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Sunday 29 October 2017

Colour study - Midday afternoon still life

Two weeks ago It was still warm outside so I set myself with my french easel on our terrace and set a small still life near mason wall of our house to see how direct sunlight can effect colours. It was a lovely experience. I have tried to be faithful to what I was seeing but maybe I emphasised some colour a little bit just in sake of my understanding that every shape have a definite colour family - even shadows. I didn't use black in order force myself to use chromatic content every time I put brush onto my painting surface.


This is my setting to se roughly the composition (I put it in BW - I hate a colours of photos - Especially from iPhone - sorry apple :-) )


This is basically first laying with and beginning of some details - In this stage I tried to have every colour shape of a definite colour family


Here's final study (oil on canvas primed with oil primer - I love the surface, 8x7 inches)

Both pictures are taken under a balanced light temperature 5500 K to have colours as truthful as possible.

I have some question for artist friends - has someone tried to study colour from a colourist Henry Hensche's perspective? I'm reading this "free be" article from Camille Przewodek's web pages:


I get an idea from it and I have actually tried beginning stages of study described in the article. But opinions shared in the article are quite strict and I would say doctrine like. For example in mids of it its author says that it is painting strictly with colour and not with values - but I think he misses the point that value is inherent aspect of colour and you can't simply get it out of an equation. 

Another point is that all the people suppose to have a wrong bias for colour given by conception and so on and one should by exercises given by article overwrite those misconceptions. Although I'm on board with this idea - meaning you should try to put colours as you see them and not how you think they are coloured (for example wrong approach would be - I know that that apple is red so I mix red on my palette). We all know that local colour of an object is always affected by light effect and its surroundings. But I'm worried about a procedure - I have to honestly admit that it seems to me really, really cumbersome (It's advised 20 years of development by studies and accordingly author wants from reader some humility) and I would lost my enthusiasm (I thing I would lost that spark that art gives me in the first place) and another thing that I'm worried about is that you can impair your perceptual development sort of speak by doing studies at the beginning with just tube colours (Although If I look at final and complete pieces of Hensche students, e.g. Camille Przewodek I don't think that would be the case.)

And my final point is that I find article quite offensive against any other traditional approaches (starting with just black and white and limited palette and proceeding to a full chroma slowly once you get confident with the basics)

Any opinions on colourist approaches in the comment section would be very well appreciated since I have troubles to get my head around it. Or you can write me an e-mail (stranikp@gmail.com)

Pete






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