Why do you paint?

This is a question that was recently posed on Facebook. My answer is rather complicated, just like painting itself. I think the fact that it is so difficult to do well and can therefore never be conquered makes it a lifelong pursuit. There is no finish line, you never arrive and you always have a bunch of paintings in your head that you want to bring to life. It is never boring.

Other reasons for me include: the serene zen of flow when deeply involved in painting, the tactile pleasure of pushing around the buttery colors, the fun of trying to bring to life an ideal in your head, the constant challenge of improving and learning more and the hope of creating a poetic masterpiece.

Quote of the Day

Thanks to my friend, Desiree Holmes Scherini, who posted this on Facebook:

"Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions.
Small people always do that,
but the really great make you believe that you too can become great.”

~Mark Twain

Sargent and the Atelier Methods of Carolus-Duran

Carolus-Duran was the progressive painting instructor in Paris with whom Sargent chose to study. His teaching diverged greatly from other painters of that time because of the emphasis on color and form, created with direct and painterly brushwork, with inspiration from past master Velasquez. This method of painting was very different than the academic norm at the time, which emphasized smooth blending. Sargent's facility with a brush is almost universally admired among oil painters and an examination of how he achieved such beautiful realism combined with gorgeous brushwork is of interest to many of us, so I thought it would be good to find out more about the method he learned from Carolus-Duran.

I found this quote, taken from The Lure of Paris: Nineteenth-Century American Painters and Their French Teachers by H. Barbara Weinberg, very interesting as the painting procedure described is still practiced by painters today, such as Cedric Egeli:

Despite his gifts as a draftsman and his success in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, there is almost no easel painting by Sargent, from his atelier studies to his most ambitious late portraits and outdoor genre works, that does not disclose an affiliation with the painterly, anti-academic manner of Carolus-Duran. Sargent’s early Blonde Model vividly exemplifies Carolus-Duran’s method, as described by R.A.M. Stevenson, an English painter, and later writer, who also entered the atelier in 1874:

No preparation in colour or monochrome was allowed, but the main planes of the face must be laid directly on the unprepared canvas with a broad brush. These few surfaces – three or four in the forehead, as many in the nose, and so forth – must be studied in shape and place, and particularly in the relative value of light that their various inclinations produce. They were painted quite broadly in even tones of flesh tint, and stood side by side like pieces of a mosaic, without fusion of their adjacent edges. No brushing of the edge of the hair into the face was permitted, no conventional bounding of eyes and features with lines that might deceive the student by their expression into the belief that false structure was truthful . . . you must make a tone for each step of a gradation. Thus, you might never attempt to realize a tone or a passage by some hazardous uncontrollable process.

Also, here is an account of how the studio ran by Carolus-Duran functioned, taken from A Manual of Oil Painting by John Collier:

The model was posed on Monday, always in full light, without shadow effect, and against a strongly-coloured background, which we had to imitate exactly in its relations to the figure. The figure was drawn in in charcoal, then we were allowed to take a sable and strengthen the outline with some dark colour mixed with turpentine, but not to make any preparation, nor put in conventional dark brown shadows.

The palette was set as follows: Black, verte emeraude, raw umber, cobalt, laque ordinaire, brun rouge or light red, yellow ochre, and white (the colors being placed on the palette in this order from left to right).

We were supposed to mix to or three gradations of yellow ochre with white, two of light red with white, two of cobalt with white, and also of black and raw umber to facilitate the choice of tones.

We were not allowed any small brushes, at any rate not for a long time—many months or years.

On Tuesday Duran came to criticize and correct the drawing, or the laying in of painting if it was sufficiently advanced. We blocked in the curtain first, and then put in the figure or face in big touches like a coarse wooden head hewn with a hatchet; in fact, in a big mosaic, not bothering to soften things down, but to get the right amount of light and the proper colour, attending first to the highest light.

The hair was not smoothed into the flesh at first, but just pasted on in the right tone like a coarse wig; then other touches were placed on the junctions of the big mosaic touches, to model them and make the flesh more supple.

