Interior Scenes, Trying Something Different, and Simplification

Sometime last month, Chontele, Elora, and I had morning tea with my grandparents in their dining room. The room has frilly white curtains, ornaments, paintings, and glass-paned doors leading to the garden.

There was a moment when sunlight was bursting through the partly open doors and hitting the floor in an interesting and beautiful way. I don’t usually paint interior scenes, but this was one of those “I must paint that” moments.

I took reference photos from many different perspectives. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to whip out an easel and brush to do a few color studies on location. Photos had to do.

Below are the studies I have done so far, along with my reference photos. Feel free to paint from the reference photos as you please. I plan on doing a larger scale painting later, once I have refined my ideas.

I'm pleased with them, but there's much to improve. This training report will dive deeper into the nuances of painting interior scenes for both your benefit and mine.

Dan Scott, Grandparents' Dining Room, Horizontal, 2021
Dan Scott, Grandparents' Dining Room, Horizontal, 2021
Dan Scott, Grandparents' Dining Room, Vertical, 2021
Dan Scott, Grandparents' Dining Room, Vertical, 2021
Dan Scott, Grandparents' Dining Room, Study, 2021
Dan Scott, Grandparents' Dining Room, Study, 2021

Trying Something Different

It's easy to get caught up doing the same things over and over again. I mostly paint landscapes. Interior scenes are a largely unexplored subject for me. It would be easy to stay in my comfort zone and continue painting landscapes and only landscapes. Easy, but not effective or interesting.

Those first few interior studies made me feel like a complete beginner again. It was refreshing. Each stroke had a heightened sense of uncertainty to it. I couldn't rely on my usual processes, habits, and skills that I developed for landscape painting. Some transfer across, but not all.

Of course, doing this put me in a vulnerable position. Uncertainty is uncomfortable. I needed to accept that my hands might not be able to do what I wanted them to and that the outcome might not be up to my usual standard. But this vulnerability is required to keep improving in general. If I only painted landscapes, my landscapes would eventually stagnate. Painting interior scenes opens up a new world of techniques and ideas. And the challenge of trying something different keeps things fresh and interesting. What fun is life without change or challenge?

What Are You Really Painting?

What are you really painting? An interior scene? Or warmth and intimacy. Homeliness and comfort? This is an important distinction, as it will directly impact how you go about painting a subject.

If you want to convey warmth, you might focus on color temperature and contrast.

If you want to convey intimacy and closeness, you might focus on composition and overlapping objects.

If you want to convey homeliness and comfort, you might use a harmonious and pastel color theme.

If you want to convey drama, you might distort the perspective.

When you think of the subject like this, every interior scene becomes unique, just as every portrait is unique. It also makes it easier to paint, as the subject will give you clues on how to paint it. You aren't just painting an interior scene filled with objects and things; you're painting feelings, ideas, stories, and meanings.

In the studies I have painted so far, I haven't just been painting an interior scene. Rather, I've been painting the warmth of the light, the pleasant color harmony, the room's delicate and intricate nature, and nature's organic patterns and bright colors. This is what I think about whilst I'm painting and it influences how I approach the painting. To convey the light's warmth, I pushed the contrast and used thick, luscious paint for the lights. To convey the idea of color harmony, I started with thin washes of muted color. To convey the room's delicate and intricate nature, I used simplification and bursts of color and light. To convey the nature in the background, I used abstract brushwork and pushed the color saturation of the greens.

Mary Ann Rogers had an interesting quote (via Robert Henri's The Art Spirit):

"I want to see these houses solid, I want them to feel like houses. I don't care about your drawing and your values—they are your affair. They will be good if you make me sense the houses and they will be bad, however "good" they are, if you do not make those houses live."

Simplification—What Details Are Important?

Interior scenes tend to be complex by nature. Look around the room you're in right now. You will probably see a vast array of overlapping objects, edges, lines, shadows, highlights, and mid-tones. Our minds simplify all this detail subconsciously. It must, otherwise we would be completely overwhelmed by the constant bombardment of "noise" and information. But as soon as we sit down to paint a subject, all this detail becomes apparent as we analyze the subject with greater and great scrutiny. It's no wonder that many hopeful interior paintings end up so cluttered and confused.

