Making Your Work Look Better for ASMA Jurors
The Fellow’s Jury Committee has decided that this statement should be published to help answer questions that members may have regarding their submissions for the Annual Portfolio Review and also submissions to ASMA Exhibitions. The Committee has put a lot of thought and work into this. We hope that it will be of value to you.
Some members of the Society have occasionally requested that the jury mail out critiques along with rejection notices. That is an organizational impossibility, and also a two-or-three line critique can be as misleading as it can be helpful. Nevertheless, the request for guidance is a legitimate one, and the jurors, having all been rejected at some point in their careers, can identify with the frustration of not knowing why.
We must all bear in mind that ASMA does not have the capacity to function as a correspondence school. However, over the years, the jury has found that recurring things have weakened a number of submissions, and we thought it might be helpful if we catalogued them as a series of reminders.
A few important caveats about this list:
This list is intended to be helpful, not to intimidate or discourage.
No one ever painted a fine picture by means of a checklist, and in this society no one will ever jury one that way. The perennial mystery of art is that it can never be done “by the numbers”.
Most of these items have to do with representational painting. That is simply a function of the fact that virtually all the painters who have requested guidance have been of that “school”. This checklist must not, under any circumstances, be construed as some kind of semi-official indication that that is the way one should paint for our juries. More than anything else we are looking for freshness and originality in your approach. If that originality involves breaking “rules” for reasons of conscious decision or spontaneous artistic impulse, do so with confidence.
Most of the things on this list are straight-forward, little things, often overlooked and easily remedied. They don't begin to address the ineffable qualities that mark a work of art, but we do hope they'll help some people. Again, and we can't emphasize this too strongly, the intent of this list is benign and the last thing we wish to do is to increase any artist's burden of apprehension or inadequacy. As artists we all carry around more than enough of that. As a jury we seek not adequacy, but those mysterious clues that prove an artist cares deeply about their work.
Checklist of Some Things to Watch for in Your Paintings
1. Insufficient attention sometimes paid to light and atmosphere; often a lack of variety, idiosyncrasy, and interest in these effects.
2. Skies sometimes treated as a mere afterthought, despite occupying most of the painting. They don't have to be busy, just well thought-out and should harmonize with the rest of theme.
Some related problems:
2 a- Same value and intensity at horizon and zenith
2 b- Cloud masses too heavy and crude
2 c- Blues and whites too intense, no atmospheric recession
2 d- Lack of compositional thought, skies argue with the rest of the painting
2 e- In some cases, “erratic” light source, producing contradictory shadows
3. Unpersuasive handling of seas.
Some related problems:
3 a- Horizon colors as intense as foreground colors, and value too strong in background. Always keep aerial perspective in mind.
3 b- Transition from sea to sky at horizon too hard-edged. This cuts a line too strongly across the painting, leads the eye out and also tends to pop the horizon into the foreground.
3 c- Wave masses either too monotonous and repetitious on the one extreme or too chaotic on the other. There's a lack of compositional attention and this can indicate insufficient observation.
3 d- Excessive and unconvincing foam and spray. Again this indicates insufficient study of causes and behavior.
3 e- Absence of variability of tone and broken color in water and foam. Handle color to show transparency as well as reflected skies. Avoid excessive spotlights through wave crests and bear in mind that there are a lot more colors than blue. Make your seas engaging; they occupy a lot of space in your paintings.
3 f- Excessive use of pure white and no modeling of waves and spray through light and shadow.
3 g- Spray can vary in its effects from tons of hurled concrete to the softest vapor. Its texture, weight, relationship to the wind and to objects it collides with must be varied accordingly.
3 h- In agitated waters, there's not just foam upon the surface, but aerated water beneath the surface.
3 i- Lack of awareness of physics of wave formation and behavior in different bodies of water under different wind conditions. Different bodies of water have identifiable characteristics, and sea states often depend on fetch, depth of water, bottom contours, silt, etc. Watch out for painting short-period seas off soundings, and they don't break as they do on a shelving beach.
4. Try to avoid too much borrowing of other artists' motifs and approaches. If someone else has handled something well, go on to something new.
5. Lack of compositional variety or interest.
6. Tendency to avoid interesting or unusual angles and perspectives.
7. In addition to the middle ground, try to think of interesting uses of the background and foreground. Give the viewer a chance to wander through your painting. They eye must do this by design or the painting tends to be dull.
8. Inattention to large masses of darks and lights. Does it hold up well as an abstract design just in its shapes and value contrast, subject matter aside?
