Klimt - Island in the Attersee

Island in the Attersee (1902) by Gustav Klimt

This painting by Gustav Klimt is one of my favourites.  It's called Island in the Attersee.  He painted more than one version - and this is the 1902 version.

I first came across it on the cover of the book about Klimt's landscapes which I currently have out of the library - see Gustav Klimt: Landscapes

I absolutely adore the colours in this work.  Colour was also incredibly important in determining the nature of Klimt's imagery.  I also love the really high horizon which is also very characteristic of his work - it plunges your focus into the way the surface of the lake looks.  It has a square format with distinct rectangular zones of colour.

The mountain lake called "Attersee" can be found in the Salzkammergut region of Austria. Klimt used to visit the small island in this lake in summer. Apparently the water is very clear and the lake is favoured by swimmers and sailors.

I wonder if this is the painting he used to hang on his wall so he could dream of summer days in the middle of winter!

I'm not drawing/painting a lot of water at the moment - which is not to say it's not one of my favourite subjects.  So I'm going to start posting work which I like which does portray water - and will maybe learn something in the process

Who's your favourite painter of water?

online sketching and using photoshop

Sketches/doodles done online here Vivien Blackburn

Julie posting a link to this fabulous time-eating site - sketching with the tools is so fluid and the marks it makes delicious! Click to see it larger and you'll see what I mean. I did this quick sketch from memories of walking through the dunes and down to the sand on the Norfolk coast. (I must get over there with Spring on its way) I used the shading, chrome, ribbon and long fur tools in this.

then combined with colour on my computer .....

making it more wintry

I could play for hours! I'd love this as a proper programme, actually on my computer, that would produce large scale drawings.


It's really worth clicking on them to see the lovely marks it makes properly. And play have a go ..........


oh dear .... Julie this is addictive

Stormy Waters - trouble with composition

Some progress from the abstract camp!

Back in this January post I began my adventure in trying to paint a rougher sea for the first time - trying to capture more threatening moods in the sky, more crashing waves, but with my usual soft minimal look. My preliminary sketches were more freeform, and the canvas itself has been more exploratory. Unlike most of my paintings I decided to just dive into this one and see what happened, allow myself experimentation.

It all started well. Some dark layers, bringing tones and composition upwards, over the eye-line of the viewer. At an early point I liked the underpainting so much and felt I wanted to capture some of it in the early stage for "light" lines to indicate, perhaps, foam on the waves. So I put down masking tape that I could glaze over and remove later to bring back those elements.

Painting, painting, darkening, lightening the crashing waves, and got stuck. But of course there's that very misleading tape that actually isn't an indication of what's underneath - distracting me from what the whole looks like. So I removed it to reveal... well, something interesting. Interesting isn't necessarily a good thing!

So now I'm really frustrated. I have to keep reminded myself that this canvas is meant to be an experiment, but it's all to easy to get caught on in the drive to "finish" something after so many hours of investment.

The problems?

1. Composition. I've said it to myself, on my blog and probably on Watermarks too - composition is the number one thing that cannot be overlooked. If I don't sketch, don't think about a composition it's inevitable that the painting 90% of the time doesn't work and has to be recovered with a new stage of composition. Yet foolishly thought that I could ignore it in the name of creativity.
   
   
2. Working on pieces and not the whole. Yes, we all fall in love with parts of our pictures - little passages of wonderful colour or brushwork. But it is at the peril of neglecting the whole, the balance, how the picture works as a single effect. I was taught to always work on the whole - not do an object then fill in the background for example - progress on one part, then go work on another part to the same degree. Step back and look. The masking tape in this painting misled me and I should have planned more (error 1) and kept better awareness of the tones and colours underneath.

Trapped in the storm for now...

Sketching as shorthand - the Dorset coast

For my first post on Watermarks I thought it serendipitous that I've just been on my latest cycle journey for my English Coast project. So last week I cycled part of the Dorset coast, from Poole to Swanage to Lulworth Cove to Weymouth and finally a whole day on Portland Isle. (Which I admit I didn't cycle, I walked the circular coast path around the island. Shh! Don't tell.)

I've posted some landscape-ish sketches on my my regular blog here but thought I would share the water based sketches here. Now the sketches I do are in a small passport-sized sketchbook (rather like a moleskine but much cheaper from Muji) and are very very quick unless it's summer. Heck, even then it can be too cold to sketch for long! Since I take a zillion photographs the sketches aren't to capture exact images but more as a visual shorthand so I can remember which elements of the view I would like to capture or emphasise in a painting. Often it's strong light and shadow, or combinations of horizontal lines.


First is my idea from Portland Island - the combined horzontals of the layers of Portland Stone in the cliff, the stretch of Chesil Beach (that strip of land you see on the water - it connects between Weymouth and Portland), and then haze of the mainland in the distance. I want to simplify all those lines into a flat composition.



Next is Poole Harbour. This is a funny one because I've been to Poole before and it was covered in haze. Wouldn't you know, it was again! But this time it was also low tide so I had a great view of the huge stretches of mud. My sketches were to quickly catch the texture and the different shades of haze at the horizon just in case the photos didn't quite get what my eyes saw.


And finally the rough seas at Portland Bill. I loved this and have been waiting for crashing windy waves like this for my whole project! Right out on the edge of the rocks at the lighthouse I took another zillion photos of the waves (never quite getting the full effect you see, of course a photo never will). There was an amazing hour of light with the sun beaming through but I knew the photos would get that. But what I pondered as I sketch in the pub was how to get that force and power? How to express the rising of those masses of water? So these couple of sketches aren't even shorthand but more experiments in hard movement, looming shadow, trying to get a sense of looming. These are as close as I get to purely abstract instinctive drawing. Just going for a feeling.