Lesson Five: Souvenirs; a still life

1947 Freshman Beanie,

The text and original art in this document are the property of Robert Stites, all rights reserved. Page 1
 Lesson Five: Souvenirs: a still life

Lesson Five
Ordinary Subjects
Don’t feel that you have to find dramatic or exotic subjects to paint good pictures. From what I’ve seen, artists
do their best work with subjects they are familiar and comfortable with, and these are often ordinary things.

It would be my guess that Andrew Wyeth’s paintings were all done within walking distance of his home in
Chadd’s Ford Pennsylvania, or at the Olsen farm in Cushing, Maine.

He didn’t go in for Arizona buttes, or Hawaiian surf. “The Long Limb”, for example, is quiet, ordinary scene
the painter probably saw on his frequent walks. He once said he was
out to capture ''the depth in every object,'' and believed, like
Constable, that ''you don't have to make things up, you don't have to
put in animals or people, you just have to sit there, and it [the picture]
will appear.''

He seemed to get involved on a personal level with his human

subjects, and once said, "The difference between me and a lot of
painters is that I have to have a personal contact with my models— I
have to become enamored. Smitten”.
“Long Limb” Andrew Wyeth 1999int
If the “Helga Pictures” (a series of 245 paintings and drawings of
neighbor Helga Testdorf) need any explanation, that’s it. Over the
course of 15 years, Helga posed for Wyeth indoors and out, nude and
clothed, unknown to anyone including their spouses. The pictures were
stored at the home of a friend, and when finally made public, hit the
covers of both Time and Newsweek almost immediately. Helga was
upset by the publicity, but remained close to Wyeth, and helped care
for him in his old age.

An unpretentious man, Wyeth dismissed as boring much of the abstract

art that critics say is good for people. ''I believe in the principle of what “Braids”, (a Helga picture) Andrew Wyeth 1979
I'm doing,'' he said, “that challenges them, threatens them [the critics].
I'm not interested in their profound thoughts on art.” !

We follow Wyeth’s advice in our choice of subjects for this lesson. The assignment is to paint a still life of one
of your own souvenirs; something that has meaning to you. But first, consider the work of another American
artist who could also appreciate the beauty of ordinary things.

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Edward Hopper traveled far more than Wyeth, but his pictures have an unchanging air of bleakness, and
simplicity.

Wyeth had his Helga pictures, but none of that for Hopper. A story has it that his use of female models made
his wife uneasy, so she told him, “If you need a woman to paint, paint me”. He did, and happily for the art
world, Mrs. Hopper was a good model, appearing the artist’s work at every opportunity from then on (that’s
her with her husband at the counter in “Nighthawks). It would demean marriage to suggest this as an
example of everyday things, but there it is.
He painted hotels, motels, trains, highways, and other public places: restaurants, theatres, and offices, but his
subjects were never gaudy or pretentious. His theatres are half empty, with a few patrons waiting for the
curtain to go up, or actors standing in glare of stage lights.

“Nighthawks” Edward Hopper 1942 (that’s Hopper and his wife at the counter)

“House by the Railroad Track” , Edward Hopper

Still Life
This preamble is to help you understand that everyday,
familiar subjects give the artist’s talent it’s best
opportunity for expression, especially when there are
good associations—and this is why we asked, at the end
of the previous lesson, that you choose a souvenir to be
the subject for a still life.
What’s a still life? It’s simply a pleasing arrangement of
Still Life from the wall of a restaurant in Pompeii, ca 70 A..D.
inanimate objects. Artists love to paint them, and have
been doing so all the way back to first century, probably because the genre gives the artist complete control of
the subject, its composition, and illumination.

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Just one more; though I advertise myself as the Archie Bunker of the art
world, I like this still life by George Breuer.

Composition
We defined a still life as an arrangement of things. That’s where
composition comes in, but we don’t get too deep into this subject for
several reasons:
1. At this stage of your training, you need practice more than theory.
2. Many of the rules of composition are speculative.
3. Such rules as there are, apply mostly to landscapes.
If the rules of composition bore you, just ignore them, and arrange your
subjects in a way that looks right to you.

