Day 148

I'm going to try something a little bit new here. I'm going to start with a field study (quick sketch), watercolor study, and then, an oil painting...

For two reasons: one, I think artists that do field studies are hilarious and pretentious, two, I often try to be pretentious, which is hilarious, so we have come full circle.

Ok, so here's the deal, field studies were popularized by artists like John Singer Sargent, Joaquin Sorolla, and other impressive impressionists. They were guys who were always painting and drawing. Almost compulsive (or so we are to believe) and they were very passionate about their process. I guess, I believe it. Looking through their archives you can see that they had no intentions for these drawings to end up in book/museums, so they were really doing them to benefit their work. Mostly because cameras were not really around or cost prohibitive. So they would do a sketch and try to get accurate colors and shapes so they could take that information back to finish the painting in the studio if the weather changed and ruined the painting.

Fast forward about 80 years to modern day - Artists like John Singer Sargent, Joaquin Sorolla, Anders Zorn are as popular as ever (They really have a very similar aesthetic). They are guys who really understood application of paint, color, value, the human figure, and were really skilled at landscapes. They are artist's artist. So many modern day artists obsess over these guys. Like I said, these guys poured their soul out in every way for their art and were constantly drawing and painting. They are the acceptable kind of crazy artist that most people can handle. They weren't battling with drugs, alcohol, sexuality issues, affairs, suicide, etc... but they were "crazy" about painting. However, there probably isn't an interesting story about them anywhere.

A lot of modern days artists who work in realism really try to get in these three guys' mindset by implementing their practices, and philosophies (or at least they say they do). A lot of artists talk about how they will hike 10 miles into the middles of nowhere with just their canvas, paints, and easel in hand and just paint (how romanticized). First, these guys will do a field study. They will often say things like "this a very important part to my process (these guys say that word a lot)" and "It's really abstract shapes that help me understand the composition (this is letting people know that they can be very abstract devil may care if they need to)", and "it may not look like much to you, but I can see important details in the loose scribbles"

This is all bullshit, of course... These guys will often hire some photographer to go to the mountains or buy images from them to use. They will then sit at home behind a computer screen doing a shitty irrelevant "field study" so we think, "Wow, these guys really care about every aspect of the process! This is an artist I can really get behind!" And the artist will never use the field study for anything... Other than maybe have it featured in the book they hope gets written about them and their "process"

They will then use the photo they have taken or bought from a photographer and set it up under and an opaque projector and start tracing away... and then, magic!

I have been at art shows where they have had quick draw contests (where you get an hour or so to complete a drawing/painting from scratch) and you can see these people who have only ever traced (and done good jobs actually) and they are just doing the most miserable drawing/paintings ever. I have to think "what about your field studies? Didn't they prepare you for this?"

Now of course, I purposely made sure I did a shitty irrelevant "field study" from a photo I had taken from behind a computer screen. The irony is not lost here... it's for my book