Sfumatto
t Plein Air Easton Competition and Arts Festival, we were allowed to turn in two paintings for competition. All other paintings are in the “headquarters” - the Armory on Harrison Street in Easton. (There are some real American Masterpieces in that show from some real rock stars of the Plein air tradition…not a second-string show at all). I wanted to do something a little different this year -this is the Olympics of Plein Air, after all. I added some new colors to my palette, and I approached the painting with a tad softer touch. The morning heat here on the shore makes for a diffused light…a “Smokey” kind of haze. So - instead of my “brushy”, impressionist, expressive mark making - I leaned into a softer process…to get that point across.
I channeled some of the Renaissance masters, and American tonalist artists. The art word is “Sfumato”.
“Sfumato” is an Italian word meaning “smoke”…it is also a painting technique and process.
“Sfumato” is a painting technique for softening the transition between colors and values. It is the painted process of blending and blurring hard edges. It is one of the canonical painting modes of the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci was the most prominent practitioner of sfumato. He introduced it and implemented it in many of his works, including the Virgin of the Rocks and in his famous painting of the Mona Lisa. He described sfumato as "without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke". In other words, there are blurry edges between painted disparate objects - e.g., a cheekbone and the background, a cloud and the surrounding sky, a tree-line and the “air” around it…etc, etc.
here is my entry…and attempt.
Morning of Grace”. 24 x 30. Oil/canvas
