For my entire artistic life I have been painting realism or photo-realism. Hearing friends and family say “WOW this looks just like a photograph!” or “I can’t tell if you’re texting me pictures or paintings!” makes me very happy. I love this kind of feedback, because after all, extreme detail is what I am trying to achieve. But there is a little voice inside my head asking me “is there more to this artistic life?” or “why paint it exactly as is when you could just take a picture?” or “make it more painterly”. I’ve started listening to this voice more and more. Perhaps there is a way to make these realistic paintings a bit more….well…artsy.
Enter Impressionism. Impressionism art is just that, painting an impression or experience. In my recent readings I’ve discovered broken strokes or broken color. At last I see what all the fuss is about with Claude Monet! Instead of just painting leaves green (boring, obvious) he painted little brush strokes next to each other of yellow, blue, yellow, blue, yellow, blue, etc. etc. From far away your eye does all the work (thanks!) and you see green leaves. But up close, wow! there is so much magic to be seen!
Now at this point you’re probably questioning my career as an artist. “You don’t know anything about Monet?” OK I know some things. To be clear, I took Art History my 9th grade year…so 20 years ago. Do I need to study more art history. Yes. But for now, I am enjoying being a student again. I spend every day painting or studying or both. But I’ll save that for another post.
OK back to impressionism. I am becoming quite fascinated with color theory. All along I have been using local color (aka the color you see when you look at, let’s say a tree). I see it, I mix it, I copy it, I paint it. I rely heavily on darks and lights playing together. But now I’m discovering I can use colors to make colors pop! I’ve used complementary colors before to make colors stand out, but now I’m using a more subdued color (greyed out by mixing it with it’s complement) to make another pure color pop. I am underpainting with red for a green marsh scene. I’m putting colors side by side to make them vibrate. I’m making an orange sunset burst by using purple as the shadows. I’m receding objects with cool colors and bringing them forward with warm colors. This is ENJOYABLE.
This is probably something my art teachers and professors tried to tell me to do and perhaps my brain just wasn’t registering it. I am still painting in my realistic style, but trying very hard to be mindful of colors. I’ve even starting using a pallette with just primary colors. I’m rarely squeezing green out of the tube. I only just black if needed for a small detail. I try to only mix in white if I’m doing clouds or a sky.
I went out of my comfort zone and tried a broken brush stroke style. I would like to practice this more, who knows, maybe even get very abstract with it.
