Thursday 21 October 2010




Course work: Made some very minor adjustments in the setup to improve the light-shadow relationship. Decided to work on 45.7 x 61 cm paper, with the long axis vertical. At this point, I was ready to proceed to the next stage (Project One: A Color Study, Stage Two). I sketched in the general outlines of the still life using very diluted black acrylic, making a few errors in construction, but having enough correct lines to use as a basis for departure. Laid in colors approximating local color, using a broad brush; this at least helped to reveal the remainder of my drawing errors. Made some color notes in my sketchbook as I worked, to assist in reproducing the colors used.





Reading and theoretical studies:



E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art

Phaidon Press Limited, Oxford 1978

Pp. 125-154



Went online to review the works of Hitchens and Auerbach, as recommended by the text. I understand that my role as a student is to study the works of others and learn from them, but I must confess that the twenty or so works that I studied online or downloaded and have now reviewed several times leaves me convinced that I would not enjoy being a student of theirs. Perhaps it is my age; perhaps it is my inadequate background in art; perhaps my sample was inadequate; perhaps I’m just not competent to appreciate such work; nevertheless, I saw little to which I would give wall-space.



Sketchbook work: Another covert restaurant scribble in my pocket sketchbook; at least I represented the general attitudes of the diners.

Time today: Two hours 7 minutes

Wednesday 20 October 2010




Course work: Project 5, Stage 3. Laid out all my Assignment One work for review…see photo p. 53. (Tiles in floor are 30.5 cm.)

Colors are reasonably flat; some transparent colors are less than perfect in uniformity. There is some minor imprecision in paint application: this is due in part to the multiple applications required, and to a lesser extent to occasional difficulty with a mild senile tremor. My color mixing has improved, and my handling of acrylic paint has improved a little. I anticipate some continuing experimentation with color-mixing, primarily in my sketchbook.











At this point, I think that I have completed the Assignment One work. I am sure that if I repeated it from the start, I could improve it somewhat.



Reading and theoretical studies:



Johannes Itten The Elements of Color


John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1961

Pp. 72-95

(In my opinion, The Elements of Color is overrated. The language is frequently ponderous, and the translation is suboptimal. There is useful information, although it is often hard to locate or comprehend in the barely-penetrable jungle of tedious Teutonic verbosity. The irrelevant mysticism (“…the essential factor is the ‘aura’ of the person.”) and a significant number of comments that are not only absurd, but which seem tainted with Nazism (“Light blond types with blue eyes and pink skin incline toward very pure colors… A very different type is represented by people with black hair, dark skin, and dark eyes, for whom black plays an important part in the harmony.”) distract the reader and detract from the value of the book. The association of colors with specific geometric shapes is just silly, and one can easily find any number of other equally absurd statements. Some figures are presented out of logical order…the first cited in the text is No. 58. While The Elements of Color may have some historical interest, it would seem to have limited value to the contemporary student, who can easily find more readable and better illustrated color theory texts which lack the objectionable features of this volume.)



Time today: 58 minutes



Total time for Assignment One: 89 hours 13 minutes

PAINTING ONE: STARTING TO PAINT

Assignment Two

3: Using Colour to Describe Objects

Wednesday 20 October 2010




Course work: (Project One: A Color Study, Stage One) Set up the still life again, this time on top of a filing cabinet, to bring it up closer to eye level when I am standing at the easel. I removed the light bulb, since it was generally similar in shape to the wooden pear, and because it added no color to an already low-color setup, and added a colored-glass bottle. I then lit the setup fairly strongly from the left, which produces interesting cast shadows and projects and reflects the bottle color. The colors are still analogous (red-orange-yellow) with the background a slightly neutralized green as a complement. To get a full range of color, I would have had to start over from scratch, and this does not seem to be the intent of the project.



Reading and theoretical studies:



These works by Bratby, Derain, Auerbach, Hitchens and Matisse seem to use color primarily as a means of expression, with elements of construction and impression in some:


(Images omitted from blog because of copyright concerns)




These works by DeChirico, Braque, Lempicka, and Picasso seem to use color primarily as a means of construction, with secondary elements of expression:




(Images omitted from blog because of copyright concerns)















These paintings by Hopper, Bierstadt, Monet, and Picasso seem to use color primarily to represent impression:



(Images omitted from blog because of copyright concerns)












I am certain that other observers would classify these differently, especially since two or all three components work together in many paintings. Itten does not provide the reproducible criteria for the categories that one would expect: in the absence of such clearly defined criteria, it is a matter for each individual observer to decide what impression, expression, and construction mean, and which is the dominant component in any given painting.



