Hawthorne on Painting - More Good Stuff

New Painting - "Plein Air Garden, Paris"
Oil on Linen, 20 x 16 "
Available

If you read my blog regularly you know I am re-reading my "Hawthorne on Painting" book again. It is hitting me as though I had never read it before. Maybe I'm just ready to hear it this time.
Anyway, it if filled with so many tips about color and light that I feel I have to share.....

It is divided into sections and right now I am reading from the INTRODUCTION & LANDSCAPE sections:
INTRODUCTION:
pg 18 - Everyone knows what a man looks like, or a tree or a house, but it is our job to tell the world something about these things that it has not known before, some impression that we alone have received.
pg 19 - If you are not going to get a thrill, how can you give someone else one? You must feel the beauty of the thing before you start. Good painting is an excitement, an aesthetic emotion--reasonable painting destroys emotion. Painters don't reason, they do. The moment they reason they are lost--subconscious thought counts.
The only way to learn to paint is by painting. To really study, you must start out with large tubes of paint and a large palette and not stinit in any way as far as materials go. If you look into the past of a successful painter you will find square miles of canvas behind him. It is work that counts, experience in seeing color.
Don't try to be an artist all at once, be very much of a student.
pg 20 - Do studies not pictures. Know when you are licked--start another. Be alive, stop when your interest is lost.
LANDSCAPE:
pg 54 - It's the artist's business, the painter's job to point out to the public the beauties of nature.
Try to see them before you paint. Don't try to see a picture--go around and look at the subject until you see something, say in trees or houses, coming together, that inspires you. We do well the things we see already painted in our mind's eye--don't do it until you see it or you are defeated before you begin.
**Look at the view with your head sideways to get better relations, so that you get a sensation of the color spots rather than a perception of objects as objects.
pg 70 - Realize the value of putting down your first impression quickly.

**It seems like this works like squinting. Also Don Hatfield says to look at the value/color of what is next to the area you are painting in order to find the correct color/value. Very valuable information!

This is the way I want to paint. Some of the teachers I've worked with who talk like Hawthorne are Anita Wolff, Jim Smyth, Brigitte Curt, Ovanes Berberian and Don Hatfield. Wonderful painters all.

Hawthorne on Painting

I got out this book again. It is one of those that will never leave you without some new insight....
I have been teaching the Still Life in my weekly classes. I have some very new students and this is very new for them. We set up a simple still life, get out our view finders, and start painting. This is how you learn to SEE!
Excerpts from the book:
The painting of still life gives one the widest range for study--
a bottle is as serious a subject for the portraiture as a person. In arranging, place things so they have color and so that you can see it well. If you cannot decide on color and values in the beginning, move your still life around until you get things simple so that you can see big relations.
Select one light thing against a dark thing--a kitchen utensil and a lemon cut in half--try for spots coming together.
You don't hear me say much about drawing. It is because I think drawing the form, and painting, are better separated. The first thing is to learn to see color. You will draw better a year from now if you disregard for the time being the thing you call drawing. Realize that you haven't yet the painting point of view--after you have got the spots of true color in their proper relations, you have something to draw with and you can then consider it. Don't consciously try not to  draw but do the other thing so well that it will draw itself.
Don't look up at the nature and consider an inch at a time. See what one big spot is in relation to the other big spots.
Search always for more beautiful notes of color, don't search to put more things in.
Study larger spots of color coming together--don't break objects up into too many colors.
Establish big general things. You can't make all the differences you see.
Insist all the time on one spot being right relatively to another. I'm trying to say that when you think straight that thought alone is worth while and when you put down one or two notes that are right that's all that is necessary. You'd be surprised at how little work it takes to make a picture.

This is about a page. There is so much in this book - tons of information. Every time I read it I understand it on  a new level.
I find the above information very exciting. This is what we are striving to do in class, to SEE COLOR.. I learned a lot of this from Don Hatfield who is also teaching at the Capital Art Center in Sacramento.