9. Sometimes, and it depends on appropriateness there's an unwillingness to “suggest” detail. Over articulation sometimes leads to static results and sacrifices the illusion of movement and depth. Excess detail can also lead to confusion in the overall painting. The details must interact convincingly.
10. Failure to realize that figures draw the eye, so placement that is random, gratuitous or inappropriate can be risky. Do your figures help your overall compositional plan? Are they to scale and anatomically correct?
11. Emotional stance of artist can sometimes be excessively heroic, but on the other hand can sometimes communicate indifference, fatigue, predictability. Shorten the distance between your subject and your feelings.
12. Within documentary art, there's often too much concentration on too narrow a slice of history and vessel types. Where is the wider world? Unusual vessels? A greater range of eras?Rivers, canals, unusual ports, exotic special-purpose craft? What about regional peculiarities, interesting and evocative shorelines, odd events, naval engagements, interesting ways of handling cargo?Interesting works, drills and evolutions, aboard ship involving the crews as subject? For those who wish to be historic, or even contemporary, documentary marine artists, a deeper and wider reading of the literature is suggested.
13. Try to avoid repeating the same motif endlessly. Just try to envision a solo exhibtion filled with the same painting and ask if it would fulfill you.
27. Exercise caution in “inventing” historical scenes before there's a thorough understanding of light, shadow, value, movement, modeling, texture, edges. The verisimilitude of a scene hinges on these things as much as on the factual knowledge of the artifacts.
14.Regardless of your interest in the ship or scene, will it make an interesting painting?
15. Photos: Imagine how you would feel if someone were selling exact copies of your original painting. Photographers are artists too and take pride in their work. They also often go to great pains to discover and pose a subject, waiting for the proper light. Often years of effort go into producing just a few gems, as is the case in our field. Photos are a tool; they often provide essentials information. Nevertheless, a literal photograph is usually the property of the artist who made it. Let them sign their work and your sign yours, it must also be understood that while a photo source may be archival and in the public domain, it is also probably well known in the marine field. It may be assumed that others are well read in the photo archives, and avoidance of direct use can spare much embarrassment.
problems when depicting sailing vessels:
1. Problems with drawing:
Twisted, torqued vessels, horizontal planes not agreeing.
Drooping foregrounds - foreground descends too rapidly to bottom of picture plane and foreground objects, e.g., small boats, look like they're climbing a hill.
Disagreeing vanishing points, vessels on different planes.
Lack of attention to appropriate scale, object to object, in the same paintings.
“Banana distortion” problem in bows-on picture (i.e., centerline curves toward or away). 4 f- Absence of fair curves.
Failure to correct perspective distortions when using models or photos.
Displacement problems; e.g., when vessel is depicted on leeward side, if eye were placed on windward side, it's clear that practically the entire hull is out of the water. Vessel must “sit' in the sea.
People out of scale.
Failure to flatten perspective lines when ship is at considerable distance (ship looks torpedoed). Also, you aren't going to be looking up at the rigging when the ship is two miles away.
Masts out of perpendicular with athwartships deck lines. This gives and exciting angle of heel as indicated by the masts, but ship is on a relatively even keel. Excessive and unreasonable heel is something to watch for in general.
Common error in buntlines, lifts, and headsails filled on downwind runs. Do not place reliance upon some other artist's interpretation of these things—they may be in error. Learn the gear.
2. Awkward movement of vessel in water. Vessel's “posture” is inappropriate to sea movement at that point. Also lack of attention to bow waves, wakes, etc. in respect to wind and sea conditions depicted.
3. Disharmonies between ship and sea. Over-articulated ship in oversimplified “formula” water-tends to make ship look pasted on.
4. Wind direction as indicated by sail trim inconsistent with sea direction.
5. Over scale rigs (too lofty) a common problem.
6. Deck gear, standing rigging often insufficiently “hefty” for its function.
7. On the other hand, rigging often painted in too dark a value (e.g., black!) - Tends to make rigging jump off the canvas. All objects must live in their proper atmospheric plane.
8. Lack of consistency in wind direction for sailing vessels in close proximity to one another.
9. Too much sail carried given wind conditions for the vessel type depicted.
10. Lack of attention to the effects of “relative wind” on smoke (do a vector diagram). Pay attention to the combined effects of vessel's forward motion and real wind.
11. Sailing vessels doing 32 knots in enclosed waters in light airs.
12. Watch out for “monster seas” and implausible “Himalayan heights” given distance from viewer and height of eye.
13. There is much repetition of known and popularized ships and events (seven submissions of Old Ironsides to one show was the record).