Roses #2
6x8in oil on canvas panel $135. SOLD
This is the second rose painting
I have painted using the foundation
of this month's focus at the Guild
- using LINE in painting.
The base is underneath - trust me!
Artist Note.
The continuation of
the value of LINE
is for a few artists I mentor
who are interested in adding some
power to their work.
Hope you find it interesting.
Notice the lines Picasso used in
Woman In White
1923
(Metropolitan Museum NTC)
Unlike Cezanne, who mostly used his lines
to turn the form,
(darker at edges as they turned from the light)
Picasso used both the lyrical and form line.
I have stood in front of this painting
and marveled at the beautiful layering,
but mostly at
the fluidity of the lines for the hair
in comparison to the structure lines of the face.
So simple and they describe so much.
(close-up below.)
In Picasso's Blue Period,
The Old Guitarist
1903
below
You can see the lines are clear
and used beautifully.
He needed the eye to
flow around the painting
so "value" was important
along with line. Notice how the
head and one hand are lighter -
legs and other hand drop a value
and the clothed torso disappears
by keeping it in the same value
and color family as the background.
The simple line around the guitar
plus the warm color
moves it to center stage.
Two years earlier he painted
Le Gourmet
1901
When I saw this painting I was fascinated.
Picasso had skipped around
with form, lyrical, and
crosshatching line work..
You can see the different quality lines
almost everywhere, but none appear on
the top edge of the tablecloth
where he played around with
a lost edge on her cuff by
making it the same value
as the cloth,
creating a beautiful flow
from tablecloth into her arm
and up to her face.
Only 6-7 years after the
stylized painting of the guitarist,
Picasso painted
Portrait of Ambroise Vollard
1910.
I have not seen this one in life,
(it is in Russia)
but it is the force of movement
that line and value can achieve
together which knocks my socks off.
We see artists today losing edges
with deliberately smooshed strokes
of the brush, breaking up edges
- me included -
in an attempt to be 'loose"
and here is Picasso with pure
control and logic,
fracturing the image.
Not all of the cubist paintings
Picasso painted
achieved this effect
to the same degree.
If you are not bored silly by now
look again at the
Woman In White
painted 12 years after this one.
Examine his use of line
and your personal response to it.
You may find it very contemporary.
Neat eh?
picasso
