How to Paint Trompe l'Oeil

Wouldn't we all like to be able to paint like this guy?

Gerard De Lairesse's trompe l'oeil grisaille masterpiece is an excellent lesson in how to paint trompe l'oeil. Taking a closer look at Allegory of the Sciences, we can discern his technique for creating a successful illusion of depth - particularly with reference to the value range he employed.

When I speak of 'value' here, I'm referring to the Munsell color system. I personally use the term interchangeably with 'tone' or 'tonal value', although that's probably not correct.

I will never forget speaking with my friend Dermot Power (concept artist for films such as Star Wars, Harry Potter, Batman Begins, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice In Wonderland), who told me that you have to be really careful with highlights: The sign of a novice is the tendency to touch everything with a dot of white on the highest point. "It looks like it's snowing" he would say. That really stuck with me.

Examining De Lairesse's painting, we can see that he reserved his brightest highlights and darkest lowlights for a section of the painting occupying no more than 30% of the overall composition, inside the lower right section above. I'm calling this his 'High Contrast' section.

The rest of the canvas is roughly broken in half by two areas of 'Medium Contrast' and Low Contrast'. It is important to recognize the sense of balance achieved by this: the painting neither jumps out at us, nor recedes too much. In my opinion, a general rule of thumb would be to divide the 'value sections' of your canvas into percentage divisions of 30/40/40, as above. If every area within the painting was given the same value range the trompe l'oeil effect would be flattened and unconvincing.

'High Contrast' sample, with tonal range

'Medium Contrast' sample, with tonal range

'Low Contrast' sample, with tonal range

Let's examine this further: Sampling from the High, Medium and Low Contrast areas above and isolating the value of the tonal ranges, we see that the ranges are represented within the graph below.

When plotted against the fullest possible value range (solid black through white), we notice some interesting things. To begin with; even the area that contains the darkest lowlights and lightest highlights (lower right section of the painting with the seated figure), doesn't come close to representing the full range of tones available. In other words, the outside boundaries of the value range De Lairesse employs represents no more than 75% grey at its darkest, and 25% grey at its lightest.

Of course, this is borne out through our own observations of nature: Shadows are never 100% black, nor are highlights 100% white. That last point is worth restating, because I have seen it done incorrectly many times: Highlights in trompe l'oeil painting are never 100% white. What? Oh alright, not "never", but let's just say they should be used extremely sparingly. Unless you're rendering a high gloss sheen on a white marble statue, pure white highlights should be a last resort.

The value of pure white (Value 10 according to Munsell) and the value of pure black (value 0) are actually unattainable with pigment, being theoretical limits.

The following illustration of spheres receding in space uses the same value range De Lairesse employs to differentiate between foreground and background objects. You can plainly see that the optical laws of chiaroscuro apply: If you want an object to appear to recede in space, limit the values to the middle of the spectrum.

Note that the whitest highlight in the foreground sphere is still not pure white

The point gets a little confused here due to the fact that we are dealing with a grisaille representation of carved statuary, not simply a painting of objects in space, as say, a trompe l'oeil landscape. Our objective is to convey a sense of how an object is carved in stone. So not only do we flatten the value range to represent how an object recedes from us, we also flatten the it when representing objects in low relief, as in the detail of the frieze, below.

I posted these before, but they are such perfect examples of trompe l'oeil low-relief cameos that I am adding them here again. They are by the artist Christen Kobke, and demonstrate precisely the technique of expanding the value range to imply high relief, and reducing the value range to imply low relief. And yes; these are paintings!

Note the reduced range of tonal values in the low relief of the wing

Generally speaking though (when painting trompe l'oeil molding for example), there is a simple rule of thumb that we should adhere to when dealing with middle distance objects, of medium relief: That is the rule of thirds. Roughly speaking, a sphere should be divided into thirds between highlight, mid-tone and shadow, as below.
Not only that, but an accent tone, light or dark, should be one third the width of the half-tone, as below:

Gerard de Lairesse

Cesare Ripa is a fascinating figure: Beyond the fact that he worked as a cook and butler little else is known of his life, and yet he somehow managed to publish a book in the early 17th C. that was a smash hit with writers, poets and artists for two hundred years.

It was called Iconologia, and was "based on Egyptian, Greek and Roman emblematical representations. The book was used by orators, artists and poets to give substance to qualities such as virtues, vices, passions, arts and sciences."

