Hip hip hooray, away with the mask...
Happily 20+ Rancho Santa Fe Art Guild members gathered for the first art demo in over a year to discuss, observe and learn more about the art of painting. Presenting was RSF Art Guild member and artist-in-residence, Alex Schaefer. As we all settled in to the Schaefer studio we observed Alex's unique set up.
The demo subject Alex chose was a view of a Venice, Italy. The image was projected on a screen as his reference photo. On this reference photo he had drawn some crazy lines going every which way marking up the scene. These crazy lines we learned is a system called Mancini's Graticola. Also behind the reference photo was the actual graticola structure Alex had constructed.
https://realismtoday.com/antonio-mancinis-graticola/
Alex began the demo with an introduction of the tools and himself. He is a self-described Representational Depictionist, more of an illusionist with paint I would say. He pointed out that his beautiful subject, the scene in Venice, was a still shot from a live video cam in Venice that he'd manipulated to his taste. Prior to the demo he had also projected and drawn his handmade graticola onto a large canvas he intended to complete for the demo. Alex had also pre-painted the canvas with what he calls Notan. Notan is a Japanese term which means "light dark harmony" used to arrange light and dark elements in a painting, without having the distraction of other elements like color, texture and finer details.
Although he had a jump start on preparations, the scene looked quite complex to be completed in our short session of three and half hours.
But he began swiftly with his long flats and small brushes in hand and turned the canvas upside down. Yes he took the large canvas and turned it completely upside down along with his reference photo on the screen. This takes squinting to a new level, he said, "shutting off the detailed brain to paint just forms rather than detail."
The next step was "opening up the color" as Alex mixed a lot of white into his limited pallet of colors and away we went, painting with Alex.
His comical and very learned banter continued throughout the next few hours as he covered the canvas nearly completely, jumping from light to dark with just the right values and local color fitting into the gridded portions of the canvas.
Shortly after the lunch break was the big reveal. With an audible gasp from the audience Alex turned the canvas right side up to show how the brush strokes of local color and proper values but with a lack of detail captured the scene in a painterly fashion. The graticola simplified the intricate scene and the broad brush stokes of value and color represented the light at the scene perfectly.
As Van Gogh said "The great artist is the simplifier." We all enjoyed and learned some great techniques and skills from Alex. It was simply a wonderful day of art and fellowship.
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