Oil Painting

I think that as artists, one of the primary goals of a successful painting, whether spoken or unspoken, is that we hope to evoke an emotional response from the viewers of our paintings.  We want that untrained eye to approach one of our pieces, and smile.  In fact, it is my hope that the buyers of my paintings will smile each and every time they look at their new piece of artwork.  I actually say that in my ‘thank you’ notes to them.

We have all heard and perhaps even taught about the 5-7 key elements of a good painting: line, form, texture, value, pattern and color.  But if you look up what makes up the key elements of design, you will find that one of them is Movement.  I will suggest that when movement is one of the elements in your painting, it will evoke a greater emotional response from the viewer, than when that element is not present.

Most still life’s do not have movement as one of their elements.  Perhaps Tibor Nagy would be the exception to that statement.  Most portraits likewise do not possess movement in them.  In fact, many landscapes, while successful in inviting the viewer in, do not possess movement. 

I am not suggesting that all paintings need to have movement in them to be successful; I am simply saying that when the element of movement is present, the emotional response is greater.  The viewer can smell the salty air, feel the wind or hear the waves crashing onto the shore.

In U.S.33 (also known as Defender) you can feel the power of the wind driving that beautiful sailboat forward.

In Taking Flight, you feel lucky to get that instantaneous snapshot of the duck lifting off the water’s surface

In Beached, you understand that the little rowboat was lucky to be pulled ashore before the wind kicked up and the waves grew too large to handle.

Roger Dale Brown OPAM taught me that “you don’t need to fill in every little detail, because the mind will fill in the blanks”.  I totally subscribe to that line of thinking and further believe that the mind will do likewise when movement is present.

Happy painting!

I received an email from my blog a while back asking a couple of questions about how Berthe Morisot painted. I thought my reply might be interesting to a wider readership, so here it is…

On Feb 25, 2019, at 11:36AM, Malcolm wrote: 

Mr. Kitts,

I received your email this morning about the micro and macrocosm of your painting brushwork and enjoyed the video. Very nice surfaces!

This evening I will purchase, and watch, your ‘Sargent’ video and hopefully that video will answer a question that I have about gestural brushwork.

But in case it does not I am also sending you this email to ask: in the attached image of the Berthe Morisot painting the brush work is very loose and superimposed over other brushwork, what medium (if any) would she have mixed with her oils to achieve those flowing strokes? They are fluid and almost translucent in areas.

And here was my reply…

Hello Malcom. Thank you for your kind words and email. For the record, the video you referred to is a 2018 demonstration of Sorolla’s methods, not Sargent. But I have just release a 17-hour demonstration of Sargent’s techniques a few weeks ago. So perhaps one or the other, or both, will be of interest to you…

But to return your original question: I have always loved the work of Berthe Morisot and feel her influence has long been underrated as one of the original French Impressionists. But I don’t consider myself an authority on her or her work. However, I do feel I can make a few educated guesses based upon what I know about the materials and methods used by Berthe and her brethren. But before I begin, it is important to appreciate few artists worked in the same way with the same materials over their entire career and I believe Berthe was no different. So what follows should be considered a quick generalization about our two paintings and not a scholarly summary of Morisot’s technique.

First, I have attached a different painting than the one you shared. It was probably painted close to the time of your Morisot. But with mine, you can zoom into the image to see more detail, which reveals a lot about her brush work. And please note, the observations I share refer to my image, not yours…

1. In general, Berthe painted on a tightly woven linen support. The ground or ‘primer’ would have likely been a mixture of lead oil and a calcium carbonate, or a chalk to aid in the adhesion of the paint layers. This was a common support used by French Impressionists and it is still a lovely surface to paint on today. So why not try it out yourself? If you like Berthe’s work, the support you paint on will often dictate the character of your brush work. 

2. I would guess her ground was somewhat absorptive and Berthe often stained it with a pigmented earth color such as burnt umber. (see the enlargements found in this post.) A thin wash would have been applied and allowed to dry before a painting was started. I say dry because I do not see any softening or diffusion in the lower layers of the painting. Diffusion would indicate Berthe painted into a wet surface, or a wet imprimatura, and we don’t see that here.

3. The colors she used contributed to the character of her brush work. Berthe used a (largely) opaque pigmented palette that was common to most of the original French Impressionists. (She married Eugène Manet, Édouard’s younger brother, and it was she who convinced Édouard to begin painting outside. She also introduced Édouard to her circle of young Impressionists, who received him as a champion of their cause.)