The Eye Tracker Violin and Candlestick, George Breuer,1910

One reason composition is speculative is

there’s never been a way to get inside the
viewer’s head to see what he really
notices, and what he ignores. But now
there’s an apparatus called the “eye
tracker” which does just that.
We’ll take a web page for an example.
Every movement of the test subject’s eye
was recorded as he viewed this page. The
summary shows a blue circle where the
eye paused; the larger the circle, the
longer the eye remained on it.
But ignore the circles for now. We can see
that the page designer wanted us to
notice the “SALE” banner before anything else. He put it in a prominent place, and used large display fonts
on a saturated red-orange background.
Back to the blue circles; there is something unexpected going on here: this test subject completely ignored the
banner. Maybe it was an aberration. What if we tried it on someone else?
A “heat chart” (following page) is even more revealing, for it tells us the results for a whole group of testers.
The longest dwelling times are shown in orange on a heat chart, diminishing through yellow, green, then
gray, showing which parts of the page are studied and which are ignored.
Results art the same. The heat chart tells us: Every one of the people in this test group ignored the “SALE”
banner—which is enough to make you wonder whether what we thought we knew about

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composition (at least with respect to web page

design) is really true.
To see the video of an actual test, go to
http://www.youtube.com/v/lo_a2cfBUGc?
fs=1&hl=en_US"

The Rule of Thirds

This is more a convention more than a rule. It
helps avoid some clumsy errors, like putting
the focal point in the dead center of the page.
The rule of thirds says you should:
Divide your picture into three equal rows and
columns, and locate your centers of interest where the lines or intersect (at the red dots).
See the examples on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds
We can best describe the other basic rules of composition by saying, they’re not rules at all—just guidelines:
 Provide a center of interest.
 Don’t show a subject facing out of the picture.
 Allow space in front of moving objects.
 Remember that high contrast, elements have as much impact as those
which are larger but “dull”.
 In landscapes, locate the horizon line a third of way up to emphasize
the sky, or two thirds up to emphasize the land.

Details
A still life gives the viewer a close up look at the subject, meaning that the artist has to show more detail than
usual. But detail is not the forte of pastels, because they don’t keep a sharp point for long. This is a good place
to use your black and white charcoal pencils, which can be sharpened to a fine point, and hold it better.
If you do a lot of still lifes (sounds awkward, but that’s the plural) in pastel, I recommend you try pastel
pencils, which are a little harder than soft pastel, but a little softer than the hard. They can be sharpened to
fine point, and hold it fairly well.
Perhaps your greatest challenge in doing a pastel still life is in showing texture, and we will have more to say
about that in the Example.

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Exercise
Position your memento(s) in a way that pleases
you, do an underpainting on a quarter sheet in
hard pastel, and block it in. Don’t try to show
more than one or two articles for your first still
life. Use either side of the paper. The following
example shows the steps.

Photo “Freshman Beanie” RWS

Example
I still have my old freshman beanie (upper classmen threatened
dire consequences if you got caught without one). In the photo,
it’s hung on the back of a chair. I begin by drawing it in white
charcoal, and you can still see remnants.
The background is too cluttered; it was feathered in and will be
darkened later, but the subject is rotated slightly clockwise,
which looked better to me.

The vertical chair post leans, but can easily be corrected.

Underpainting, blocked in

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Then I ran into a problem that was new to me;

how do you show “wooly” looking fabric?
Scumbling doesn’t work because it leaves a
texture that’s too coarse. I was dissatisfied with
this picture, and started over.

Beanie, first try

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On the second try I used the rough side of

the paper, hoping the added texture would
help. I laid in a dark green for the cap,
mixed a greenish gray acrylic, and applied it
lightly with a stippling brush; each dab
leaves tiny dots of paint within a one ince
circle and also later leaves a rough surface
for subsequent scumbling with a light gray
pastel . The seams got an extra treatment of
light gray, because they’re raised and show
the most wear.
The background of the first picture was a
disappointment. This time I simply laid in a
random mix of lighter colors, partly rubbed.
You’re lucky to get a painting right the first
try. If not, don’t hesitate to do it over.

The completed pastel

Assignment
From the underpainting prepared earlier, complete your still life in soft pastel.
Revised 2/12/2011

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