Capturing the Impression, Gaston la Touche.

It was not long ago that I came upon this painting by Gaston la Touche entitled Pardon in Brittany which is about a regularly held festival honoring a saint, this picture taking place in northern France.

The subject matter really isn't my concern here, but looking into Gaston's history and how he came about painting the subjects he did, and his relationship with Manet, is extremely interesting, and worthy if its own post.

As a Post Impressionist I find him of a higher caliber than most who carry that label. Earlier last year I stumbled upon this painting, and every time I've been back to the Art Institute of Chicago it's been to see this picture. I make sure its the last one I look at before I leave.

I've always thought it a much harder task for a painter to capture the impression of something than it is to just render it. Rendering has its difficulties, ones that I admire when done well, but personally if you can trick the viewer into seeing detail where there's just a blob of paint upon closer inspection, I have nothing but respect for you.

This painting is exactly that. Pardon in Brittany from a distance is a beautifully soft scene capturing the meditation and quiet of a religious service in dying light. From afar you can make out some of the individuals who are moving along with the mass of them while holding candles. It's a luminous painting while still being low key, and through the style he painted it in, is also able to capture the movement of the masses of people as well.

On closer inspection the painting turns into globs and brushstrokes. He first painted thick passages with his brush and then went in and flattened certain sections with his palette knife, and left mainly the brush strokes that lead the eye to the right, flowing with the crowd. From a distance this is what gives the painting it's sense of movement.

Some of the tones are muddy, but work with the color range, the details are extremely subtle and most of them don't make sense up close. This painting truly captures a moment in time, with the only sharp lines being that of the woman on the horse, leading the procession and the eye along with the group.

I like that, it's mine!

Still sketching, but getting close to having the cartoon done for Death in Malaga, so a post will be coming about all that.

For right now I'm going to share with you my process of how I steal from other artists better than myself.

When I start a painting it's important to determine what the color range is going to be, and in those harmonies I like to see how other artists rendered some of the same things I'm after.

-Leon Maxime Faivre Death of the princess de lamballe

In this painting here I'm looking at a number of things the artist has done that just blow me away. The light is very much the same kind of light I'm looking to get in my painting. I'm studying the stone, stucco and flesh under this kind of light, how the range of values are pushed to accentuate the point of the picture, how the crowd in the background is done, the softness of the edges, the atmosphere and sense of depth even in a relatively small space...the lessons never end. It's important to study nature yes, but seeing how someone else has solved a problem I'm getting ready to tackle is really helpful.

Another thing I like to do is wander around video game worlds that have a similar feel for the scene I'm wanting to do. In this case Fallout 3 is perfect.

If you take into account how much work that needs to be done for a game from start to finish, the concept all the way through to actually creating the world that you can go walk around in, I think it's a waste not to take advantage of the amazing talent behind these games.

So I go in the game and I walk around, in this case I'm looking at the destruction, as well as the post apocalyptic grey and brown tones used in the destruction. I've used video games to explore perspective, mood, lighting, and whatever else I need for just about every thematic painting I've done. It's not only a lot of fun, but a lot of help too.

Whatever you end up using, seeing what other artists have done to accomplish something similar that you are aiming at, can help you set the bar high for yourself, and get your eye used to seeing art that is on a whole different level.

Sketch for the first painting Death in Malaga

Where to start...

I got the commission. Not that I really feared being rejected, I know Bill (my patron) wanted to do this as much I do, but it was a shock that when he saw both of my sketches he decided that I needed to do both paintings. So I ended up landing both of them instead of just one. Do the happy dance! Okay, enough playing around...

So the work begins. This is the loose sketch for the first painting, Death in Malaga.

A bit about the painting. Towards the later half of the book, and of the war, Nell decides that if her and Edward are going to die that they might as well die together, so she starts walking with him to work. There was one particular day Edward described, where he was walking with Nell and the sky had otherwise been beautiful out, but you wouldn't know it when entering Malaga from all the smoke from the bombings. He then went on to describe how brutal and continuous the killings were. The Anarchist groups especially would round people up daily and shoot them and dump the bodies in mass graves, people would come around and cheer during the executions. Edward used to wear an American pin, and carry around a pipe, playing the role on an important American diplomat. The tactic saved his life more than once. This particular scene came to mind for the picture.

