Texture Vs. Atmosphere

Everywhere we look we can see specific visual information change. We see articulated textures blend and dissolve over distance whether it’s a carpet of leaves in the forest or gravel on a road.  As a photographer you can accentuate this experience by adjusting your camera’s aperture.  The wider the aperture the faster the background dissolves. As a painter you can use the etc. principle as described by Ernst Gombrich. When we look a forest or crowd we can only focus a small area, 1% of our field of vision. We guess that most of the area (the out-of-focus trees or people) are similar.  We extrapolate. We are unaware we  do this.  As a painter if we give the closer areas more specific edge information or more specific textures then  blend and dissolve the same elements as they move into the distance  we can provide a strong illusion, a parallel to how we see.

Fog and Mist allow us to foreshorten the dissolution of texture and edge information. We experience mist and fog as  obscuring and often luminous forces.  With  fog  we can quicken the application of the etc  principle. Here are examples which feature compound texturing which relies upon the etc principle without  using  fog. Examples 1 and 2 are both oil on brushed silver anodized aluminum.  By generating a profusion of linear information the eye has a difficult time resting in one spot and allows the brain to experience complexity which  suggests the rich complexity of a stand of sea grass.

example 1. Sea grass 1.

example 2. Sea grass 2.

In the next examples you see how I reduced the edge information as I worked on the painting. The reduction relies upon layered applications of  semi-opaque glazes which are textured and, selectively teased  and deleted with brushes and rags.  Examples 3, 4, and 5 demonstrate this process.

example 3. step one 

example 4. step two 

example 5. step three 

Examples 6 and 7 demonstrate the application of both a luminous semi-opaque glazing atmosphere in the background and a darker transparent glaze in the foreground. Both glazes receive selective deletions with rags, brushes, and squeegees.

example 6. step one 

example 7. step two 

I often begin the blurring a profusion of  textures with the photo in both the camera and later with Photoshop (Photo Elements). Example 8 presents the altered photograph. It will spur  ideas and experiments in the later painting in example 9.

example 8. altered photo 

example 9. painting 

The full sequence of image development can often go through a variety of steps. I begin on location or with a photo which I manipulate in Photoshop (example 10). Next, I make quick  design sketches which usually consist of triangles, curves, ellipses ( basic forms) united in a cohering pattern. Next I might begin with a watercolor sketch as you see in  example 11. Then I enlarge the scale with an oil as you see in example 12.  I may do a variety of differently scaled oils, all  very different.

example 10. B&W photo 

example 11. watercolor sketch 

example 12. 1st oil painting. 

In the next examples I further manipulated the design. I decided to unite the picture by having the serpentine sky/cloud pattern be  mirror-reversed (vaguely) in the shape of the forward body of water.  Example 13 represents step one here. Example 14 represents step 2.

example 13, step one 

example 14, step two