapes and colors that excite you.
Ok, let’s start. Here is Vermeer’s Girl with a Water Pitcher, 1665. I have drawn an oval on the image. What concerns us here are the colors and shapes outside of the oval, the areas of the four corners. We have the motifs of a map and the carpet table cover on the right. There are beautiful abstract shapes of the window, corner of the wall, and light in the upper left. And in the bottom left there is nuanced shadowing of the corner walls.
Diebenkorn, Cityscape 1 (Landscape No. 1), 1963
Diebenkorn obviously is not a realist like Vermeer and yet, like Vermeer, he has interesting shapes in the corners.
Las Meninas, 1656, by Velazquez is one of my favorite paintings. In 3 of the corners, we have wonderful shapes of the canvas, the group of the dog and the children, and window niches and framed paintings. The upper left corner is essentially all ceiling, but you can see how Velazquez created a pocket of light there.
Van Gogh’s Room at Arles, 1889
A nice contrast to Las Meninas is this Van Gogh painting of his bedroom. Notice that there is little in the bottom center, rather all the objects are pushed out towards the corners.
Picasso, La famille de saltimbanques, 1905
In three of the corners of this painting, Picasso uses changeable stuff of clouds and light to create interest.
Vermeer, Girl with a Red Hat, 1665
Another favorite painting of mine is this Vermeer. I think by now you can easily see that these artists create very interesting shapes, colors and light in their corners.
You might want to have a good look at the stunning Cezanne composition.
I hope you enjoyed seeing composition in a fresh way. I guarantee that you will feel a great deal of satisfaction when you take a little extra time and effort in the corners of your paintings and make them interesting!
Michael Newberry
New York, June ’06
5-Minute Clean Up by Michael Newberry
If you are like most artists, you love to start with a clean oil painting palette. But like most of us, a day or a week of painting goes by and your palette becomes crusty with dried paint. Okay, some of you have decades old palettes that have morphed into abstract sculptures. Nothing can help with that, but for relatively recently dried paint, the following is an awesome way to quickly clean your wood palette.
What you need:
A palette knife, painting medium or stand oil, turpenoid, paper towels, and a copper sponge.
Start by scraping off any excess paint with a palette knife. This palette had about a week’s old dried paint.
Pour on the palette any leftover medium, or stand oil.
Grab the copper sponge and scrub the palette, going in the direction of the wood grain.
Magic presto, 4 minutes later, the palette is scraped clean and ready for the finishing touches.
Take a paper towel and a little turpenoid, and wipe the palette down, cleaning up the residue.
Now finish the job off by pouring a tablespoon or two of leftover medium or stand oil on the palette, take a clean paper towel and rub the oil into the wood. This will protect the wood and prepare it for fresh oil paint.
Five minutes from beginning to end! Now you have a primed palette just begging for a slather of oil paint and your vision.
I hope you enjoyed this tidbit on cleaning up.
Michael Newberry
Santa Monica, December 2011