Berthe’s palette primarily consisted of cadmium yellows and reds, and I’d guess from this painting, prussian and colbalt blue, plus possibly an ultramarine blue, a viridian or emerald green, and a few earth colors such as umber, ochre, and sienna. For an impressionist, Berthe favored more neutral color mixes and she painted with a lead white, and there does not seem to be much use of black since it was considered an anathema to the theories of Impressionism. There may be more colors in this painting but confirming what they are would require some sophisticated lab analysis. For the most part, the lead white dictated the character of Berthe’s strokes. Lead white’s thixotropic properties create this kind of stick, drag, grab, and pull, and it tends to imbue such qualities into any other color it is combined with.

4. Consider how the paint is applied. The surface strongly suggest this painting was executed rapidly with paint being applied thinly at the outset. Later strokes were built up and applied more thickly, with more body, and with each pull retaining its own integrity. You do not find much blending between strokes or colors and there is little to no softening of edges. I don’t find any slumping in the thicker strokes so Berthe probably didn’t incorporate much, if any oil or medium beyond whatever was already in the paint. I don’t know if she, like many of her compatriots, purchased her paint from Sennelier in Paris. But if so, her colors would have been ground in safflower, not linseed oil, which behaves differently under the pressure of a brush. Applying paint straight from the tube with minimal alteration was a common practice among the French Impressionists because they valued expediency when painting from life, and color intensity above all else. Thus they did not like to overmix their color. They also preferred their finished work to have a matte surface because they felt glossy surfaces and pre-mixed color diminished the optical (partitive) effects they pursued over all else. Berthe often left small flecks of pure color in her strokes to excite the eye, with the flecks at times being analogous to the base hue, and sometimes the flecks being a complement or near-complementary hue. So as a card-carrying inside member of the French Impressionists, Berthe was likely to have been working straight from the tube, wet-into-wet, and pushing color into, or on top of color. If you look closely at the child’s lacy collar you will find Berthe ‘double-loading’ her brush – where she picks up two colors before she dragged the hair across the canvas – an entirely new and exciting way to paint that became central to the Impressionists’ aesthetic. 

5. In addition, from the marks we see, Berthe preferred using a stiff brush. Likely consisting of hog hair; and even more likely, a combination of short flats with worn down or flayed hair. (So failing to clean your brushes may have an up-side, yes? Ha!) You can see traces of her distressed brushes pressed into the thicker striated impasto strokes. She also applied flicks and touches of color with a round brush on occasion, reserving them for fine details such as the eyes and eyebrows. But please note: Berthe doesn’t use a small round to paint a large shape, nor does she render ’detail’ with a lot of repetitive strokes. Big areas are indicated with expressive gutsy pulls with a fully loaded brush. 

6. And finally, look at the directionality of her strokes. What you and I would call the gesture of the mark. She often pulled her strokes in alignment of a shape. Yet she also turned the direction of her strokes to follow the shifting surface planes to imply a sense of form. (Look at the shoulders of both figures.) Other times she pulled her strokes flatly aligned with the picture plane. (Look at the cheek of the nanny’s face.) Sometimes, some of Berthe’s strokes are short and appear to be laid down randomly, a technique reserved for areas of lesser importance. Sometime her strokes start off going in one direction but then arbitrarily whip around in another. All of this activity contributes to the energy you feel when you look at her work. Her unique brushwork is a crazy, layered, mark-making technique, yet her subjects and narrative still hold together. Why? (hint: Value Relationships…) French Impressionists used such loose and expressive brushwork to convey a sense of light, movement, vibrancy, and a  joie de vivre– with Berthe being one of the more wilder members of the club. In fact, in my opinion, Berthe was farther out there on the edge than all of her better-known male counterparts and yes, she deserves far more credit for being there.

So based on this painting and the others I spent time in front of in the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris last August, I don’t think Berthe used much medium at all, beyond the possibility of a little solvent at the start with the one possible exception being the isolated blue scribbles which define the nanny’s left wrist cuff. That blue paint looks as though it was thinned down with a solvent and added after the fact on top of dry paint. A corrective move, perhaps.

And in your opinion would that painting be completed in one sitting or over many days? 

This painting was probably largely completed alla prima, or within a single session. A few passages may have been re-worked or re-touched during a second pass. But given the way the surface looks, any revisions would have been minimal. There is no sign Berthe was working into what the Parisian Academics called a ‘couch’ – meaning, painting into an ‘oiled out’ area with fresh paint – which is how many artists in the late 19th century often made their multi-session paintings look like they were one-shot wonders.

