Thread: Colorist
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Old 09-14-2007, 11:01 PM   #6
Steve Craighead Steve Craighead is offline
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Location: Manassas, VA
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If I may, I'd like to clear up a slight misunderstanding about Henry Hensche and his method of teaching.
During the Summer months for approximately 60 years (1929-1989) Henry Hensche ran a school in Provincetown, Massachusetts on the tip of Cape Cod called the Cape School. He never thought of his school as a comprehensive art academy. He expected his students to further their art studies elsewhere during the Winter months. Hensche and his teacher before him, Charles Hawthorne, thought of themselves as carrying on the legacy and discoveries of Claude Monet. They sought to teach their students how to paint the effects of sunlight, that is, the light key, the time of day, the weather, etc. They felt that if one painted all the color notes of a scene accurately and placed them correctly that that painting would be truer and more vibrant than a painting that was first drawn and then filled in with color.
Charles Hawthorne, in his school, would have his students paint backlit figures on the beach in order to teach them to see the big color notes. To keep them away from painting features like eyelashes, etc. and to have them concentrate on accurately seeing the color notes, Hawthorne made his students use broad palette knives.
Hensche later refined this method of teaching by having students paint colored blocks outdoors in the yard of his school.
Its true Hawthorne and Hensche discouraged their students from drawing when they were painting their color studies, but that was only in order to teach them to see the big color effects.
Hawthorne and Hensche were in fact very competent draftsman.
Here's an example of what Hawthorne had his students doing.
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