A rose is a rose is a rose... I seem to have roses on the mind lately. They are a great shape to play with, endless opportunities to explore color and structure. This little study was done in a color-spot-by color-spot approach, a technique I was introduced to in the early 90's when I took a 5 day workshop with a colorist who studied with the late great Henry Henche. Since then I have noticed that my favorite painters were either Henche students at one time, or come from that tradition. The spot by spot approach requires that you constantly judge color relationships, by color temperature, value, and saturation or intensity. It also involves a lot of exacting color mixing, which in some ways is better suited to oils, since acrylics dry fast. I've been experimenting with Golden OPEN Acrylics and mediums lately, they dry up to 10 times slower than the regular Heavy Body Acrylics. I may paint more roses with oils just to compare. Regardless of the medium, painting a white rose against a white background is a great way to discover spots of lovely, neutral colors lurking everywhere.
White Rose 4
6x6 Acrylic on Canvas
8 comments:
This is great Patti and I am very interested in the method of painting you talked about. I seem to try to do that in my head (judge each spot of color by temperature, value, etc) but don't always get it. Thanks for a great example!
Hi Denise
there is a book by Arthur Stern, called something like "how to see color and paint it" which deals with the color spot technique, altho he has you using grey cards, which he calls spot finders or something - which i find a bit too technical. I don't want painting to feel like a left brained chore, so that aspect of it didn't work for me. but there are many great examples of how he and his students broke color down into the "one spot of color next to another". He too comes from the Henche/Hawthorne tradition of color... hope this helps
I love this painting as I love everything that you paint. I, too, have Arthur Stern's book and find it very technical.
Patti, you are such monster of info. Your paintings are so beautiful and then you tear them apart and describe your process. I'd love to take a class from you. I never heard of Henche.
Monster of info - i like that! If i do a workshop in Italy next summer, as I'm planning on doing, please take it! I'm a real taskmaster but you'll come away with a lot of new skills :-)
Google Henry Henche and you'll find lots of great info and images
Jerry -thanks for your nice comment! I do plan on writing a blog about acrylics soon but life keeps getting in the way - we can talk by phone if you like, that might be faster... i'm happy to share what I know - which is a lot - and may be better suited to phone...
Gee, Deirdra - thanks, can't wait to pick up my award. Glad you like the work - with any luck (and less of a hectic teaching schedule) I will be adding to the blog soon. My husband just last night FINALLY built me a still life box on a tripod - it only took him a year but who's counting. Now I get to play with some new viewpoints and angles. thanks again, patti
nice post
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