These are two paintings I'm currently working on. The first is on Georgia street and is an afternoon painting. The second is a morning painting on a little lane called Eligan Lane.These are more developed paintings that I have decided to take my time, exploring the variations of the color masses.
When we learn blocks at the Cape Cod School of Art we learned mostly how to do starts. I recommend starts to everyone the more starts you have the better your color and design is going to be. After a while you will want to carry your study further.
Henry Hensche taught about the variations of the mass. This was the way the painting develops by taking the simple color masses and developing them. Hensche said the time to stop working on your study is when you can't see anymore color changes or you can't see more variations within the mass.
For many years I struggled with maybe working on a painting two maybe three times. Mostly because I wanted to hurry up and sell the damn thing.
I'm still broke, but I take my time working on the masses of color because I know this is the only way to get better color and improve the painting. I learned a lot about this from John Ebersberger, who comes to Provincetown for a few weeks in the summer.
Do you begin with large color masses? It almost sounds that way. I can see that happening in the white wall -- maybe the mid-color blue overall, then the lighter and darker notes. But the mass of flowers -- pink, rose, magenta, orange, yellows, greens -- was that a single mass? Or did it start out as a constellation of vari-color notes?
ReplyDeleteIt would be neat to see step-by-step build-ups (if you're willing to share).
Dave