Dutch painter Gerard de Lairesse, like so many of his contemporaries, relied heavily upon Iconologia to develop the visual language for his paintings. Here is a huge file of his splendid trompe l'oeil work titled Allegory of the Sciences.

You're welcome!

Antique Map Cartouches

I love antique maps. The combination of gorgeous ornament, the romantic whiff of aging prints, and magic of Terra Incognita is a winner. It reminds me of the apocryphal ad placed by the legendary Ernest Shackleton looking for a crew:

 "MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, 
   BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS,
   CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOR AND
   RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS."

I've never been one to let the truth get in the way of a ripping yarn [this ad may never have been placed], and Shackleton's voyage South is by far the rippingest of yarns I've ever read. It's that "safe return doubtful" part that gets me every time. I love the idea of these hard-men heading into the blank of a map with naught but a pouch of tobacco and dead reckoning.

On a different note, there was an article in the New Observer recently about the death of blogging; basically saying that any idiot with a 'Sarah Palin' Google Alert and a keyboard can regurgitate other peoples work into a blog entry. Well here's yet another uncreative blog post by me. Other people's work again.

It's always been the case with me that I try to write the blog I wish I had found when I was starting out. Lots of large images and little commentary. So I'll skip the pithy one-liners and the wiki-links this time and just present the work itself, because I think it's beautiful.

Rather than choke the inbox of the few faithfuls who subscribe to this blog, I'm posting just a couple out of my collection of cartouche images here. The rest are here, on my Flickr page.

Paul Cézanne's Studio

There's probably some truth to the idea that the first step towards manifesting your dream is to stick a photograph of it on your fridge. Well here is mine: Paul Cézanne's studio in Aix-en-Provence. I don't just want to visit it; I want to live in it and wake up every day to every single object in this room, staring for hours out the window at Montagne Ste. Victoire.

How to Draw the Acanthus, Part III

'How to draw the Acanthus' is a perennial topic with a rich history. I covered some points in Part I and Part II, and am presenting these drawings as a further aid to drawing the acanthus scroll and related ornament. Though most suitable to hand-carving, they have a simplistic contour and sharp contrasts of light and dark which lend themselves well to an understanding of painted trompe l'oeil and the study of simple form.  They are not as ornate as say, the drawings of LePautre, which are very elaborate and detailed, but that also means that they're less confusing to study. I personally find them to be a little heavy for trompe l'oeil or grottesca, but there are some elemental ornate forms here that are really nicely treated.

And the truth is they are closer to what one might expect to paint in a real-world job situation. As gorgeous as the drawings of LePautre are, modern taste seems to tend towards economy of ornament - if we see ornament of this nature at all any more.

All Illustrations this article: "Motifs Ornementaux: Sculptures Sur Bois" [Editions H. Vial]

10 questions: Are you a Professional or a Prima Donna?

Are you a Prima Donna? Decorative painters seem to have a bad rap from contractors sometimes. We spend a lot of time and money fine-tuning our portfolio, printing promotional material and developing our web presence, but sometimes we neglect the importance of our real-world presentation on the job. I've been guilty of most of these at one time or other myself. It's no wonder I have time on my hands to write blog entries, instead of being too busy answering the phone to new clients. This stuff comes back to bite us in the end. Time to step up our game and spruce up our image. 

1.
Have you ever walked around the job-site with a coffee cup in one hand and a brush in the other? Have you ever come in to work and found yesterdays latte still hanging around on the scaffold?

2.
Do you wear your regular clothes to work instead of painters white pants and an apron?

3. 
Have you ever asked one of the other contractors if you could borrow a tool that you forgot to bring?

4. 
Do you take long lunch breaks? Do you take lunch breaks at a restaurant instead of eating your lunch sitting on a bucket like everyone else? Do you disappear for long periods on errands?

5. 
Are you generally the last one to show up in the morning or the first to leave?

6. 
Have you ever complained to the client or designer about conditions on the job-site? Ever complained about the condition of the toilet or the dust? Ever moaned out loud about contractors in 'your' space?

7. 
Have you ever talked about money with others on site?

8. 
Ever hit the client up for more money at the end of a job because of 'unforeseen' circumstances?

9. 
Ever leave your brushes sitting in a bucket of water overnight?

10. 
Do you sometimes skip taking 10 minutes to sweep the room and tidy away your tools at the end of each day? Do you leave full garbage bags on site overnight? Ever just throw a tarp over everything and call it a day?

