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Originally Posted by Steve Craighead
I think of Henry Hensche as a colorist. In fact, he called himself a colorist as opposed to being a "value painter". He said every form change is a color change. In other words, form is created on the canvas not by lightening or darkening color by adding white or black, but instead by painting the distinct and unique color that describes the form.
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This definition and artist nails it for me. Thank-you Steve for that wonderful post.
The brilliance of the Impressionist movement is that they released the pictorial from the grip of chiaroscuro and form. It was the influence of the beautiful art coming in from Asia that alerted artists to the beauty of color and pattern alone.
It is a rather unusual perhaps but exhilarating way to paint. I simply mix the color and bring up to my model to see if it matches. After a few matches, you can judge if it needs to be bluer or pink etc. It simplifies the palette for me, anyway, to only white, naples yellow genuine, yellow ochre, vermilion, pyrolo ruby, raw umber, ivory black, ultramarine and viridian. You keep working until the color vibrates.
It becomes like a play and removes the mechanical and intellectual aspects from the process. When I had my workshop in Scottsdale last summer, I has my students running back and forth to the model with bits of mixed color on their knives. The poor model. Mine is used to it.
I have actually moved my model to face the light directly, thus de-emphasizing the form and playing more with a flat background. Klimt did that with great success, elegance and originality.
Julie-Thank-you for that lovely compliment.