Lesson Five Painting Sunflowers PART THREE

Dear Sprigg Zoners,

     A fabulous way to learn about color and how you can use it is to study the Impressionists, Pointillism, Van Gogh and the Fauvists. I mention Van Gogh separately because he is so individual, attaining uniqueness by combining his knowledge from the aforementioned styles and branding it Vincent for stunning everlastingly great results making each painting that exhibits his developed style we know so well, simplistically striking -forever memorable.

     Here are some basics gleaned for you from some of my 6 hour workshops "How to Paint like Van Gogh" and "Become a Wild Beast!". If you have an extra long filbert 4-8, bring it to class for painting sunflowers. If not, consider ordering a #4 and #6 for a Monet style painting later on this year. A long handled, extra long bristled  filbert is an impressionists tool for licking up wet paint from the underpainting to reveal it with the subsequent layer being applied. 

George Seurat

 

• George Seurat was also influenced by Delacroix.
• Seurat analyzes how Delacroix used the artist's law of contrasts.
• Seurat unlike Van Gogh abandoned the Earth tones.
• Seurat and Van Gogh spent time together and Seurat influenced Van Gogh to go lighter with his Palette.
• The palette of Seurat was prismatic or rainbow colors like Van Gogh's minus the Earth tones.
• If he used earth tones he kept them to the siennas and ochres.
• Like Monet he added white to increase the reflective qualities of the color.
• In examples of Seurat's paintings you can see how Seurat crossed one color into the next, leaving a portion of the pure colors to be identified.  This matured into pointillism.

 

 

The Pointillist Dot

 

• Limited mixture of color on the palette. Colors are mixed with white by degree on the canvas, or applied unmixed directly on canvas.
• Palette is made up of prismatic or rainbow colors.
• Think in twos:  Use 2 adjacent colors on the prismatic color wheel.
• Think in twos:  Use patches of orange and blue dot to represent shadow and reflected
  light.
• Think in twos:  Use 2 primaries side-by-side to blur into secondary color.
• The 2 primaries fuse into a third color optically and with small dots appear grayed. 

 

 

Susan Sprigg

 

Delacroix:  See compositional parenthesis in his paintings.

Van Gogh:  Picked up on the circle to emphasize his focal point in his work.  Subtle.

His landscapes will have other approaches to encapsulating his focal points, similar to a parenthesis.

 

Developing Focal Points:

Analogous:  Opposite color used.

Contrasting:  Analogous color used.

Use your selected pallette spectrally – primary colors first closest to or at focal area, then introduce secondary colors. 

Pure color is more opaque.  Add a little white for it to be reflective.

Temperature of Comparative Primary Colors 

Cadmium Yellow Pale:  Cool of Cadmium Yellow Medium

Vermillion = hot / Lakes = cool ( Alizarin is a Crimson Lake color)

Cerulean = warmer

Cobalt = cooler

Ultramarine = coolest of the 3 blues (cerulean, cobalt, ultramarine blue)

Chrome Greens & light greens = warmer)

viridian = cooler

 

If warm surface being painted, shadows are cooler (dark blues/dark greens) and vice versa.

 

 

Pointillism: 

 

Difference between pointillism and traditional painters is the tonal changes in the color.  There is no neutralizing of the colors (well, very little) in pointillism.  It is done by the color put down next to it and white (not black).

 

Local color is the overall color of your puzzle piece before changes by toning it, adding white in pointillism, or adding of contrasting colors. 

 

Local color is influenced by white, yellow, and orange for white. 

 

 

 

 

Fauvism

Turn Yourself into a Wild Beast!

 

This is the final step to understanding color in our lecture series.

 

It's the first step to becoming unique!

 

Once you experience the Wild Beast within, you can extract the treasured means of logically selecting color.

Up until now, I have focused on design and composition. I've taught you how to neutralize color, greying color down with it's opposite,contrasting color. I've taught you to neutralize color everywhere in your painting except in the direct light in your focal areas. And now you are ready to learn more about color against color.

  Color is the # 1 thing we notice about a painting.

Color calls to us from across the room as we look around. 

Color gets our attention.

Design holds our attention. 

Together the two are spellbinding!!!

 

i)  Fauves means “Wild Beasts"

 

ii)  Two Main Fauves

(a)  Henry Matisse

(b)  Andre Derain

 

iii)  Matisse and Derain formed a partnership like Monet and Renoir leading them to fame.

(a)  They evolved their distinctive styles into vibrant color.

(b)  Colors were anti-naturalistic.

(c)  The colors were not imitative of their subject meaning their goal was not to duplicate color.

(d)  They did however see color and how it spectrally moved in the subjects before them.

(e)  The Fauves plucked out the color in pure extract from the color found in nature and intensify it. 

(f)  Gauguin in 1888 told his students to abandon imitative color and intensify color from the recognized primary or secondary color influence in their subjects.

(g)  In other words is the brown in your tree a blue brown or a red brown then lose the brown.

(h)  Learn to do this folks, and the next step in painting becomes your first step to developing a successful Style through color Knowledge.

(i)  Use this new wild beastie inside you that can identify color and tame it creating a color palette exclusive to you, that shows subtly in your work.

 

iv)   Combine this color ability with the priceless knowledge of composition and there are only two things left.

(a)  Technique

(b)  Production

 

Review: Six questions you ask yourself before painting:

What's my line?

What's my puzzle pieces?
What are my values?

What's my color?

What's my chroma?

What's my temperature?