Method of the Masters: Classical Academic Painting

1. Introduction: Welcome to Oil Painting with Steve Simon. There are a variety of ways to approach oil painting in this class. And in my next class, we'll take a look at two distinctly different approaches or methods. The method that we will explore in this class is the original method taught in academies established during the early Renaissance. And it prevailed as the dominant system utilized by masters for three centuries or so. It is therefore sometimes called classical academic painting or the Method of the Masters. It is a systematic approach that addresses the complexities of shape, value, and color in distinctly different steps. In addressing these challenges separately is meant to simplify the challenge of painting and for the beginner minimize frustration. All prima painting, which we'll explore in the next class, is a much more rapid approach which addresses shape, value, and color simultaneously. It is the style of painting which has historically gained traction with the impressionist. Many beginning students are eager to jump right into All prima painting, lured by its more painterly quality and its association with impressionism. All Prima is, however, by its very nature of tackling form, value, and color simultaneously, quite challenging the method of the masters. The focus of this class is therefore an important starting point to any oil painters development. In other words, even if you strive for a more painterly, impressionistic style of your work and who doesn't, I highly recommend you develop a foundation root in the masters presented in this class. In this class, I'll be doing a step by step demo of this painting using this time monitored method. Thank you for your interest and I look forward to seeing you in class. 2. Short History Lesson: First a quick history lesson. The first Bona Fide Art Academy was founded in Florence in 15 63. This academy, and others that would follow, constructed a whole pedagogy on how sculpting and painting should be taught. This instruction was quite rigid and academically challenging. It included in depth study of geometry, anatomy, and a variety of other academic subjects. There was a distinct effort at the time to establish art as separate from craftsman. Artists were to be intellectuals, not laborers. This academic art flourished in Italy, eventually spread to France, and then throughout Europe. The Renaissance art, which had begun in Italy, gave way to Baroque, Rococo, neoclassicism, Romanticism. But despite the evolution of these movements, the general technique of oil painting within these movements remained relatively consistent. Now, most students within academies were not allowed to paint until they showed advanced proficiency in drawing. Drawing the forms of models or statuaries, like let's say this statue of the three muses. They would be required to perhaps draw something like this from different angles. And to be able to accurately render the form and value or shading long before they would be able to take brush to canvas and paint. Our friend here, Augusta. Broadly speaking, painting was seen to have three fundamental levels of complexity, form, value, and color. It therefore followed that the painting process should be structured accordingly. Painting thus had a three phase technique. First, drawing form or creating an underdrawing on the canvas. Secondly, establishing value through an underpainting on the canvas, and then lastly, applying color over the top of that underpainting. Now, in the classical academic painting method, the last step of applying color was traditionally done in a series of translucent glazes, in which oil paint was thinned with a medium applied, allowed to dry before a subsequent layer is applied. In this way, color is actually built up over successive translucent layers. Theory being that the light would reflect off the lower layers and on up even with a diminished effect to give paintings a certain luminosity. In the interest of simplicity, I will not be presenting the glazed layer technique, but simply applying one layer of color as our final step. Now, over the years, there were a few renegades like France Halls and Rembrandt who strayed from the idea of allowing layers to dry before applying more paint, using so called wet on wet painting. Interestingly, it was an invention by an American artist named John Rand that opened new possibilities. In this regard, Rand invented the collapsible paint tube in 18 41. Prior to Rand's invention, painters ground their own pigments, mix their own paints in a time consuming process without effective means to keep paints fresh. Within a few decades, the impressionists, with the benefit of the paint tubes we now all take for granted, now had the latitude to work quickly and outdoors. They largely abandoned the layered approach of the masters who preceded them and painted a la prima, meaning at first attempt, often creating entire paintings using wet on wet technique. This is the technique we will learn in the next class. Today, you will find painters of all stripes using a variety of different methods. Whether or not you choose to use the method of the Masters as your go to method is up to you. Learning this method, however, is highly recommended as you will definitely develop your skills as a painter. Personally, I use the