Charles Hawthorne: Indoor Model

"The Lovers" by Charles Hawthorne

• "Approach your subject in all humility and reverence - make yourself highly sensitive to its beauty."
  
  
• "If in painting a head you encounter difficulty, just disregard it as a head and treat it as you would a still life. You should go after the big spots, the relation of the figure against the background, the light spot of the figure against the shadow of the figure, first establishing highest light and darkest shadows."
   
• "You must establish a background, in the right relation to the head. Until you have the spot of the face true against the background, you have nothing to build on. Watch the big spots of color make them more subtle in relation to it. Remember that the background becomes a background only in relation to the thing you are doing in the light."
  
  
• "Pay attention to the big note that the head makes. Don't be afraid to paint flesh, think of it as a note of color - get the mass against the background. Close your eyes and remember back and you can visualize the beautiful note of color that was. See it on canvas before you begin - after you get that note of color you can resolve it into feature. Half the likeness lies in the colors - they are the first things we recognize. Your three of four general spots coming together make the portrait, make the likeness. Everyone can supply the rest if the spot of color is fine."
  
  
• "The first color you put down influences you right straight through. Do not put things down approximately - you will start with a wrong note of color and unconsciously key everything to it, making it all false... Separate the canvas into a pattern and give one color its true weight in relation to another."

  To be continued

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