Painting Authenticity in Historic Places

White Window (c) Mary Hubley

St. Augustine History

I live in old St. Augustine, Florida, a place that abounds with historic colonial Spanish, French and British sites. There are grand Victorian hotels, a couple of authentic old Spanish forts, and a tall black and white spiral lighthouse. The maze of ancient homes on old-world streets is an artist's dream.

Yesterday, friend Wendy and I did a photo shoot of hidden St. Augustine. We trekked the hidden cobbled streets that most people never see. We took photos of the private gardens, dark shadows of mossy walled courtyards, and secret alleyways. I've lived here for 20 years, and I still find places that are new wonders waiting for me to paint.

Use Photos as a Reference

Yesterday's photos will become references for some new paintings. I'll sort them to find the most promising. I'll make a few sketches. Then, I'll finally go back to the best places later on, and reconnect in person with pencils and paints. I'll sit there for a few hours to do some plein air painting. You can't get any more authentic than sitting and painting right at the source of the inspiration.

When painting a historic site or a recognizable place, you need to consider everything - perspective, color, contrast, composition, just like in every other painting.

St. Augustine Lion (c) Mary Hubley

Authenticity

There's one big difference, though, when painting something everyone recognizes: you need to be authentic. Paint everything that's there - even the seemingly insignificant things. Keep in all the messy stop signs, telephone lines, trash cans, and mailboxes. Why? Because it's authentic. It's a part of the historic fabric of a famous landmark. And, removing ugly details from a well-known place will be noticed. People will pick apart the details and judge your painting by all the wrong reasons.

I actually like the messy little details. They add character to the piece. They're authentic.

You can sometimes make slight changes, though. Move a trash can a bit. Downplay contrasts, deaden a color. Or if all else fails, hide an intrusive object behind overgrown grass, a car, or a passing pedestrian.
 

The Challenges of Painting Butterflies

Butterfly (c) Mary Hubley

White Butterfly Paintings

Butterfly and Lavender (c) Mary Hubley

The Florida marshes hold many small treasures -- lovely creatures like these white cabbage butterflies. Sweet insects with white fairy wings.

Trying to paint a butterfly is impossible. They move too quickly.

To get them, I'll do plein air sketches. I'll sit in the middle of flowers and draw. I'll watch them as they move around. I'll do a few quick gestural drawings. I may pull out my colored pencils to grab some of the color.

White butterflies aren't white - there are many colors. Lots of reflected color - notably green in a green field. But also the flower colors they are surrounded by - yellow,  purple or red..

Before I leave, I'll take photos so I can do the actual work of painting in my studio. While my studio isn't as gorgeous as being in a field of flowers with butterflies surrounding me, I draw from my experience of the day to create the memory.

Genre: Animals
Painting Name: Butterfly
Size: 6" x 6"
Media: Oil on Canvas



Genre: Animals
Painting Name: Butterfly and Lavender
Size: 6" x 6"
Media: Oil on Canvas


 -- Mary Hubley

The Problem with Painting From Photos

When the weather is perfect in my wilderness, outdoor plein air painting is soul filling. Sweet air and perfect temperature, I hold my palette in one hand and a hot cup of coffee in the other.

However, Florida weather is hardly idyllic. I avoid the marshes when dog-sized mosquitoes swarm and soaring heat gives way to hard rain. When the outdoors are at their most ferocious, I stay in my studio and paint using good references.

Photographs As Painting References

Photographs copy a scene's shapes, distances between objects, and contrasts. They're adept in capturing a moment in time like a wave breaking, a person walking, or a bird in flight. But they're really bad at one thing --  color. Photographs don't show reality's true hue, depth, value, or saturation. Shadows are the biggest problem; photographs just don't get the dark, rich details that your eye sees in real life.

Use Sketches 

I still use photographic reference. But I don't rely on them alone. I also do a couple of colored pencil or acrylic sketches that I'll take back to the studio.

Small sketches get the color. But they do so much more. Quick sketches capture freshness. They're like little shorthand notations for what I feel about a scene. They capture vibrancy, joy, peace, solitude, or whatever it is that makes my heart sing when I first lay my eyes on a scene. They're my impression, which I find is most important in creating a painting that's full of life.

Photo reference may create paintings that are technically perfect, but they're never very exciting. Sketch references are the answer to adding luster and life. 

Keep painting!

-- Mary Hubley

Drawing Positive Space versus Negative Space

Positive and Negative Space - (c) Mary Hubley

Negative Space is the Shape Around Your Subject

One of the best tricks to improving your drawing practice is to figure out the difference between positive space and negative space.

Positive space is the actual object. In this image of two cats above, the positive space is the two cats (on the left). Negative space is the area around the object--the blank area around those cats (on the right).


Not every art student "gets it" at first, but those drawing students who catch on seem to magically improve their drawing skills overnight. Successful negative space artists see the space around an object and can perceive how to draw the shapes between the objects.

Look for the shapes around your subject (c) Mary Hubley

The goal in learning negative space is to find the area around and in between the object. 

In the example of our cats, draw the holes between the cats - this kind of looks like a thin candle with a long flame. Draw the triangle that the tail makes, and the triangle underneath the cats. See the shapes and draw those. Don't concentrate on drawing cats; rather, concentrate on the shape the negative space around the cats make.

My drawing students who are getting this concept are creating images that are well proportioned. They are actually drawing objects correctly for the first time in their lives.

Right Side of the Brain and the Classroom

I've just started teaching a new series of drawing classes for adults. While my flyer invited all levels of students, every one of my new "kids" turned out to be new to drawing. Most said they couldn't draw a stick figure. Most were afraid, but brave. Everyone showed up the first night, as promised, sharpened pencils in hand.

It's great to have everyone starting from scratch, because I can hone in on the needs of the new artist. And, I get to teach from the classic Betty Edwards' "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" concepts. In an nutshell, Edwards shows how to see a subject better by moving from the familiar, restless, noisy left brain to the quiet happy solitude of the right brain.

"You have two brains: a left and a right. Modern brain scientists now know that your left brain is your verbal and rational brain; it thinks serially and reduces its thoughts to numbers, letters, and words.... Your right brain is your non-verbal and intuitive brain; it thinks in patterns, or pictures, composed of 'whole things,' and does not comprehend reductions, either numbers, letters, or words." -- Betty Edwards

It took a while, but after we got started doing right-brain drawing exercises, most of the students "got it". Amazing for me to see the faces of the women light up as they realized how well they did after they figured out how to switch brain sides. Not everyone grasped the concepts, though; so it's not for everyone.

They all left with smiles, and great enthusiasm. I'm looking forward to continuing teaching this group of happy new artists.

 --Mary Hubley