method of the masters for some paintings and all Pm for others. And sometimes like this painting, I can employ aspects of both of them in the same painting. The bottom line is that efficiency in one technique builds greater efficiency in another. In the next segment of this class, I'll present the method of the master's process using examples of my own art before jumping into our class project, where I will demonstrate the method in a step by step demo. 3. Theory and Examples: This is Bell Rock in Beautiful Sedona, Arizona, where I lived for 14 years before moving to New Hampshire. While I was there, I painted a lot of red rocks and published them in this book of Sedona. As with most of my landscape paintings, I draw on multiple photos to put together a composition. In this instance, I like the general composition in the first photo. I borrowed the clouds from the second photo. I like the pen stem and flowers in the third photo. Using those inspirations, I then take a charcoal stick and draw the image on the canvas that I'll be painting from the perspective of the method of the masters. We have now addressed the first level of complexity, which is form, and accomplish the first step, the underdrawing. Having addressed the first level of complexity, which is form, we now focus on the second level of complexity, which is value with the primary source image. As our guide, we now create this monochromatic wash. To create this wash, we thin our paints with paint thinner. I use gam sal and then apply the paint as if it were water color to the canvas. Now in this example, I've used the source material as my guide, but I'm also trying to solve certain value relationships. I feel like, for example, the desert marigolds and the foreground, their greenery is getting lost in the lurch, so I'm going to darken up the base of those plants. Likewise, I feel like I want the butte on the right side to be lighter so as to not compete as much with Bell Rock, the center of interest in landscape painting. We're also trying to create the illusion of depth and varying the value is an important way of achieving that. The mountain and the distant background you can see. I've also lightened up to allow it to recede further back into the painting. Addressing value in these ways, we now achieved the second step in the method of the masters, the underpainting. Some artists will only use black and shades a gray for this layer, and therefore it's sometimes called a griz, after the French word for gray. I actually prefer to use a mixture of burnt sienna and ultramarine blue. And therefore, we wouldn't call this underpainting grise, but rather an impromatura with form and value now firmly established, it's time the head to the third step. Color. Color, as we know, has the attribute not only of value, but also of hue and saturation. If you feel like you need a better understanding of color or how to mix color, please review my class on mixing color. In this last step of applying color, we are essentially mixing a color on our palette that has the hue and saturation that we want that simultaneously matches the value that we've already established in our underpainting. Now I want to point out a slight but important inconsistency here. When the underpainting is created, it's created using a wash. When that thinner dries, the image will actually appear about ten to 15% lighter as I'm applying color over the top of the underpainting, I'm taking that into account and actually applying color that's slightly darker than the underpainting. You can see that in the difference in value in these two images. Let's take a look at another example. You might recall this image from my class on mixing color. This is Deganawta, Hiawatha Autotaro, an underdrawing of a painting, allegorical painting of what is known as the Iroquois Great Law of Peace. You might be wondering, how in the world would you ever draw that? Well, believe it or not, I actually posed for each of the figures and then montaged the composition in Photoshop. Here again, if you're not quite confident in your drawing skills, please review my drawing for painters class, consistent with the method of the masters. Once we've finished the underdrawing, it's time for the underpainting. Here again, I've used burnt sienna, French ultramarine, and thin these paints with Gamsol to create a watercolor like wash that I've applied as my underpainting. Then true to form, we finish up with our third step of applying color, using the sum of our previous two steps as guides for form and value. Please join me in the next segment for our class project, where we'll put all these lessons together in a step by step demonstration of the method of the masters. 