Peggy Hadden The Artist’s Quest for Inspiration

Allworth Press, New York, 1999

Pp. 39-78



E. H. Gombrich Art and Illusion (11th Printing)

Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, USA, 1969

Pp. 93-115







Sketchbook work: A scribble-sketch of my still-life setup in progress, thinking about viewpoint and relationship of objects.

Time today: Two hours 25 minutes

Wednesday 20 October 2010





Course work: Project 5, Stage 3. Laid out all my Assignment One work for review…see photo p. 53. (Tiles in floor are 30.5 cm.)



Colors are reasonably flat; some transparent colors are less than perfect in uniformity. There is some minor imprecision in paint application: this is due in part to the multiple applications required, and to a lesser extent to occasional difficulty with a mild senile tremor. My color mixing has improved, and my handling of acrylic paint has improved a little. I anticipate some continuing experimentation with color-mixing, primarily in my sketchbook.

At this point, I think that I have completed the Assignment One work. I am sure that if I repeated it from the start, I could improve it somewhat.



Reading and theoretical studies:



Johannes Itten The Elements of Color

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1961

Pp. 72-95

(In my opinion, The Elements of Color is overrated. The language is frequently ponderous, and the translation is suboptimal. There is useful information, although it is often hard to locate or comprehend in the barely-penetrable jungle of tedious Teutonic verbosity. The irrelevant mysticism (“…the essential factor is the ‘aura’ of the person.”) and a significant number of comments that are not only absurd, but which seem tainted with Nazism (“Light blond types with blue eyes and pink skin incline toward very pure colors… A very different type is represented by people with black hair, dark skin, and dark eyes, for whom black plays an important part in the harmony.”) distract the reader and detract from the value of the book. The association of colors with specific geometric shapes is just silly, and one can easily find any number of other equally absurd statements. Some figures are presented out of logical order…the first cited in the text is No. 58. While The Elements of Color may have some historical interest, it would seem to have limited value to the contemporary student, who can easily find more readable and better illustrated color theory texts which lack the objectionable features of this volume.)



Time today: 58 minutes



Total time for Assignment One: 89 hours 13 minutes

Tuesday 19 October 2010




Course work: Taking a sheet of grey paper, I painted a red cross on it, stared at the center for a timed 30 seconds, and, as expected, saw an evanescent light green cross when I diverted my gaze downward. Out of curiosity, I made further experiments with a yellow, a blue, and a grey cross on the grey paper, and with a red and a grey cross on white paper. The yellow cross produced a convincing violet…the strongest effect of the series. The blue cross produced a barely discernable dirty yellowish image. The grey cross on grey paper produced an image slightly lighter than the grey paper. The grey cross on white paper produced an afterimage lighter than the white paper (which certainly provides food for thought) and the red cross on white paper a stronger green image than was noted with the red cross on grey paper. Here is a composite image of my experimental setups:

Reading and theoretical studies:



E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art

Phaidon Press Limited, Oxford 1978

Pp. 94-124



Johannes Itten The Elements of Color

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1961

Pp. 49-71





Sketchbook work:



Another color circle, this one using Grumbacher Red, cadmium yellow medium, and cobalt blue as the primary colors. A strong orange, and a usable, but somewhat neutralized, violet and green result from two-primary mixtures. Mixtures of each primary with its mixed complement produce useful brownish neutrals. A mixture of all three primary colors produces a strong near-black brown.



These three colors plus white would allow one to do reasonably satisfactory work, though the vermillion-arylide yellow-cobalt blue triad remains the most successful of those I have tested to date.

A red-chalk sketch of the cone of a white pine, a fairly uncommon tree in this area.