A professional demeanor goes a long way towards securing future work. Repeat business from designers and recommendations from General Contractors should be of paramount importance, and as such we would do well to pay close attention to how we present ourselves while on site. 

1.
Make a job-site checklist of all tools and materials and refer to it before packing for each job. Brought your own garbage bags? How about enough ladders, lights and tools to remove hardware? If you need to use a scaffold, be sure to establish that while estimating: don't assume that the GC will be okay with you climbing on hers, as there is a very real liability issue for her whether or not the designer tells you it's okay. 

2.
Take a moment while preparing your estimate to consider real-world conditions: will you be required to put down Masonite or other protection in the room and corridor? Where is the closest paint store? Is lunch available close by or should you ask your workers to brown bag it? What time does the freight elevator close? What are the building access hours and issues? If other contractors are going to be working there too, you may need to account for slower progress, touching up damage to your work and more time spent mitigating dust and cleaning up at the end of the day. All of these affect your profit, which affects your mood. If you're stressed while working it'll be apparent. Nobody wants to work with a stressed-out freak. 

There will be legitimate add-ons to any job. Be sure and have a price agreed before doing them. What you don't want to do is surprise the client at the end by charging a "getting off my ladder every five seconds to open the door to let contractors through" fee. 

Nobody likes talking money, but being up-front and realistic about expectations will make you a happier worker. 

3.
Establish a friendly relationship with the GC and contractors. Bring in a box of donuts every now and then. Buy the elevator guy a coffee. I know a decorative painter who places a bunch of flowers in the house every time she finishes a job. 

4. 
Under no circumstances talk about money while working. Other contractors always want to know how much you're charging. Make no mistake: it's not an innocent inquiry, and they will be happy to underbid you on the next project. At the very least, talking money builds jealousy and bad feelings which means you're less likely to get the call on the next job. 

5.
Make your area the cleanest on the site. Using a paper-hangers table to mix your colors looks really good. You can drape a canvas drop cloth over it and store all your other junk underneath. You can be sure that the client and/or designer will be doing after-hours walk-throughs, and you never know when they'll decide to drop by unexpectedly while you're there. 

6.
Pay close attention to your appearance. Ever notice that the best painters are also the cleanest? Buy a new apron and painter's pants before every big job, and make sure your workers dress the same. Do not allow anyone to use their pants as a paint rag. That's what rags are for. 

You can buy large canvas bags and have your company name or logo put on them and your clothing quite cheaply these days. 

Make sure you have business cards and photos of other completed projects. You never know where the next job will come from. 

7.
Keep the music turned down (or better yet wear headphones), and for ¥#%$ sake; no cursing! For that matter, never bad mouth the client, designer or other contractors on site or on your Facebook page: you never know who's listening. 

8.
Make sure you're there on time every day, and stay all day. Besides maximizing profits, it just looks good. Be sure you can start on the day you specified, and bend over backwards to be out of there when you said you'd be. You're the only one that cares that it took you an extra day to re-glaze a wall because the electrician dug a channel for a sconce down the middle of a finished wall: the client doesn't want to hear it. Hire extra help if you need to, and if you haven't agreed to an extra cost for damages, just suck it up and say nothing. With a smile on your face tell the designer that you'll take care of it. You'll be seen as a problem-solver, not a problem. 

9.
Guard your recipes and techniques. Tear the labels off those Home Depot paint cans, and develop some arcane method of marking your pots. Keep your medium in a glass jar. I'm not kidding! Think how cool it would look to a client if you had bell jars of obscure dry pigments and your best polar bear fur brush out for show. Who cares if you never use them. 

The European Guilds played their cards close to their chests for a reason: if people realize how easy it is to do what you do, you can't justify the exorbitant prices you wish to charge. 

It's all about the appearance of professionalism. Okay, enough procrastinating and sitting in my car typing. It's time for me to get back to work!

As Autumn into Winter slips

'In his Autumn before the Winter comes Man's last mad surge of youth.' -A Town Called Alice

Nothing like the Russians when it comes to capturing the starkness of approaching Winter. Maybe this was the height of Summer over there, who knows? Seems like all their paintings look like this. Maybe that's why I love them.

This canvas entitled 'Осенью', by Maria Konstantinowna Baschkirzewa, hangs at the State Museum, St. Petersburg. My guess is that 'Осенью' is not Russian for 'Happiness'.