The good thing about having already done paintings like The Pale Cast of Thought and Faust, is that I've started to get a good method going for how to progress on this sort of thing. Here's what I'm considering right now:

Casting. Who plays what role. For the two main characters, Edward and Nell, all I'm looking for with a reference are people of the same height and build, the faces I'm taking from old photo's of the couple. For the characters in the background there's a lot less pressure, it doesn't have to be anyone specific in any particular pose, but I do have to decide male and female, and it helps to come up with motivations for the people doing the actions, so that it looks genuine.

Location. I've been walking around my neighborhood looking for alleys and streets that fit what I need, which is a street running up a slight elevation, Cobble stone is also important, Chicago common bricks and old stucco too. None of these are hard to find in the city. For the rest of it though, I'll have to pull from references on destruction and rubble and then start designing. The hardest part here is making parts look destroyed without making the clutter and rubble detract from the picture.

Costume. Who's wearing what and why? I've been doing a lot of research on clothing. This is a guilty pleasure for me. I don't like shopping, especially buying clothes, but for some reason figuring out what a character needs to be wearing makes me feel like Sherlock...if he were much less intelligent and painter...It's like getting into character. You have to put yourself into the mind and time of the people you're pretending to be. I think it's a lot of fun.

Time of day and source of light. In this instance I will be working in overcast light. In most cases tracking the light is important. This scene would be happening in the morning, so when it's overcast in the morning is when I'll be shooting my references. Normally I would figure out what direction they need to be facing, but its not needed here.

Color. What will the overall harmony of the painting be? When I'm doing something like this I like to collect paintings that remind of something I want to working towards. One thing I look to see is how artists of the past might have done something in a similar palette or affect that I want to learn from.

Since it came out, I've been using Pinterest to collect all my photo refs for inspiration on my paintings. I usually make the board private, but in this case I've decided to make this board public so that people can see my thought process.

So there are a few things I need to order for costumes and props, then all I need to do is take my reference shots. In order to do that I'll have to stage the scene. That's a post for another time...like when I figure it out.

The Little White Hearse. Some sketches and thoughts.

I just finished a painting entitled The Little White Hearse, a life sized picture which is about a mother reliving the pain of losing her child after seeing a white hearse drive by.

I completely lost track of time on how long this picture took because I had an apartment fire that destroyed nearly everything I owned. Tragedy tends to warp time. This painting was the last picture that I was able to pull out of the apartment, and it was still wet when that happened. There were some scrapes I had to repair, and I ended up repainting the entire top half of it because the dust and ash from the fire stuck to it. (No surprise considering there was dust and ash from the fire on the houses down the street from my apartment)

It sounds more daunting than it was in actual labor, the repairs went fast and I was back into actually working on the rest in no time. But I really don't think this painting took me all that long to do. The sketches were done almost a year before, here is the first sketch.

A lot of words, but really starting the sketch is opening up a dialogue with myself on the whats and the whys and the hows of the picture. Sometimes I get a flash of an image followed by its meaning, and sometimes I get a concept or idea or emotion that is then followed by a flash of an image.

In this case it was the concept first. I knew the feelings I wanted to convey, but it took a bit to flush out the picture. I started this sketch a year in advance so that I could occasionally look at it during down time with other projects.

This second sketch here was when I really started to answer some of the questions I posed for myself. Whenever I get stuck on something I stop and ask what the purpose of the picture is supposed to be. A lot of times this is all I need to edit and refine. I wanted to try and capture as much as possible with as little extra information as I could get away with. I probably tried for this because the last painting, Faust, was full of objects and detail. Life is most fun with some contrast in it.

I lost all of my process shots, they were on my last camera that seemed to just disintegrate into thin air, despite not being anywhere near the flames. But for this figure I drew in charcoal on the canvas until I reached my limit on pushing the drawing. Then I blocked it in with a grisaille so all I had to worry about was the drawing and the value.

I did this very thick and loose, and then scraped in the direction of the form after it had started to set up. Then I started in with the color. The background was mostly done in with a palette knife to give the feeling of an old plaster wall. My goal in my work is to make it feel like what its supposed to.