Time today: Two hours 25 minutes

Monday 18 October 2010





Course work: Worked on Project Five, Stage One, Optical Mixing. Some preliminary experimentation showed that small, fairly uniform dots could best be produced by stamping with a small, sharp piece of wood. A circle with ~1mm dots of cadmium yellow light and cerulean blue, straight from the tube, and a second with larger dots of the same colors, these made with a brush, were evaluated: I could not convince myself that I could see them as green at any distance, as the blue dots seemed to overpower the yellow ones. I then lightened the blue considerably with white, and repeated the two small circles, with slightly more convincing results. I then did a roughly square set of ~2mm dots, with an overall size of ~5cm; with this I could imagine that I could see a little green: the effect seemed stronger in indirect daylight than in incandescent light.





I then carried out a similar series using cadmium yellow light and cadmium red light: I was able to convince myself that I could see orange in each of the five areas. To assess whether the white background could make a significant difference, I painted a small solid yellow square and applied dots of cadmium red light to it: the effect was somewhat more convincing, but is outside the range of the project.



I was not fully satisfied with the results of the project so far, and set out to find a way to make small uniform easily-controllable dots. Colored markers proved effective: four small circles done with yellow and blue, yellow and red, red and blue, and red and green, yielded when viewed from a distance the impressions of green, orange, purple, and a reddish-grey neutral.



With this knowledge in hand, I returned to acrylics, and, making smaller and more closely-set dots, managed to produce a fair violet, a weak orange, a rather weak green, and by using red, yellow, and blue, a somewhat yellowish neutral.

My conclusions: (1) To provide effective optical mixing, dots must be small, uniform, and fairly evenly spaced (uneven spacing results in a tint shift). (2)Viewing distance is important: smaller dots mix optically at a shorter distance than do larger dots. (3) Selecting the proper amount of each color to use to achieve a desired effect is difficult. (4) I am unlikely to become a pointillist.





Reading and theoretical studies:



Johannes Itten The Elements of Color

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1961

Pp. 24-48



E. H. Gombrich Art and Illusion (11th Printing)

Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, USA, 1969

Pp. 63-90



Sketchbook work: A sketch of a closed hand.

Time today: Two hours 14 minutes (85h50m)

Sunday 17 October 2010




Course work: Continued work on Project Four, today working in matching tones of dis-similar colors. This is a slow process, as it is difficult to accurately estimate the amount of darkening that will occur with drying. Repeated slight corrections are required, and one must squint until it is painful. In a row of grey squares, one light, one medium, and one dark, I used a cadmium yellow very slightly neutralized with a speck of a mixture of ultramarine blue and cadmium red, a cadmium red with a little white, and an ultramarine blue with a somewhat greater amount of white. The second row consists of a cadmium red square, a cerulean blue square, and a cadmium lemon square. For the first, I prepared a complement of a slightly bluish green with cerulean blue and cadmium lemon yellow; I had to add some white to this to approximately match the tone with the red background. For the cerulean blue square, I mixed an orange with cadmium red and cadmium yellow; in order to match tones with the blue, the orange had to be neutralized to brown with ultramarine blue. To match tones with the lemon yellow background, I prepared a violet with alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue; this required addition of a great deal of white before a tonal match was obtained. Every small square was repainted at least four times before a tonal match was obtained, making this quite an onerous exercise. I think that I have now met the objectives of Project Four.

Reading and theoretical studies:



Hajo Dütchling Cézanne

Taschen, Köln, 2003

Pp. 193-216

(A generally well-written and balanced account of the artist’s life and work, with only occasional digressions into the author’s personal opinions concerning the artist’s thought processes, and fewer flights of descriptive fancy than one often sees in such books. Most, but not all, of the works discussed are illustrated. Well worth adding to a basic collection.)



Johannes Itten The Elements of Color

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1961

Pp. 4-24



Sketchbook work: A not-entirely-successful attempt at a brush sketch of some cirrus clouds. In trying to avoid the error of making the sky too blue, I failed to make it blue enough; it could also have been more smoothly painted.

Weekly reflections on learning experience: After ten days of painting squares, I am ready to go on to something else. The entire series of color-theory projects has shown me that my knowledge of color-mixing and tone is less complete than I had thought, and that there is still a great deal of room for further work on my part. My reading has gone well this week; my sketchbook work has been about average.



Time today: Two hours 56 minutes

Saturday 16 October 2010




Reading and theoretical studies:



E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art

Phaidon Press Limited, Oxford 1978

Pp. 80-93



Peggy Hadden The Artist’s Quest for Inspiration

Allworth Press, New York, 1999

Pp. xv-xvi, 3-38



Time today: 39 minutes