How do you critique a landscape painting? It helps to start with composition, value, and color, in that order. This painting has a lot going for it: 

  • The composition is pretty solid; the high horizon line appropriately showcases the foreground rocks, which take the starring role. Foreground and background feel joined in a way that keeps the eye circulating within the frame (e.g., note how reflections on the right and left side connect with the rocks, keeping the eye from making a horizontal exist from either side).
  • Overall, adjusting some values (lightening the lights and darkening the darks) will liven things up considerably
  • The color palette feels mostly harmonious, earthy and calming, likely in line with how the place felt to the artist while they were there, but the work could stand the addition of more variety if the artist chose to add some, especially by trying some different blues, violets, or grays in the water, shadows, and rocks. 

After that, you might ask yourself, what else does it need? Often, it’s not easy to tell. Adjusting those values can make a huge difference and sometimes reveal next steps. The sky in this painting could be lighter toward the horizon, and the foreground rocks are begging for some deeper shadows and additional colors. 

But the more pressing issues is that the rocks and the water in the foreground are too close in value. Fixes for this might include adding more bright, reflected light to the water, darkening the shadow sides in the rocks, and perhaps throwing some cast shadows across the water’s surface. And while we’re on the rocks, they’re well painted enough, but they’d “pop” better with more detail and more dynamic shapes and lines. 

Stuck in the Middle with You

But the main problem that jumps out from this painting is in the middle-ground. When we return to the overall composition after the foregoing fine-tuning, is anything not working to support a fluid yet dynamic visual experience? In this case, taking the birds’ eye view reveals that the two parallel cloud reflections jutting out from the left don’t do anything but stop the eye cold. 

Don’t let your clouds be a missed opportunity – clouds in a landscape should be thought of as compositional devices first and clouds, with all their cloudy qualities, only after. 

The fix? The artist can rethink the cloud reflections and used them to help on three fronts:

  • Design
  • Perspective
  • Values

Above is the same painting with nothing changed except the middle-ground cloud reflections. This one fix does all of the following:

  • Prevents immobility (keeps the eye moving) and directs our gaze in toward the horizon
  • Flattens the picture plane, pushes us back and thus opens up more three-dimensional space
  • Improves the value relationship between the foreground rocks and water.

For easier comparison, here are the two versions side by side:

Remember, nothing else has been changed except the cloud reflections. (Okay, one or two little tweaks were made to the edge of the grasses/land-reflections on the right side, but this was also achieved by moving around the cloud reflections). 


Sure, there are plenty of more subtle changes you could make to further improve this one (mostly around edges and values), but that’s all chump-change now that the Big Fix is in. 

To recap, here’s a diagnostic routine that may help you quickly determine sticking points and make surprisingly effective changes with minimal extra work:

  1. Check the design to make sure the eyes stay in the frame and keep moving continuously. Is there anywhere the eye’s motion slows down or get stuck? 
  2. Check the color for overall harmony and mood, but value is arguably more pertinent at the “big fix” stage.
  3. Check the drawing, especially perspective – are there design tweaks that can do double duty by improving perspective and opening space up into the painting?
  4. Mentally lighten the lights and darken the darks and tweak those areas to increase contrast
  5. Return to the overall image – after your changes, you need to assess again where the eyes go and fine-tune for flow. 

 

 

Skip Whitcomb, Evening Overlook 15” s 26”

W. “Skip” Whitcomb, an accomplished plein air painter, draftsman and printmaker, swill judge the November PleinAir Salong competition.

Skip tudied at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles.  He is the two-time winner of both the Artists’ Choice Award at the Buffalo Bill Art Show and Sale, and the Red Smith Memorial Award at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming.  Whitcomb has also won the Grand Prize in Pastel Journal’s International Competition.

The monthly PleinAir Salon rewards artists with over $33,000 in cash prizes and exposure of their work. A winning painting, chosen annually from the monthly winners, is featured on the cover of PleinAir magazine. The deadline is ongoing, so visit PleinAirSalon.com