4. Project Part 1 - Underdrawing: Welcome to the project. This is a photograph I took of the Noble Lighthouse in York, Maine. This is the photo we're going to be working with in this project. Although we're going to alter the composition a little bit, the center of interest is of course, this lighthouse complex out on the island. I want that to figure more prominently in the composition. So I'm going to foreshorten this middle ground where the water is and also crop out some of the foreground. I've done this in Photoshop and also using the Photoshop clone tool. I've moved the red out building with the flag on it to also improve the composition. Now don't worry if you don't have Photoshop. I just wanted to use the opportunity to show you that you can always tweak your photographs to improve upon the composition. I also knew that I want to paint this image on a 12 by 16 canvas. So I've cropped the image to a three by four aspect ratio. You can find both of these images in the download resources section of the project and resources area of this class. We're going to begin our project with a 12 by 16 inch canvas. And we're going to partition that canvas into four inch squares, creating a three by four grid. The source image that I've provided is identically gridded off. This grid is going to give us a reference for us to draw our composition more easily. To create this under drawing, I'm using vine charcoal and a needed eraser. If you're feeling a little unsure of your drawing skills, please review my Drawing for Painters class, which was the second class in this ten class oil painting curriculum. As we create this under drawing, we're really just concerned with the shapes of the elements that are in the composition. In other words, we're creating a form drawing and not at all concerned with any shading. We're using our grid here to establish what I call PPO, that is proportion, placement, and orientation. We're just starting with the biggest shapes first, estimating the elements as large shapes, and then ascertaining, do I have the proportion correctly, do I have it placed correctly, is it oriented correctly? And then we just make adjustments from there. And you can see how much the grid helps us in this process. It's much easier to establish proportion, placement, and orientation of elements within the three by four boxes, then it is within the broader 12 by 16 canvas. Additionally, we're starting with the grossest level shapes, or the most basic shapes, and then refining as we go, adding detail within the big shapes as we go. In this particular composition, it's fairly important to be pretty exact with the architecture of the buildings on the island, but probably not so much so on these rocks on the far bank, or perhaps the sea foam in the water, or even the rocks in the foreground. Here we have step one in the process, the underdrawing. Please join me in the next video segment as we tackled the underpainting. 5. Project Part 2 - Underpainting: Welcome back to the project. We have our under drawing complete and now it's time to start working on the underpainting Again, in this stage we're focusing just on values. Many artists at this stage will just do a traditional griz, where we're using only black and shades of gray. I prefer to do what we call an impromatura, which is to use earth tones and blue for the underpainting, specifically burnt sienna and French ultramarine. And then I use Gamsol as my thinner to create the wash. The reason I prefer to use earth tones here rather than just tones of gray, is that even though we're focused on value at this stage, it's sometimes helpful and instructional to the next step when we're applying color to have at least a little bit of color guidance. Particularly in areas where the underpainting might get a little complex or even confusing. Without these hints of color hue in progressing through the underpainting, it's generally a good idea to start with the biggest areas first. This is also our opportunity to make some adjustments to the values that we see in our source material. I feel like the sky is a little bit too dark, so I'm going to lighten it up a little, especially down towards the horizon. You can see I've started here at the sky using just straight French ultramarine and then move to the water, adding a little bit of burnt sienna just to differentiate it a little bit. It's important to emphasize though that even though I'm playing with two different hues here, that the focus is on value. I'm making judgments about the value that I see in the source material and either trying to replicate it or slightly tweak it in ways that I feel will improve the painting. When working with value, it's also really good to establish your lightest lights and darkest darks relatively early on. Now the lightest lights in this composition are of course, on the sun kiss parts of the architecture and also in the sea foam. The darkest darks are going to be in this foreground area here where the rocks are. I'm adding those darkest darks now, then we'll establish another wash for the wet rocks that's almost identical in value with the water. Sometimes, if a color is highly saturated, as is the case with the greens here, it can be a little bit difficult to accurately judge value If you find this to be the case, it's helpful to squint at the color in the source material and then squint at the color that you're applying on the canvas and get a feel if they're close to the same value. You can also place a value scale up next to your source material and do the same squint exercise. If you do that here, you should see you get a value of somewhere around 6.2 And then you can replicate that same value on your underpainting. Of course, not all the grass is one value. We'll make some of those subtle value changes on our underpainting as well. Since the color of the roof is just so close to burn sienna, I'm just going to use my straight burn sienna to represent it in the underpainting. I'll do the same thing with other red hues of similar value. From here on, we'll continue to work on the architectural details before moving on to the rocks. From time to time, you'll come across a situation where you want to lighten a value that you've already placed on the canvas. And to do that you can use your brush as like an eraser where you just put some thinner on the brush and use it to lift paint. You can also use a paper towel and use it as an eraser provided the wash is still wet enough. We'll finish up by speeding through the underpainting of the rocks on the bank of the island and the rocks in the foreground. A couple of final touches to the grass and to the water. There you have our finished underpainting. Please join me in the next video segment as we undertake the third and final step of applying color. 