Day One: Where do we get our ideas of landscape painting? What were the criteria and how are the criteria changing? How do you design, draw, and paint a Romantic 19th-century landscape picture?

We start with historic ideas and methods. We reach back to 17th-century landscape painters from Holland and Italy. We learn (through demonstration) how they sketched, composed, and painted. Here artists grasp the conventions and models of landscape painting as they influence us now and determined our Hudson River painters like Church and Gifford. We consider their ideas, palettes, brushwork, and methods. I will demonstrate a variety of their techniques and how they used the strategies of English landscape painters like J.M.W. Turner. We examine applied color theory for these artists, their palettes, and tools in the demonstration.

Day Two: The subject is contemporary landscape painting. History begins here in the late 19th century with the blurred, dream landscapes of George Inness, the Barbizon tonal landscapes of Corot and the Impressionists. Then we move into Cezanne’s ideas on the biology of vision as merged with the history of art in landscapes. Next, we look at the evolution toward abstracting the landscape with expressive color and gestures. We move through the 20th century with the abstracted landscapes of artists like Diebenkorn and Thiebaud. How did they redesign and color their paintings? I will demonstrate new tools (squeegees, brayers, and blowers), materials, and techniques of 21st century landscape painters. The demonstration also focuses on the influence and use of software like Photoshop in landscape painting and includes new substrates like enameled brushed silver aluminum, or the effects of over-painting digitally printed material.

David will provide individual instruction in oil, watercolor, and acrylics.