PART THREE

Project: Landscape Drawing

Research Point: Landscape artists

'Landscape with Cannon' by Durer is an etching and looking at it you get a really good idea of how great an observer the man is. In fact I'm beginning to become rather a big fan of Durer. He includes a lot of information in his work - he is very well accomplished at seeing things the way they really are, or accessing the right side of the brain as Betty Edwards might say.

The tree and the clouds in Durer's 'The Watermill' are really astonishing. He creates a lot of depth in his work and seems to know how to set apart the information in the fore, middle and backgrounds without the painting looking overworked and cluttered. The colours are also really beautiful in this particular painting.

When I first read ahead and saw that the next part of the course was about landscape drawing, I immediately thought of Turner, presumably because I've seen quite a lot of his work and it stuck in my mind because of it's clarity and Britishness perhaps. The painting above, 'Landscape near Petworth' is quite sketchy as far as Turner's paintings go but I like it because of that - it almost looks as though it's been completed in pastel because of the soft marks and perfect blending of colour. You can see areas of white canvas peeping through, and the animals are mere shapes hinting at what they might be - Turner spent time focusing on getting the essence of his scene right. But what I really like about it is the mist in the background floating around the church steeple and the hills surrounding it, reminding me of chilly mornings in the countryside.

Turner here has, like Durer, a great ability to create depth - the details of the 'Villa d'Este' in the background are only barely visible from the viewers distance away, but the trees in the left foreground are quite clear - you can see light shining off the branches and leaves where he has left areas blank, and many other tones ranging right up to black where the leaves are in shadow.

This coastal scene from Lorrain is basically a still from a classical story - he uses his ability to capture nature in its true form together with a strong imagination and passion for these stories to recreate scenes that most can only picture in their minds, if at all. I suppose he was like the 17th Century version of a modern day film director depicting their ideas of how historical events may have looked if you were lucky enough (or unlucky perhaps) to have been a witness. Lorrain has a remarkable way of taking you away to a romantic place of myth and legend.

I've included this 'Morning (Landscape with Jacob, Rachel and Leah by the Well)'  by Lorrain because he has painted the sky so beautifully. In paint alone he has achieved a representation of that first feeling of warmth you get on your skin as the sun starts to rise on a summer day. It's very dramatic - bright in the dawn sky but dark in shadow in the foreground, both equally important balancing aspects of the painting.