Of course these touches were a gradation between the touches they modelled. All was solid, and there were no gradations by brushing the stuff off the lights gently into the darks or vice versa, because Duran wished us to actually make and match each bit of the tone of the surface. He came again on Friday to criticise and on that day we finished off.

Finally, here are some painting notes attributed to Sargent and recorded by http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2009/02/sargents-painting-notes.html

1. Painting is an interpretation of tone. Colour drawn with a brush.

2. Keep the planes free and simple, drawing a full brush down the whole contour of a cheek.

3. Always paint one thing into another and not side by side until they touch.

4. The thicker your paint—the more your color flows.

5. Simplify, omit all but the most essential elements—values, especially the values. You must clarify the values.

6. The secret of painting is in the half tone of each plane, in economizing the accents and in the handling of the lights.

7. You begin with the middle tones and work up from it . . . so that you deal last with your lightest lights and darkest darks, you avoid false accents.

8. Paint in all the half tones and the generalized passages quite thick.

9. It is impossible for a painter to try to repaint a head where the understructure was wrong.

PALETTE: Silver White, Naples Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Ochre dew (English Red), Red Ochre, Vermillion, Ivory or Coal Black, and Prussian Blue.

James Gurney explained his interpretation of the above notes as follows:

For me, one of the keys of understanding Sargent is looking at the painting methods of his teacher Carolus Duran, who had a somewhat unusual method compared to other academic teachers. In a nutshell he tended to block in the tones in discreet mosaic-like patches at first (like a plane head, if you're familiar with those things) and then later in the game you blend the patches into each other.

I believe this method gives the best tonal accuracy, which is what he's singing about in #5.

Regarding #7 about starting with the middle tones, I believe he means that right away you want to make your big value statement (or the 'effet' as they called it), but you should reserve your very darkest accents and lightest highlights for final, carefully considered touches.

Make sure to download this wonderful account of Sargent's painting methods:
http://www.goodbrush.com/misc/painting_lessons/sargent_notes.pdf

For more information on this subject, check out this detailed blog post:

http://www.studiorousar.com/2011/03/21/carolus-durans-methods/

And here are a couple of articles from the 1800's that are linked in the above mentioned blog:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16620532/The-Century-Magazine-Jan1886.pdf
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16620532/The-Contemporary-Review-May1888.pdf

*Photo of painting by John Singer Sargent of Carolus-Duran taken from http://a1.l3-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/140/14cacec186024a5f83205c066c4df582/l.jpg

Cedric Egeli - Another Modern Masterpiece

Here is another beautiful oil portrait of Joanette by Cedric Egeli.

I think that those long, elegant arms are reminiscent of a couple of Sargent's subjects - Madame X, as well as the painting of Ena and Betty Wertheimer, where the sister in red languidly holds a fan.

Frank J. Reilly - The Papers

If you are a representational painter, this is a must visit site: http://ennisart.blogspot.com/

John Ennis, who has taken on the rather daunting task of posting the personal notes of Frank Reilly online for the greater good of all realist painters, deserves all kinds of support from his fellow artists for sharing this information, so please visit and leave some comments.

Thank you, John!

Save the Environment Brush Washing Method

In a letter to Robert Genn, Mark Gottsegen, a member of the subcommittee on artist's materials of ASTM International (originally the American Society for Testing and Materials) since 1978, wrote:

In the recent clickback regarding cleaning brushes, no one asked what to do with the left-overs from washing brushes. Down the drain? No, that's environmentally irresponsible - putting solvents and pigments into the waste stream is never a good idea. If you have a septic system, you will pollute it; if you have a municipal sewer, you will pollute it. If you are in a class or a school, then in the US doing this violates federal law; if you are an individual artist, doing this is just bad practice.