Malcom, I hope you found this information helpful as you continue your studies. Be sure to keep looking at as many originals as you can find but don’t forget to paint from life as well. Why? Well, here is a quote to remember:

“Real painters understand with a brush in their hand…”

   –   Berthe Morisot

Today’s blog is from OPA Master, Dan Gerhartz, with some insights he shared during the 2012 “Weekend with the Masters”. Though it is a few years old, the information is timeless.

Portrait Demonstrations… Weekend with the Masters

I have had the privilege of teaching the art of painting for the last twenty years or so and have chosen the portrait as the vehicle to explain the concepts because of the exacting nature of the subject, forcing the student to be precise in their seeing and drawing.

What remains my greatest challenge in the process of teaching is conveying in the simplest of terms the most direct, systematic approach to solving the problems before us.  As we stand with loaded brush before the model, so many decisions need to be made at once, often instilling panic in our hearts while we try to sort out the visual information.  Organization of thought in the beginning is paramount in the process and seems to be the only way to wade through the ordeal with any peace of mind and success in the endeavor.

“Yes, yes”, you may be saying, “but organize what?”

It has been my goal to stress the critical nature of categorizing the aspects of drawing, value, edge, and color from the outset so as to build on a solid foundation.

This needs to be accomplished before I apply paint to the canvas so I can break down the elements in a way I can wrap my head around and not be overwhelmed as the avalanche of information pours in.  So, before I begin to paint, I will make these visual observations and mentally categorize them in terms of hierarchy of value, edge, color, etc…

Value…  Look to see while squinting where the lightest lights and darkest darks are and then make a concerted effort to keep all other values in their proper range compared to the extremes.  i.e.(Not allowing the reflected lights to become too strong so to break out of the simple shadow shape or applying too many highlights to destroy the subtlety of tone.)

Edge…   When squinting, what edges emerge as the sharpest and which visually subdue to create the most variety to add power and drama to the subject.

Color… Where are the strongest colors and how do all of the others relate to them.  Also, what is the color of the light and do I see its influence on all of the top planes of the scene.

If I take a few minutes before the work begins, often it alleviates some stress and possible mistakes along the way… Keep Smiling!

These two works were completed as Demonstrations at a conference in San Diego.

www.danielgerhartz.com

I have received a number of questions about painting “backgrounds” specifically for portraits. Too many students spend their time rendering the subject and then try to paint the background at the last moment. The result is often a disaster; the figure looks pasted on or there is a formless envelope around the head. The problem is that the background is an afterthought rather than an integral part of the painting. 

Don’t forget, someone looking at the painting sees the whole…not just the subject. In reality, the background is vitally important because it defines the center of interest. My pastel mentor, Harley Brown, told me “always work the background at the same time as the subject”. The key is to give some thought to what you’re doing and why. Here’s a great quote from Quang Ho: “If you make a decision, it’s always right!” Think about it! 

I think of three elements and three approaches when I make decisions about the background: 

Elements:

1. Value – is the background darker (like a typical Rembrandt portrait), lighter  (like a more contemporary graphic piece) or the same value (used by some artists to lose the edges on the light side of the face).
   
   
2. Hue – A background that is the complement of the dominant color of your subject (either grayed or high-Chroma) automatically defines the subject as the center of interest. Furthermore, if you place equal amounts of the discords (two steps on either side of the subject’s hue on the Munsell color wheel) near the subject you reinforce the effect.
   
   
3. Shape – Rather than have a flat tone around the portrait (boring) you can create secondary points of interest…the three approaches listed below. 

Approaches:

1. A specific scene or environment. Sargent did this in almost every portrait. He used columns, chairs and vases as secondary points of interest to create a mood.
   
   
2. A suggested environment. Abstract shapes still place the subject somewhere other than empty space. 
   
   
3. A vignette– although the picture plane is not completely filled, the shapes that are there fulfill a design purpose. (I was taught that it’s a good idea to have a vignette touch three sides of the picture plane. I often design the “background” to have a movement that opposes the thrust of the figure.)

Here are some examples of all three approaches. By the way, I cover this (plus a lot more) in my workshops and DVD on Design / Composition Secrets of the Masters. 

I have been teaching art for over 50 years and drawing and painting for 75 years. Where did the time go?! Like most people, I have certainly had my ups and downs and now that most of my life is behind me I have the tendency to reflect and think about what the heck happened! I was fortunate to get a lot of support from my family, friends and most teachers. Drawing was my favorite thing to do, other than sports and most of the first half of my life revolved around either or both of those activities, along with backpacking and traveling this wonderful world that we live in.

