Last weekend, the Cute-Little-Red-Headed-Girlfriend and I went to the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens to see the art exhibit Constable's Great Landscapes: The Six-Foot Paintings.

The exhibit focuses on a series of Suffolk landscapes Constable painted over and over during his life. The show reveals that Constable chose the imposing six-foot format for his paintings not for aesthetic reasons but simply to get the attention of the right people, in his case, the Royal Academy.

The exhibit reveals the creative and technical processes Constable used to create his landscapes on a grand scale. Most of the six-foot paintings are hung beside six-foot oil sketches, which are much more dynamic than the finished painting. In other cases, the larger paintings have been scaled up from smaller though finished paintings. By viewing the sequence of paintings that led to the final six-foot version, one can see Constable's editing process as he removes or changes elements or alters the mood of the landscape.

I was very interested in the scaling techniques that Constable developed to create his six-foot landscapes. I recently purchased David Hockney's updated thesis, the controversial Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, which reveals the various ocular devices used by artists throughout the centuries to create realistic perspective. Often thought of as "cheats," Hockney shows how these projecting devices were part of the craft of painting and held closely as trade secrets among artisans.

In the digital age, when the use of technology to create art is often viewed with suspicion--especially if the makers are amateurs--I found it refreshing to see such a revered painter as Constable as part of this history of artistic tinkerers and crafters.