Collect the veggie oil, waste water (or sludge), waste solvents, dirty rags and paper towels (dried) and take all the collected waste to your community's hazardous waste collection station, where it is consolidated, incinerated and burned to ash. Then it is cast into concrete billets and encapsulated. Only then can it be taken to a protected, certified landfill. The cleaning part is the easiest. Being environmentally responsible is more difficult.

Mark Gottsegen sets out an environmentally friendly way to deal with brush washing in his book, The Painter's Handbook. I will try to describe the system in my own words, with a few of my own tweaks, as follows:

1. Get 3 large plastic buckets with lids (about 5 gallon size, which can be obtained from stores like Home Depot, Lowes or Rona) and one that is even bigger that you will use without a lid to allow liquid to evaporate (I use a smallish, inexpensive garbage can lined with a plastic bag for easy cleanup). I have also recycled those gigantic protein powder containers to use for A, B and C and that has worked well in that when you swish the smaller opening keeps the splashing in the container instead of all over your clothing.

2. Label the first three buckets A, B and C. Container D is the larger plastic container which will hold at least 10 gallons. You will also need a container with vegetable oil. I use a coffee can with a tuna can (which has holes punched in it with a nail) inverted on the bottom. You could use a glass jar or any other container. If you use a fancy brush washer, line it first with a plastic freezer bag to save yourself some messy cleanup later on.

2. Fill A, B and C halfway with water. Add 1 cup of liquid dishwashing soap to bucket A. Make sure to use a highly concentrated, good quality liquid soap for this as the cheaper brands are diluted and you have to use more for it to be effective.

3. Now for the brush cleaning method I use: First of all, dip your brush in the vegetable oil and wipe it on an old phone book until much of the color is released. Second, rinse the brush in the can to get more of the pigment out - this will eventually fall to the bottom of the container.

You can use any kind of vegetable oil for this, so I use whatever is cheapest. You can also mix some water with the oil if you keep the mixture in a jar and shake it up just before use and that will make it less thick. Walnut oil is nice to use as it is less viscous, but it is much more expensive. The only downside to using regular old vegetable oil is that you have to be sure to wash the brushes more thoroughly to get all that non-drying oil out.

Squeeze the bristles and wipe on a paper towel to get as much oil and pigment out of the brush as you can. Then, vigorously swish the brush in container A, then container B and finally container C. Wipe the brush on a paper towel or rag to see if any color remains. If it doesn't seem to be completely clean, repeat this process until clean.

When container A becomes too dirty, transfer the contents to container D and allow the liquid to evaporate, eventually leaving a dry cake of pigment which can be safely disposed of by taking it to your local hazardous waste disposal center. When your cleaning oil becomes unusable, it can be recycled in the same manner. Pour container B into A and pour the contents of C into B. Add another cup of liquid dishwashing soap to what is now in container A.

There you have it, an environmentally friendly method of cleaning your oil painting brushes that does not involve any pigments escaping into our septic systems or drinking water!

An Early Masterpiece by Cedric Egeli

This life size portrait shows Cedric's wife, Joanette, an accomplished artist in her own right, with their daughter Anastasia.

Cedric is a modern master, following in the footsteps of amazing portraitists such as Raeburn and Sargent, with the addition of amazing color pioneered by the French Impressionists.

Cedric combines a deep knowledge of human anatomy and how to portray people on canvas with tonalist as well as colorist knowledge. He studied with both Frank Reilly and Frank Mason at The Art Students League in New York and later Henry Hensche (who studied with Charles W. Hawthorne, a student of William Merritt Chase) in Cape Cod. As a result, he is exceptional in his abilities as a painter.

One of the main things taught by this great painter is how to create form and construct a figure rather than just copying.

Every January, a group of enthusiastic students, a large percentage of whom are working, professional artists and teachers in their own right, convene on the Maryland studio of Cedric and Joanette Egeli to learn more about how to improve their work and grow as painters. Summertime finds a lot of the same group on the beach in Provincetown, studying the effect of color and light on the figure. Very few instructors have this comprehensive knowledge of both drawing the figure, tonalism and also color. Study of color is crucial for paintings set out of doors.