6. Project Part 3 Applying Color: If you're painting a long congratulations, we've made it this far. We've really done two things up till this point. We've created our under drawing and our underpainting that we can also call our grise. At this point, we've addressed two levels of complexity. The first is form or shape of things, right? And the second is value, or how light or dark things are. We've really set ourselves up now to have fun in the final stage where we're just applying color inside the shapes and to match the values. At this stage, we probably want to take a little bit of inventory. Have we done things properly? There are things that I feel like I need to add to this at this point, or am I good to go? There are, for example, some forms that I haven't added, like the railing on the lighthouse. There might be some things in my values and my underpainting that might not be exactly right, But I can take a look at this and say, is this a strong enough benchmark that I'm confident that in the final step where I'm applying color, I can nail those things. It's really up to you at this point. Do you want to make these changes now or are you confident that you can pull that off in the final stage where we're applying color, That's really up to you at this point. In this final step, as we're applying color, we generally want to work from back to front. So we're going to start with the sky. During the underpainting step, one of the changes I made was in making the sky a little lighter and actually making the sky lighter at the horizon and then subtly darker as it goes up in the sky. We're going to be starting at about a 2.5 it looks like, down around the horizon and then getting subtly darker as we go up into the sky. At the horizon, we're mostly using Cerilian blue and white and then slowly adding French ultramarine as we go upward. The subtle gradation in value and in hue will lend a atmospheric effect to our sky that's not otherwise evident in the photograph. I'm also going to accentuate the clouds a little bit. I like the diagonal that they create and how it balances the diagonal in the sea foam. While painting the sky, I'm using a natural hair, filbert. These help to generously apply paint, but since I want the clouds to recede in this atmosphere, I want to paint their edges soft. To do that, I'm now using a synthetic flat, which is more conducive to blending. Once we're happy with the sky, we can move forward and start working on the lighthouse complex. Now the architecture has a lot of squared off corners and lines. Instead of using the natural filbert that we used on the sky, which has rounded bristles, we're going to use a natural flat, which has flat bristles. Continuing to use our underpainting as our guide for values, we continue mixing colors and applying them to the canvas accordingly. Now this three step approach of doing the underdrawing, then the underpainting, and allowing it to dry, and then finally, applying color is what we call a wet on dry approach. In other words, wet paint on a dry canvas. This enables the artists to create detail, sharper edges, and well defined shapes. Sometimes though, we're not necessarily interested in these attributes. As we noted, some historical masters like Halls and Rembrandt, deviated from the academic method that stresses wet on dry painting, and dared to paint wet on wet in this rembrant painting. Take a look at the golden embroidery on the red jacket. This has clearly been painted wet on wet. And you can see the impact. There is less capacity to achieve detail. The edges aren't as sharp nor are the shapes as well defined. But Rembrandt clearly isn't seeking those attributes in this area of the painting. This is the same approach I'm going to take on the windows. The windows are far enough away that I don't need every last detail of every window pane and shutter. We're just going to paint this wet on wet first, just starting with a gray mass for the window in general, then adding some wet dabs of white over our wet gray to just define the window a little more. Furthermore, we don't have to get too caught up of getting this exactly right. There'll be opportunity to tweak this later on. In fact, in general, we have to be mindful of not adding too much detail to these elements that are pretty far away from us. If we add too much detail will come across as contrived. And we'll also bring these elements forward in our mind's eye. And this would be counterproductive to our desire to create a sense of depth in the painting. From time to time, you might find the need to support your wrist to prevent your