I never had much confidence in myself when I was younger, mostly just a very curious and competitive nature while being raised in the magnificent Gallatin Valley in southwest Montana surrounded by mountains, just North of Yellowstone Park and hanging out with some great friends helped me get through a lot. I have heard some horrible stories of people who were not allowed to follow their passion for a whole lot of reasons…probably with good reason. As for most of us, it is the great love and passion that takes many years of hard work to get anywhere good at it, unless we were one of the lucky ones blessed with superb talent, genes and maybe a trust fund or two! 

I had a little of the talent, however, one of my great uncles was one of the countries better sculptors. I was very competitive, inspired mostly from lack of self-esteem and on the flip side from a fairly poor family, which isn’t always such a detriment in small-town America. Most of us seem to have a mixture of positive and negative influences whether we want them or not and I think the bottom line again is that we really must have the love for doing whatever it may be as that is what can carry us through rejections, tragedies, and disappointments so many of us may have to endure. Growing up in Montana, I was not aware of any great artist role models, probably more due to my lack of initiative to find any. We had Charlie Russell and that was about it! That era from 1940 to 1980’s we were fortunate to have so many great magazines and books mostly chock full of some very great illustrations, a lot of it being great art done by some really great artists! We didn’t have the great museums as in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and the other great cities of the world, so those magazines for me were a wealth of inspiration and I kind of wanted to make pictures but deep down I felt that I could never be able to do that.

I kind of wandered around for my first 17 years, dreaming, but somewhat disillusioned of what I could do with my life, and won’t go into all of those details here (a long story). But my father (we did not see eye to eye on much, another very long story), finally got it out of me what I would really like to do, to become an illustrator, and he told me to give it a chance, but to try and get into the very best art school that I could get into. He was very competitive also and those were the people I would have to match to make a go of it! To his generation, failure was not really an option! Well, we both researched around for the art schools and living in Northern California decided that the Art Center School in Los Angeles seemed to fit that bill. So, we drove down to L.A. and had an interview with them. I put together a rather shabby portfolio of my drawings and a few paintings. I figured that there was no way that I could get accepted, woe is me, yet they seemed to be impressed regardless of my lack of faith in myself and accepted me (Art Center was and still is one of the hardest art schools to get into and also one of the hardest to graduate because of its high standards. If you didn’t quite meet those standards you were politely asked to leave!) On top of being accepted and because of our rather poor status, I was also offered a full scholarship after the first three semesters. A semester was an outrageous $410 back in the early sixties, which I think is about $30,000 a semester now, but don’t hold me to that. We from Montana have a tendency to exaggerate at times! 

I managed to graduate, a wonderful experience surrounded by such great students and friends and best of all, the instructors were all working professionals who knew what it took to succeed at whatever program you chose. One of their premier offers was automotive design and all the Detroit car companies got most of their top designers from Art Center and also sent promising students to the school. Certainly, in hindsight, I know that so many other artists, for so many reasons, were not that fortunate. Right around my graduation, autumn of 1963, they had the draft and so I had to go into the service. Two of my best buddies and I joined the Marine Corps and the Vietnam War was just around the corner. Needless to say, my experience was short-lived and I got an Honorable Medical Discharge (a mental and physical breakdown, another long story) and so missed that awful, misunderstood and divisive part of our history. Sorry for these distractions, but I think they are related to the struggle to keep trying, sometimes against great odds, and how I as an individual and with individual issues somewhat succeeded. As in this case, I was in a vegetable state, discharged, hospitalized and felt I had let myself and my country down and scared to death of what may happen! I was lucky to have friends and family to get back on my feet again.

Eventually, I got a job as a laborer, then a carpenter, and to work as a postal carrier, a wayward art student, not knowing what to do! I at least had the sense to go to some life drawing sessions at night, twice a week to keep my hand in the game and slowly regained some confidence to the point I was going out with my portfolio to ad agencies, book and magazine publishers, whatever seem related to my goal of being an illustrator/artist. I had some pretty darn good skills, but not much confidence to go with them! This is where my main theme of trying to succeed comes in. I call them the three P’s! Passion, Perseverance, and Patience. Not that I was endowed so greatly with them all but at least had some of them and mostly less of the Patience one… Perseverance, being a lot of stubborn… and Passion, wanting to be able to eat!   