To paint an interior scene well, or any subject for that matter, you must resist the urge to over-analyze the subject. Your mind has already done all the hard work by taking in all the detail, removing the "noise", and simplifying it into something more comprehensible. What's left is your initial impression of the subject. This is powerful and should, in most cases, form the basis of your painting. As soon as you depart from your initial impression, you risk over-analyzing the subject and overworking the painting.

As Robert Henri says in his book The Art Spirit:

"To start with a deep impression, the best, the most interesting, the deepest you can have of the model; to preserve this vision throughout the work; to see nothing else; to admit of no digression from it; choosing only from the model the signs of it; will lead to an organic work."

Let's go back to my verticle study. See the painting and reference photo below. Some of the examples of simplification are:

  • The curtains are merely suggested with a few dabs of white.
  • The flowers in the vase. I didn't render every flower and reflection on the vase. A few bold strokes of color do most of the work. Also, notice how the soft edges allow the object to partially melt into the background.
  • The floor. I didn't paint all the individual wooden boards.
  • The background. I simplified the house and sky into abstract shapes. They are in the background, so they don't need to be delicately rendered.
Dan Scott, Grandparents' Dining Room, Vertical, 2021
Dan Scott, Grandparents' Dining Room, Vertical, 2021
Reference Photos - Interior

Perspective—Get It Right

Interior scenes are perfect for conveying a sense of linear perspective. That is, the convincing arrangement of objects in space. Unfortunately, linear perspective is an unforgiving area. You might get away with using a wrong color or adding an extra branch to a tree, but bad errors in perspective tend to stand out and simply look wrong.

So, try to get the perspective right. And by right I mean believable. We are artists not engineers.

I provided some general advice for learning perspective in the most recent Q&A. See below.

Perspective is a complex area and it’s not something I can properly summarise in a short answer.

It’s essentially the position of an object in space relative to the viewer. Your job as an artist is to identify the position and convey it through your artwork.

A simple way to improve is to practice drawing (or painting) basic forms in perspective with some shading. Boxes, spheres, cones, and cylinders.

Steve Huston has some good notes on perspective in his book Figure Drawing for Artists. He cuts straight through to the important and practical stuff. You can see my cliff notes here.

I would also look into doing figure drawing in your spare time. You can draw along with videos by Glenn Vilppu. In particular, watch how he goes over, around, and through forms with his pencil (he usually talks you through these motions as he does it).

You could spend your whole life trying to master perspective. But for most art forms, you can get away with just a good understanding of it.

Having said all this, you can get away with warped perspective if you are trying to push a sense of drama and distortion. Some of Vincent van Gogh's paintings come to mind, like his The Night Café (below). But even here, the sense of perspective is somewhat believable.

Vincent van Gogh, The Night Cafe, 1888
Vincent van Gogh, The Night Cafe, 1888

In my studies, I paid careful attention to the main corners and edges of the room and the relative size of the main objects. These aspects would do most of the work in terms of creating a believable idea of perspective. Everything else could be roughly estimated.

I did do two studies that were unsuccessful. I wasn't going to show them in this report, but Chontele reminded me that it's an important lesson to share the ones that don't go as planned. So, here they are (see below). In both studies, I messed up the size of the flower arrangement on the table. The first is too small; the second is too large. It's hard to recover from perspective mistakes like these. It also pains me to share these studies, as there are aspects that I do like more so than my other studies. But unfortunately, a single aspect does not count for me; the finished painting must be able to stand on its own.

Dan Scott, Study, Fail
Dan Scott, Study, Fail 2

Geometric vs Organic

Interior scenes tend to have a strong geometric theme by nature, with all the straight lines, flat planes, and rigid shapes. This can work well when paired with organic, irregular shapes and forms. Take Edgar Degas' ballet paintings for example, like the one below. The rigid, geometric theme of the room contrasts nicely against the irregular and organic shapes, forms, and lines of the dancers and the violinist.

It's worth noting the dancers are made up of some geometric forms, just as the surrounding room has some organic irregularities. This cross-over creates harmony between the two areas.

Edgar Degas, Ballet Rehearsal, 1873
Edgar Degas, Ballet Rehearsal, 1873

The play between geometric and organic elements exists in my studies. That is the main role of the flowers and the nature in the background. Without these elements, the composition might appear overly rigid and organized.

Master Interior Paintings

I curated a handful of some other favorite interior paintings:

Fred Cuming and Bato Dugarzhapov (this month's featured artist) also have some excellent interior paintings. However, I won't link their work here directly due to copyright.

Happy holidays to you all!

Dan Scott

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