palm from touching down on the wet painting. To support your wrist, you can use what's called a mal stick. For me, I just use this long wooden dowel. It is supported by my wooden easel up above and I'm holding it with my left hand down below. I work on some of the rooftops here before progressing forward onto the grassy area here. Again, I'm going to use a hybrid approach between the academic method and wet on wet painting. I'm going to use the underpainting to establish two values for this grassy area. Then we're going to go back over this wet area adding some dark tones and some highlights as well. Just as with our windows, there's no need for sharp edges or tight details here. I think Rembrandt would agree wet on wet is fine in this area. I'll finish up this out building and then move on to the rocks that protrude up through the grass, work on the fence over by the house, and then define this bramble. Next it's time to move forward into the rocky bank. I'm starting with the dark values of the occlusion. Shadows or the little nooks and crannies resist the temptation here to just use black or paints gray to try to get a feel for if these shadows are warm or cool, or how you want them to present. They feel cool to me, I'm painting them very unsaturated, dark blues and violets. The rocks create an interesting challenge and opportunity. They appear in the photograph as a relatively homogeneous mass of color. This consistency of color is a little bit uninteresting. What we're going to do is liven this area up by introducing a variety of color hues. The middle tones, I'm going to paint as cool blues and greens. The highlighted areas I'm going to paint as warm yellows, oranges and reds. I'm still going to be painting them the same values as prescribed in the underpainting. And the hues will be appropriately unsaturated. But this variety in hue is going to give this area some desirable color vibration. Then I'm going to approach the water in a similar fashion that I approached the grassy area. We're going to use the underpainting to lay down two different values of water. And then we'll use the wet on wet technique to add a little more variety in hue and value. You also notice I'm painting the water a different hue than in the photo. I'll explain why I'm doing this in a minute. Adding some reflections from the lighthouse and then some waves splashing along the bank. The shallow water that's commingling with the sea foam is a different value and hue than the water we've just painted. We'll go ahead and establish that now using a subtle variety of hues and values. Then we'll work on the dark crevices within these wet rocks using mostly violet and blue in here. As I evaluate the area of the wet rocks, I also feel like they would be a little bit more interesting if there was a greater shift in hue between this area and the water, I'm going to go ahead and render it using a little bit more violet. Once again, as long as I'm true to the value established in the underpainting, I can get away with these subtle shifts in hue. We'll go ahead and add a little bit of blue using our wet on wet technique just to provide a little more interest. A moment ago I said I was going to explain why changed the hue of the water. To help me out with that, I'm going to pull up my color wheel. If you take a look at the color that I've painted, the wet rocks, it falls somewhere right around here on the color wheel. If you take a look at the color of the water in the photo, it falls on the color wheel right about here. Then if you take a look at the color that I have painted, the water, it falls on the color wheel right about here. As you can see, the color that I've painted the water is much closer to the color that I've painted the rocks. Then the photographed color of the water is to the color that I've painted the rocks. Colors that are next to each other on the color wheel are called analogous colors, and they create harmony within color design. The color I've painted, the water, is more harmonious to the color that I've painted the rocks. Then the photographed water is to the color that I have painted the rocks even without the color wheel. I think this makes intuitive sense. Also, once we've made the decision to paint the wet rocks, the violet color, it's really hard to imagine the water color from the photograph coordinating with that violet color. This is a word to the wise. Once you start moving around your color, you have to be careful in terms of how they might harmonize with some of the colors from the other elements in your composition. Okay, enough color theory. Back to the demo. We're moving now to the immediate foreground of the dry rocks. And once again, we'll start with the darkest darks like the rocks on the opposite bank. These are granite rocks. We might be inclined to paint different shades of panes gray or something like that, but of course we're not going to do that once again. We're going to work some color magic and unsaturate a variety of different hues to give this area much more interest. A few more strokes, and there you have your finish painting. Thanks for joining me in this demonstration. And if you've been painting along, please don't forget to submit your project to the project and resources section of this class for me to take a look and for other students to have a look. Thanks again and happy painting.