Here is a set I posted of 150 huge high res paintings and etchings of trees, for anyone interested.

I've been researching images for a 9' x 12' folding screen that I have been asked to do, and noticed that all the trees I've been looking at are distinctly Wintery. I'm not sure how that happened exactly as I'm not quite ready to admit that it is actually Winter yet, so here's a poem that pretty much sums it up for me.

As Summer into Autumn slips, by Emily Dickinson

As Summer into Autumn slips
And yet we sooner say
"The Summer" than "the Autumn," lest
We turn the sun away,


And almost count it an Affront
The presence to concede
Of one however lovely, not
The one that we have loved --


So we evade the charge of Years
On one attempting shy
The Circumvention of the Shaft
Of Life's Declivity.

In Defense of Decorative Painting

"That man who is without the arts is little above the beasts of the field." 

Haldane MacFall, The History of Painting

Well, if that's not a sweeping generalization I don't know what is. Fortunately, 'the arts' in this case is such a broad term as to render this comment weak: Is any of us not 'with the arts'?

Things seem to have changed a little since 1911, however. There is an effort (mostly from the marketing department) to compartmentalize these arts into high and low, drawing an arbitrary line in the sand between Decorative - and/or Commercial - and Fine Art.

This distinction is a relatively recent trend. William Morris would not have agreed with it, that's for sure, nor would a whole host of others who were perfectly at home with their work hanging in a gallery, or printed on a plate. Yet since the advent of Modern Art the notion of the decorative element in painting has been sidelined as irrelevant, even beneath contempt. God forbid your work is described as 'pretty'.

One glance at Islamic Art and Architecture and it becomes obvious that Art can be both 'Decorative' and 'High' at the very same time. So why is it that a simple Google search of 'decorative painting' yields not much, if anything, in the way of crossover between high and low Art? Why is it that the headlong race to separate from populist art has left a vast dustbowl in its wake?

"This apparent absence of internal critical writing may be because many lowbrow artists began their careers in fields not normally considered fine art, such as illustration, tattooing and comic books. Many ... are self-taught, which further alienates them from the world of museum curators and art schools.

Many in the art world have deeper difficulties with lowbrow's figurative focus, its cultivation of narrative, and its strong valuing of technical skill. All these aspects of art were deeply disparaged in the art schools and by curators and critics throughout the 1980s and 90s." Wiki

Yawwwn, I'm sleepy. 'Everyone I have ever slept with' by Tracy Emin

And yet, so much Art these days seems to mistake being brazenly incoherent for some sort of street profundity, dusting off the art-terrorist tag to protect against accusations of being pointless and just downright ugly. Take Tracy Emin. No really; take her.

But let's face it; who wants ugly Art? As far as I'm concerned, all Art has a major decorative element. The market tends to bear this out: despite annual protestations over the 'death of painting' it is the very sale of paintings that keep the galleries afloat. In hard times, galleries fall back on their roster of painters to help pay the rent, leaving the fiscally riskier work of video and installation in the back room until times are good enough again to wheel it out. Doesn't that seem kind of, I don't know, Commercial?

Some of the 16,400 Google image results for 'Jasper Johns Flag'

There's a great story about Jasper "the flag guy" Johns who, after realizing great critical success in the Art world by stumbling upon the decorative use of the American flag as High Art, decided to put all his early works in a pile and burn them in effigy. It always struck me as a great Wizard of Oz moment: terrified lest someone draw back the curtain (or flag), and reveal his art as 'merely' decorative, he scrubbed the trail leading up to it and left the critics to hail him as a genius.

Takashi Murakami

Yet somehow, certain artists such as Murakami manage to slip through the critical net and get away with creating purely decorative painting, while being at the same time lauded as ironic commentators on the nature of decoration and consumerism. It's a handy critical trope that enables them to neatly sidestep accusations of being shallow. But what's wrong with their just being pretty pictures? Perhaps exhibiting his work in Versailles is less a juxtaposition than it is a perfect match.

Critics seem to have forgotten the answer to the question that every child knows instantly: What's your favorite color?

People like paintings on their walls, it's as simple as that. They add a splash of color, and we like what they say about us. We project meaning onto them, adore them as at an altar, and sit back as they reflect at a dinner party that we are wise, cultured and willing to throw money around. But they better not put you off your meal, so for goodness sake make them pretty.

