Drained of colour and sick to the core!

I have been having so much fun today. I feel more comfortable with Cezanne's style of painting now and can just enjoy it and try to use it to its best effect to bring my characters to life.

Today I have focused on the apples in the painting. They are, of course deeply distressed to hear of the recent fate of the lemons, so I wanted to capture this emotion whilst still remaining true to Cezanne's style.....You know how Cezanne leaves a lot of white paper and how this was a very innovative thing for him to do at the time.... well the idea of being 'drained of colour' sprung to my mind as I was thinking about this. So, using his layering technique to build form I have painted the colour on the bottom half of the apples but kept the top half pale in colour or left the white paper showing. The apple that Cezanne often has falling off the side of the table I have made so pale he has fainted and is rolling off the table. Cezanne often outlined his fruit with charcoal and then mirrored the shape around it so I have accentuated this idea to make it appear he is rolling off.

Cezanne also used a very vivid green for some of his fruit so I have made my row of apples 'sick to the core' at the news so I have painted these mainly greens with just a touch of red in a few. Cezanne was much more concerned with shape and form than texture and detail so often his fruit would just be shapes. In my painting I have made my row of apples face away from pearo so they have no stalk showing or just a suggestion of the base of the apple.

So here is a close up of the apples who are drained of colour or sick to the core.

next I get to paint the telephone and Pearo. I'm off to look at Photo's of David Suchet's Hercule Poirot.

Ona

Painting material 'Cezanne style'.

I have been working on the cloth on the table. Painting cloth Cezanne style is fun. When I think about how carefully I usually blend in the colours when I usually paint material, and how I use very few hard lines or dramatic changes of colour... when painting Cezanne style its the complete opposite. You need definite brush strokes showing, heavy 'charcoal' lines and dark shadows. You also layer instead of blending colours waiting for each colour to dry before applying the next. There needs to be no real thought about shadow or direction of light either. In Cezanne's paintings it often looks as if the light could be coming from multiple directions. White materiel is especially fun to paint this way as although he leaves a lot of white paper showing he also uses many of the colours that appear in the rest of the painting.

So here is a close up of the material that I have painted in this style


and here is the painting's as it is now.


I should finish the material tomorrow and then it gets to the really fun part... bringing all my characters to life.

Ona

Building form through colour Cezanne Style!

It is fascinating to study Cezanne's paintings and see how he builds up the form of objects through his use of colour.

"Cézanne's rejection of the intense contrasts of light and shadow of his earlier years in exchange for a refined system of color scales placed next to one another." (Heilbrunn Timeline of History)

His brush strokes are clearly visible and often mirror the contours of the objects. Colours are also used to link key objects together.

I must admit I find painting in the style of Cezanne quite a challenge, not so much in his use of colour to create shape or form but I do have to strongly fight the urge to straighten lines and correct perspective. Painting the vegetable marrow on the plate which seemingly hangs against the surface of the chest which appears flat on the paper is a classic example as was the table itself the two halves of which if you look carefully do not join up. Creating a table which appears to be larger at the back than the front also felt strange too do but this is a common trend in his still life paintings. The more free use of colour though is quite fun to do, and the painting style quite quick although you do need to wait between each colour application for the paint to dry before applying the next layer. Here is a close up of the chest with Poirot's prize vegetable marrow on the top. Do you notice how the plate seems to be floating due to the change in perspective? You can also see how the layering of colour on the chest helps to create the sense of form but it is all about shape and form, not texture.

The table has had many layers of paint already. I began with the lightest of washes but am using more juicy paint mixes for each subsequent layer. The table is nearly finished. It just needs its darkest top layers.



Ona

A Pearo version of Cezanne's 'The three Bathers'

Ok, it's silly season and i'm having so much fun with this. I have painted the background 'Cezanne style' building up the layers of colour and then turned my attention to the painting that Pearo has on his wall. Paul Cezanne was considered very innovative and was the first to include everyday backgrounds into his still life paintings. So I wondered what sort of painting Pearo would have on his wall. Whilst considering this I thought of how often a womans body is described as pear shaped and then started looking at Cezanne's paintings of nudes. This one caught my eye. It is called 'The Three Bathers' and was painted by Cezanne between 1879 and 1882.



I thought it would be fun to substitute the three nude women for three peeled pears. Here is my Pearo version.





I also substituted the lake for a plate filled chocolate/caramel sauce for the pears to bathe in. It makes me chuckle each time I look at it.

Anyhow, here is my progress so far.


Ona

It's time for the next installment of the Pulp Fiction Novel!

Well its that time of year again when life is very frenetic at work. To help relax I have been planning the next installment of my 'pulp fiction' novel. Do you remember the story so far? For those of you that don't here is a summary...

On October 31st last year a gruesome murder occurred on the still life table. The victim, a blood orange, was brutally stabbed. After interviewing the witnesses the FB eye, led by the famous Inspector Japp, were convinced the murderer was a lemon who had been seen acting in a threatening manner earlier that day. They gathered together all the lemons in the area in an attempt to squeeze the truth out of them but with no success. A SEE EYE A agent, known as agent Terry, also witnessed the interrogation and together with inspector Japp now have to begin from scratch and review all the evidence once more.

I began this story to help my daughter learn all about various periods in art history in a fun, hands on way. My first three paintings were painted in the dutch old masters style. Its time now to move on... so for the next installment of the story I am going to try to paint in the style of Paul Cezanne. He seemed to like oranges and painted a lot of still life's so it seems fitting I should choose him for the next installment of my orange murder mystery. During his life he also gained a reputation for being eccentric and quite odd so he seems to fit the craziness of my pulp fiction story too. The first thing that my daughter and I noticed when looking at his paintings was his totally different approach to perspective.

Whilst researching I found this

"In a formal (pictorial values) sense, Cezanne's great contribution was that he invented a new kind of space in painting. In the 400 years prior to the late 19th century, space in painting was Renaissance space - which was illusional space, linear perspective, trying to depict the illusion of space on a two-dimensional surface. The canvas was like a window looking out onto the real world, with parallel lines meeting at a point on the horizon line. After 1850, certain artists (Manet, for instance) began to gradually see the canvas not as a window on the world, but its own world, with its own laws. They did not want to depict space in terms of perspective, but more as a flat surface. And, rather than smoothing over the brushstrokes in order to model three dimensions in objects, they chose to paint in separate touches, or facets, of objects, not blending them together. Also, instead of the chiaroscuro (light and dark shading) from the Renaissance, they used color as much or more than value to depict volumes and space. Cezanne carried this further by constructing the objects or landscape into a pictorial structure, or architecture, and leaving it exposed in the work. What he did was to combine both the Renaissance notion of deep space, with the modern notion of the flat surface. This combining caused his paintings to have both flatness and three-dimensional space; the forms have both volume AND flatness. This combination causes a certain tension in his work - which is so perfectly resolved that the tension provides movement, and his resolution of the tension provides an eternal harmony. This combining of two types of space also accounts for his distortions of objects and perspective; depicting the "correct" perspective would destroy the visual integrity of the flat pictorial surface/space."

If you would like to read the whole article it can be found here.

So what is the next part of my story about? Basically Inspector Japp and the See Eye A agent are at a loss to know how next to proceed, they have some ideas but decide to call on inspector Japp's old friend Hercule Pear..o. News reaches Pear..o in the form of a telephone call. His secretary Felicity Lemon is particularly upset at the news and after taking the initial call from Inspector Japp and then putting it through to Pear..o she rushes into the room in a frenzy to hear the rest of the juicy details of the terrible demise of her relatives.


I have had great fun creating the outline of this next painting. For each object I worked from at least two different reference photo's so I could, in true Cezanne style, alter the perspective as if different parts of it were being viewed from different angles. Then I had fun using photoshop to compose the painting using a selection of my drawings.

Paul Cezanne was considered a visionary artist who was way ahead of his time. I have decided therefore not to directly 'copy' his style as it doesn't feel truly in line with his vision but more to take the essence of his style but develop it even more. I hope he would be pleased that I wasn't accepting the norm... he certainly didn't. So following his vision of perspective I am going to try an take it further ... what if the perspective changes help to highlight the feeling and emotion of the objects. What if the use of colour does too. In his paintings the relationships between the objects is very important so instead of using the more traditional linear perspective he mirrors the shapes of nearby objects whilst heightening the tension in the painting. I certainly want to heighten the tension, maybe in a different way to the one Cezanne was thinking of but I will try to expand upon his style to do so. With this in mind I have now drawn out the outline. I hope you can see Felicity Lemon in the doorway. She is a little faint in this photo.



Now I am going to experiment with how to create his style of painting and use of colour using watercolours. I will keep you informed of my progress and hope you will all enjoy learning more about the artist Paul Cezanne as I work out how to paint this in the style of Cezanne's watercolours.

Ona

Lab Adore is finished!

It's been a busy week but I managed to fit in some painting time and have finally finished. Thanks for following along with my progress and for all your encouraging e mails. So what is it that Harry has spotted?

Much Love

Ona