Charles Hawthorne, On Painting Still Life

"His First Voyage" by Charles Hawthorne

"This winter do some still life, and I don't mean pretty things like iridescent glass. Do still life because you cannot tell a story about it - paint something that isn't anything until it is painted well. Get stuff that is supposed to be ugly, like a pie plate or an old tin basin against a background that will bring out the beauty of the thing you see. Then try to do it, trying to work for quality of color.

The painting of still life gives one the widest range for study - a bottle is as serious a subject for portraiture as a person. In arranging, place things so they have color and so that you can see it well. If you cannot decide on color and values in the beginning, move your still life around until you get things simple so that you can see big relations.

Select one light thing against a dark thing - a kitchen utensil and a lemon cut in half - try for spots coming together. Don't look up at nature and consider an inch at a time. See what one big spot is in relation to the other big spots. Search always for more beautiful notes of color, don't search to put more things in. Study larger spots of color coming together - don't break objects up into many colors. Establish big general things.

Insist all the time on one spot being right relatively to another. That thought alone is worthwhile and when you put down one or two notes that are right, that's all that is necessary. You'd be surprised at how little work it takes to make a picture.

Have some fun with color. Take a dishpan, some bricks and tell the beauty of them. It would take the study out of the commonplace and and make it a work of art. Do still life and see the beauty you can get in it. There is something elevating in the painting of a side of beef so it can hang beside the Madonnas in the Louvre and hold its own through the centuries."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Hawthorne on Painting" by Charles Webster Hawthorne.)