"The over-scaled compositions being produced by so many abstract painters, which are full of movement and use of color, are ideal example, ideal transformations of an entire wall and entire room.... There is no denying that one of the major attractions of these successful large compositions is their structural decorative use in the contemporary scene... That these large canvases can be superbly decorative may not be considered complimentary by some of the artists involved"

Van Day Truex, Interiors, Character, and Color

So what if they don't find it complimentary: here's to Decorative Painting! Thank you, and good night.

Modular Ornament, past and future...

 This gorgeous ceiling was created with en feuille printed papers, made by an unknown Parisian manufacturer around 1780. Une feuille de papier literally means a sheet, or piece of paper, and in this context means that the entire design was created by cutting the design from individual sheets of block-printed paper.

The dark and light grounds, the borders of flowers and fruits, the medallions and even the figure of Diana in her chariot were all cut out separately and pasted on the ceiling to create this wonderful image.

This method of creating custom, one-off installations was the best way at the time for clients and designers to bridge the gap between the bespoke mural and the printed image.

Print Rooms, as they became known, were a highly individual way of decorating walls in the eighteenth century. It seems to have been a trend limited in large part to Ireland and England. The charming and whimsical room at Castletown House in Ireland, above, is the work of the lady of the house; fifteen year old bride, Lady Louisa Connolly. That she took great pleasure in her design is evident in the balanced design of octagons, ovals, circles and squares, all embellished with garlands and bows for a fanciful effect.

These days, photocopies and clip art are substituted for the original mezzotints of old. 

But why stop at cutting up scraps of paper?

Along with my business partner Mark, we saw that there was room for much improvement and advancement of the technique. I firmly believe that the artisans of a few centuries ago would have absolutely loved the digital revolution. The means they used were simply a reflection of the limit of the technology they had available at the time, nothing more.

So we developed the idea of modular designs created entirely on computer, then printed out in large sheets as custom installations. Why bother painting 60 rosettes on a frieze around a room when you can paint a single one, scan it into the computer, then print out rolls and rolls of the stuff? I mean; they're all supposed to be identical anyway, right? 

I started developing my own library of hand-painted shapes. These were little individual sections of ornament, painted in black and white, that I then scanned into the computer and colored and jigsawed together at will on my screen. Anyone interested in those early experiments can check out this blog post on the topic.

Instead of the traditional 'cut-and-paste' technique of the Print Rooms, where the jigsawing of images was done by hand and on-site, we did all the jigsawing of our artwork directly on the computer screen. When we liked what we saw, we simply printed it out on rolls up to five feet wide, and pasted it onto the wall.

The experiment was working! 

We decided to take it all a step further; to create artwork entirely on the computer, without any other tool whatsoever. Scanning hundreds of sheets of veneer, we quickly amassed an incredible library of wood textures. Then, using computer software we drew out our designs in the same way any artisan would lay out a design for marquetry: in simple back-and-white line drawings. These drawings were then 'colored' on the computer using our wood texture library, and custom printed onto sheets of Class A fire-retardant wallcovering. 

In the image above, you can see the 'before and after' of the room.

When we got there, every surface was primed white. We started by hand-painting all the raised moldings in traditional faux-bois. This was because our printed sheets of paper would only adhere to flat surfaces. Then we simply pasted our custom printed papers into the panels, and along the stiles and rails to create this stunning look.

This image shows the incredible authenticity of the effect. This is not a photograph: It is a computer rendered design, imitating wood inlay. The wood textures, colors, even the blemishes and worm-holes, are all added in layers to create the effect of marquetry. This piece is then printed out onto any substrate (including plain maple veneer) and applied to your project. Make sense?

We feel as though we are just at the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more we can be doing to push Decorative Arts into the new century. I really hope this might serve as some small inspiration to those artists out there looking for new ways to rejuvenate a (let's face it) pretty antiquated field. 

It's natural, when new technology comes along, to use it to simply re-create the style that came before. But what would happen if we were not limited by staid historic mimicry? What would it even look like if we took this new technology, this digital evolution, and cranked up the ambition to 11? 

Richard LaBarre Goodwin

What a master of trompe l'oeil! Yet surprisingly it is relatively difficult to find information on him on the Web. These are details from his painting Cabin Door Still Life, purchased by the Smithsonian.

They are beautifully treated and worthy of close study for those students of the art. I particularly love the way he 'carved' his signature into the wooden door: