Attentive Equations - Category: Practice, Teaching and Technique

Color Composition Seen Through The Eyes of Robert Henri

Copy of Robert Henri's "Johnny Manning" — Copy of Robert Henri’s “Johnny Manning” by Judith Reeve

Sometimes one of the most difficult things about painting is separating the subject before you from what is necessary to a successful painting. Color composition is one of those aspects that needs to be considered almost apart from the subject and needs to be considered early on in the painting process. One has to remember that the painting is paramount and it is the image alone that remains. The artist needs to consider the painting in terms of music, orchestrating color in such a way as to increase the emotive effect.

Planning the color composition is about designating the color of the basic areas of the image – their position, value and size and their overall relationship to each other. Robert Henri spent a lot of time early in his career, about 1908-1910, experimenting with the size of an area of color and what its intensity should be. He found that a painting appeared more luminous when combining grave colors with bright colors and that the grave colors should cover a larger area than the intense colors- a burning brightness amid a more subdued ever varying color range. This gave his paintings an immediate sense of light and life. By subdued areas I do not mean they were composed of blacks and neutrals but of the main components of the palette but in a lower intensity. And by bright areas, I mean a pure color, unadulterated, was used in the smallest area of the composition. This varying of intensities of the basic triadic palette allowed the colors to vibrate off one another in a harmonious fashion and still remain visible (one can see the triad throughout the painting maintaining its sense of a chord as Henri referred to it).

Once the basic areas of color are decided, one needs to be on the look out for any area in the composition where color relationships can be intensified or heightened- such as near compliments; neutrals composed of the triad placed to juxtapose and intensify a compliment; colored edges, where luminous edges come in contact with a dark, etc… Seeking and selecting areas to heighten corresponding color relationships will add life and depth to a composition allowing the image to take hold in the mind of the viewer. We are only attentive to what is brought before our eyes in a forceful manner giving one a heightened experience to remember and recall repeatedly.

Lately, I have been experimenting with what I call “radiating intensities“. One can achieve a heightened sense of a particular color by presenting that color in several intensities placed next to each other.Taking a single color in full intensity and surround it with successive variations of that color by ever so slightly neutralizing it until the color itself appears as a subdued hue. This radiating effect gives the image an overall glow of that single color – the color is felt everywhere, although it can only be directly observed at its intense center. Through this process one can achieve a sense of depth in the composition.

In Henri’s late work, he uses all of these elements of color but in a simplified fashion. In his late Irish portraits of children, one can see how he uses a background of radiating halos to describe the space behind the head. Sometimes they are “radiating intensities” and other times they are a combination of hues and bi-colors of the main triadic palette. But space is created more with color than value- with a more intense chroma less depth is described and subsequently with less chroma a greater spatial depth is felt. Color was Henri’s passion. During his career he explored many color compositional methods but his late work returns to its source. Henri designates areas of color as before but with a more mature understanding of its power to reveal the emotional state of his subject.

Waiting for the Elan

I spent this week in the print studio at the Woodstock School of Art. I finally freed up a significant block of time and a partner to print a lithograph that had been sitting on a stone for about 6 months. Sometimes you have to wait longer than you think for the right time to finally arrive. A traditional lithograph is an image drawn with greasy crayons and tusche on a block of Solnhofen limestone found primarily in Bavaria. The stone itself, when properly etched, relies upon the mutual repulsion of grease and water allowing it to be perfectly suited to printing. In the twentieth century, metal plates were introduced but for anyone who has worked on the stone there is no comparison. Not to say that the stone is any easier to work with, in fact, because each stone has its own peculiar characteristics it is much more unpredictable. Yet, to draw on a finely grained stone is wonderful and challenging.

There is this moment when you are about to etch a piece that you wish you could just keep the drawing permanently on the stone without going through the difficult process of etching and printing and the possibility of failure. It is more intense the more satisfied you are with the image. One needs an adventurous spirit. There are two etches that need to be executed. One directly on the drawing materials and one on the inked image. The most difficult is the first etch. Too much acid and you will erase the drawing and too little acid the image will become filled in and dark. Finding the right balance only comes through experience. Each artist draws a specific way and each stone has its own character. Merging the two, through experience and a lot of luck, is paramount. My only consolation is that I have taken rigorous notes over the years and I compare previous images with the one I am working on presently.

Once the stone has been etched properly it is time to print. Achieving the bon a tier, that is the best print on which all subsequent prints will be compared, is the most satisfying part of the process. As you remove each print from the stone you wait for that elan, that “yes” this is the one- this says what I desired from the beginning. The elan is where you recognize for the first time the power of the image and its ability to speak. And you know it when you see it. The next challenge is trying to get the subsequent prints to reflect it as close as possible.

As I said every image and every stone is different so applying the ink can vary from let us say 6 passes to 12 passes. My images tend to take more rolls than any one would like to perform. So I was much surprised on the first day of printing that I only had to do 9 rolls. Amazing! I was able to get my bon a tier in three prints and subsequently, five more good prints. But as the temperature rose in the studio, so did my frustration. The heat and humidity of the day started to affect the stone. Slowly the image started to loose its sharpness and refuse to take ink. I stopped and decided to yet etch it for a third time to sharpen it and stabilize it in the hope that I did not loose it altogether. The unpredictability of the printing process is hard to accept. There is much that is out of your control.

img01850-20090810-1351 — image on the wet stone

Approaching the stone on the second day, I was not certain I would have any satisfactory results. When I began the inking with 9 rolls, I knew I would need more but I was surprised that the final count would be 20 rolls! I’m glad I had breakfast because once you begin it is too difficult to stop when the printing is going well. It took from10 a.m. to 3 p.m. to print the last 10 prints. The image “Reverie” is a 15 print series. That’s about all my arms could take. But the anticipation felt in the process and that deep feeling of elan are indescribable and make the process well worth it.