It took me about two years to where I was slowly going out to agencies, publishers and a couple of galleries, that I was getting assignments. Hearing that I would get a call for this assignment or that, but, discovering that once out of sight I was pretty much out of mind as there was a pretty constant flow of other artists knocking constantly at their door. Pretty much the same with the galleries. This is where perseverance comes into play and the love of what we want to do. Some are so gifted that THEY are getting the knock on the door or phone call but for most of us, that is not the case.   

Around this time, I was also taking workshops from the very best artists that offered them, such as, Richard Schmid, Sergei Bongart, Harley Brown and Del Gish. They gave me the confidence to teach my own workshops.

By having to put painting into words as best one can really helped me to visualize my own work better and helped to pay the bills! As I improved over time and was invited into or applied to some of the better exhibitions with many of the very best artists, I would get a few of the calls from other shows and good galleries. Needless to say it sure is good for one’s self-esteem and that struggle for recognition is finally rewarded! One of the very best exhibitions in the country at that time was the “Artists of America” show in Denver, Colorado. It showcased the very best traditional/impressionistic work from all over and the show that everyone wanted to be in. The best collectors and gallery owners would fly in to see all of the fine work. One could apply to the show and they had a jury panel that would screen the work and that would vary ever so often. I applied for about eight years and always got turned down, but finally, because of new jurors maybe I did get selected and was even invited to give a demonstration at the show. To say the least, very grateful, humble and nervous throughout, as I was in the presence of so many of my heroes and other great artists. The Director of the show, bought one of my paintings.

I didn’t think it could get much better than that! Unfortunately, because sales were down, the Exhibition closed the following year. I got into some other top shows and looking back I feel very fortunate that I was able to experience, what for me was some recognition after 30 years of ups and downs and trying to do my very best. After overcoming so much I figured that my last few years would just be spent enjoying creating, pretty much what I wanted to, and whenever I wanted to, but alas, I had to face some of the biggest challenges of my life when about eight years ago, an old football back injury caught up with me. I had excruciating pain that use to go away and this time did not. I had to have back surgery and when I woke up I knew something was not quite right, but went into instant denial. I had an almost dead left leg and in chronic pain, another long story, and told that another surgery might fix it. That did not happen and with my denial, I thought I could just keep charging forward, doing the shows, galleries and a lot of plein air shows hiking and painting pack trips and still traveling the world a bit. I suffered a lot more than I should have, but keeping busy and working on my painting helped me to think less of the pain.

After about four years of that nonsense, I finally started to accept being marginalized. Some of the denial still lingers on and I have learned and accepted, along with being 80 years old, and in love with a most wonderful woman that really cares about me, accepts me and herds me around when I certainly need it! I guess it helps that she herded and ran a dairy farm for her sick uncle when she was just a teenager! Recently I have blessed with this rare disease, “autoimmune pancreatitis”, not life-threatening, but mostly have to watch what I eat and drink, and since I love to eat all the great foods of the world and love a beer or wine ever so much I am still adjusting to all of that. Yes, I do feel sorry for myself at times, other issues also to be dealt with, but I guess I would be crazy if I didn’t. My love of painting and Karen are my great blessings and so I persevere on and am still challenging myself to do a better work of art than the last one, although I still manage to do some real clunkers, but try and cut those down with more time with working out value and color studies.

My productivity is down, but very grateful to still be able to do what I love the most! Trying to think of a moral to this story is, maybe you can come up with something better? I have included a few samples of my work from my teen years up to the present day. It’s nice to see the progress and I think that some of the work I am still doing is going in that same direction. Trying hard to come up with something unique, at least for me. I must quote an old artist’s proverb, as I see way too much of it lately…” to copy from one person is plagiarism, to copy from four or five is creativity”. Look at great art..not bad art..it gets in our brain, it is humbling, which is OK, but also inspiring!  Thanks for getting this far and bearing with most of my story. I only hope that with whatever travails you have to deal with you can find some inspiration, hope, and solace in your own work!

I have a Facebook group where I have demonstrations and videos of my processes including portraits, figures, studio, and plein air landscapes along with explanations of demos and references I use and why and how I put them together. I have been teaching for over 50 years and painting for 75 years and so have a lot of experience, knowledge and some wisdom to share. I am also a “Designated Master” with both the Oil Painters of America and the American Impressionist Society and I love to share my process with others. You can go to this link: Ned’s Artist Buddies or go to my website at: www.nedmueller.com and click on works and then “Artist Buddies”. It is a very good deal!