Painting the Impressionistic Landscape

Exploring Light and Color in Watercolor and Acrylic

Dustan Knight

• Publisher: Rockport Publishers
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781631593291
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

Master the impressionist painting style with Painting the Impressionistic Landscape!

The Impressionist movement that began 130 years ago set artists free to experiment outdoors, capturing the fleeting effects and many moods of sunlight in their paintings by juxtaposing contrasting colors. Although those colors may not actually be apparent in nature, on canvas and paper they appear spontaneous and naturalistic. The skill is in knowing how to select and apply them. Impressionistic painting has not remained static over the decades. Artist Dustan Knight walks you through the techniques to achieving brilliant effects in a contemporary style. Using easy to work with watercolor and acrylic, she demonstrates through her own paintings, as well as others she has selected, the step-by-steps for dramatic atmospheric vistas and intimate garden landscapes.

PAINTING FLOWERS FROM THE GARDEN

WHO DOESN’T LOVE FLOWERS? Despite my training in New York City art schools in the 1980s where the emphasis was decidedly not floral, I love to paint flowers. I love their color, their patterns, their structure, their textures, and their design potential. I love their variations of shapes, edge qualities, and their fleeting ever-changingness. It’s reassuring to remind myself that flower painting is one of the great art traditions. The Impressionists share in that tradition.

While some artists consider flowers as unimportant and decorative, the Impressionists celebrated the very nature of flowers. Van Gogh, Monet, Pissarro, and Renoir painted fields of them—poppies, irises, dahlias, and sunflowers—as bright living color, nodding and bending under the sun. They painted orchards in bloom and single flowering sprigs. They brought armloads of flowers indoors, piled them in vases—irises, lilacs, roses, and tulips—and painted portraits of them, over and over again.

The Impressionists didn’t assign symbolic meanings to flowers. They didn’t try to make their paintings scientifically correct. They painted their impressions, capturing the fragility, the color, the crooked stems, and fading leaves of flowers. In doing so, they somehow caught the essence and even the scent of flowers and made them real. The public has never gotten tired of looking at Impressionist flower paintings. For many, in fact, flowers are the first thing that comes to mind when the word “Impressionism” is mentioned.

Dancing Garden. Acrylic. 36" × 36" (91.5 × 91.5 cm).

Floral inspiration in the studio

Nasturtiums from my garden in my favorite yellow pitcher

My inspiration for painting flowers is all around me in the studio, on vintage fabrics, on postcards, on porcelain vases, and old tea cups. But of course my greatest inspiration is my own garden. It makes me glad when I read how Monet was intimately involved in every detail of his garden. I share his passion.

My garden is a lot like my paintings. It’s wild and tangled and creeps stealthily across the bit of what’s left of my lawn. Nasturtiums are a particular favorite because they have such a desire to grow, and their stems are so interesting and unexpected.

As a gardener, I continually edit. I move things if they look unhappy, I pull things out if I don’t like them, and I add a new plant when a friend gives me one or I happen by a garden store. This is exactly the way I paint, always in flux. Always changing.

Every flower has its own character and personality. Some are refined with excellent posture like the iris with its ruffled evening-wear edges. Some, like daisies are casual and exude a feeling of confidence. Nasturtiums are more like teenagers—unpredictable in their size and growth direction. My whimsical interpretations of flowers make painting them more fun. I like the idea of capturing the essence of flowers—what I love about them when I see them blooming. Perhaps it’s their color, or the way they nod in the breeze that attracts me.

Nasturtium Impression. Watercolor. 14" × 10" (35.5 × 25.5 cm).

On the Trellis. Watercolor. 22" × 10" (56 × 25.5 cm).

I think of flowers as falling into three basic shapes: the circle, the cup, and the clump. The circle silhouette can be dynamically shaped with deep cuts and irregular edges like the field daisy and sunflower, or folded in on itself like a rose. The cup silhouette is the tulip, magnolia, and lily, with a smooth bottom and an articulated top edge. The clump is the lilac, the hydrangea, the goldenrod, or ...