The Art Spirit - By Robert Henri - More Good Reading.....

On Simplicity..and a lot of nevers.....

"NEVER change the course of a line until you have to.
Never change a plane of a form until you have to.
Never change the tone of a  color or from one color to another until you have to."
page 203

I love this passage from Henri's book. This is something I am trying to get into my head, and across to my students.
He goes on to say...

"If you follow these injunctions intelligently you will practice that great economy which is necessary to expression in your medium.
Every change must count, and count strong. there must be no quibbling. You have the observer of your work under control. Through the changes you lead him straight or crooked into your meaning. If you have digressed into triviality he must digress with you. Where you hesitate or are uncertain, he hesitates and is uncertain. If you are a quibbler and a flounderer, and not direct in your purpose, He turns his back on your work unless he is, himself, like you, happier in floundering."

"Because the medium we use in very limited, we must exercise a great economy in its use. No line or form or color must change until you are compelled by the neccessity of the structure you are making to change it."

"The need for change must be great. You only make the change because you must respond to an absolute demand."

"Some painters flutter all about their subjects, others are straight drivers to the essence of things."

"A house has many windows, but a ray of light catches on one. It becomes the window which declares all windows. It is a  builder and a vitalizer. It links with all the other structures - is one of the big factors in making a whole."

So "What is essential?"

"How shall the greatest economy be practised?"

"Water runs down hill consicely. There is no quibbling about it. It does not have to run uphill in order to be entertaining. Man has always followed its course with fascination. The soul of man may reveal its mysteries through direct expression, simple speech, simple gesture, simple painting, just as the soul of the brook is expressed in full simplicity and economy."

"One of the curses of art is art. The filling up of things with decoration, with by-play, to make them beautiful."

"When art has attained it place, sufaces will be infinitely less broken. There will then be millions less of things, less words, less gesture, less of everything. But each word and each gesture and everything will count in a fuller value."

"When we have attained a sense of the relative value of things, we will need fewer things. We will not change a line or color until we have to - and when we do make a change, a wealth of meaning will then fill the world from this new gesture.(italics mine)

"On a face one accent rightly valued in all its powers is worth a thousand little forms. The little forms subtract more than they add. The right accent achieves."

"You have reserved your forces but now you must expend them positively and effectively. A new course, full of meaning is to be taken, and by it the observer is to be carried deeper into your meaning. You have taken a positive step to force his understanding of your motive".


Henri just said a mouthful and to learn this is a lot of learning. But it is important, the essence of the thing that you are saying! Study and learn my friends...and I'm talking to myself here!

Hawthorne on Painting

Last weekend near Monterey

I got my little Hawthorne book out again after having put it away years ago. I remember back then that I didn't really "get it" like I do today. I guess that's progress??

This is one of the books that art teachers commonly recommend to art students. I have them all and then some. This one was put together by Charles Hawthorne's daughter shortly after his death in 1930. It is broken into 4 sections: Outdoor Model, Still Life, Landscape and Indoor Model. It is a bunch of notes put together from his students.
I'll just throw together some of the quotes from the book to peak your interest. It is good stuff!

• Do studies, not pictures. Know when you are licked - start another!
• Stop when your interest is lost.....
• Remember no amount of good drawing will pull you out if your colors are not true. Get them true and you will be surprised how little else you will need.
• You are here to represent by color, by separation of color, by exact matching of color, what you see, and thereby learn to see....
• I don't say much about drawing because I think drawing the form and painting are better separated. Realize that you haven't yet the painting point of view--after you have got the spots of color true and in their proper relations you have something to draw with and you can then consider it.
• Everyone knows what a man looks like, or a tree or a house, but it is our job to tell the world something about these things that it has not known before, some impression that we alone have received.
• If you are not going to get a thrill, how can you give someone else one? You must feel the beauty of the thing before you start.

More later in the week.....