Charles Hawthorne: On Still Life Painting

"Still Life with Fish" 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.

An old bit of white china - the way one paints white or black is the test of being able to paint at all. Old restaurant ware used a long time acquires a wonderful beauty of color. Go into a cheap restaurant and if you see a beautiful piece of white crockery, get it. Try to make it look clumsy, it will keep you from being satisfied with well turned edges. Clumsiness indicates a struggle to put things down right, an honest effort to grasp the truth. The study of old crockery is very exacting, very wonderful." 

To be continued

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

Charles Hawthorne: Bits of Critiques

 

"The Fisherman and His Daughter"
by Charles Hawthorne

• "Don't model little blue hats in an outdoor portrait - you saw this too much as a hat and not enough as a spot of color. Look at some positive dark to get the value of water behind the head - hold up the black handle of your palette knife to compare it with the darks in the subject."

•  "We must all teach ourselves to be fine, to be poets. Spend a lifetime in hard work with a humble mind. In his attempt to develop the beauty he sees, the artist develops himself."
  
  
•  Try coping with different sized canvases. There is a certain influence that the big area of canvas gives you - it makes you see things larger. There is one thing of which you may be sure, being able to paint large canvases does you no harm when you come to paint a small one. Take out large canvases - when I say a little one I mean a 16" x 20".
  
  
• "Simply graying won't do - in natures it is more than that. If you have done your job well, anyone can tell if it is morning or afternoon light by the color you use."
  
  
• "Don't be afraid of mixing your colors. Some of the most beautiful colors in a canvas are nothing but mud when taken away from their combination. To see a beautiful flesh tone against brilliant sand and to be able to recognize that a piece of mud color from the palette put against a brilliant yellow on the canvas will give the illusion of flesh on the beach - that takes an understanding which comes as a result of study."
  
  
•  "Make background and figures represent the same kind of day - think of your work as the portrait of a day rather than of a model."
  

To be continued

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

 

Charles Hawthorne: Color

A Study by Charles Hawthorne

"The model out of doors ceases to be the same human being that she is inside - in a head on the beach the features show as reflections, are not drawn as in an indoor head. It is amusing how little one needs features for likeness - think of color notes; spots, not planes, when doing the face out of doors.

Draw as little as is compatible with your conscience - put down spots of color. Seeing things as silhouettes is drawing - the outline of your subjects against the background, the outline and size of each spot of color against every other spot of color it touches, is the only kind of drawing you need bother about. If you do that faithfully you will be surprised at the result. 

Think in color, think in color volumes. The majority of painters don't realize what it is all about - they believe in reproducing nature instead of expressing themselves in beautiful spots of color. Let color make form - do not make form and color it. 

Make it so that I could recognize the subject from the color alone, for color also is a likeness. Remember no amount of good drawing will pull you out if your colors are not true. The spot of color that a model makes against the landscape has much more to do with his character than you imagine. Do that and you have something to work with. Our tool of trade is our ability to see the big spots. 

Starting with a note of truth in a picture is the most important thing - the first color you put down influences you right straight through. Do not put things down approximately - you will take a wrong thing and unconsciously key everything to it, making it all false."

To be continued

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

 

Charles Hawthorne: Painting the Figure

"By the Window" by Charles Hawthorne

"My artist friends are surprised at my having the class paint a model out of doors, something which they consider extremely difficult. But I consider it the quickest way to get under your skin the idea of the way to paint everything - the mechanics of putting one spot of color next to another, the fundamental thing.

We paint the model out of doors because it detaches itself from other things and is easily seen, obvious - it is still life one cannot escape. The figure stands up and is seen solemnly and very beautifully against the background; it is not part of the landscape. Just four or five principal things to do - it is an ideal problem. We paint problems in order to be able to paint pictures, and, if we are good, we keep on doing problems all our lives and the more humbly we stick to that attitude the better we paint.

It seems sometimes as if the figure painted out of doors is easier than the landscape. Landscape differences are more elusive and delicate - a figure in sunlight is more easily seen. The house may look like part of the landscape but the figure outdoors does not.

If the figure is against the sky, the water or the light sand, keep it as a silhouette against its background - it is surprising how violent things are up against the light. Keep the separation of figure from background out of doors. Have the courage to set down the colors you seed there - overdo in color rather than be weak. See brilliant color, then paint it a little more brilliant than you see it. Working out of doors your eye will be brought up to color - it has the effect of shaking off the shackles of your mind, showing you that you can do anything you please, making you dare. It is the most direct way of learning to see color. You will gain great delicacy and strength painting out of doors."

To be continued

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

 

Charles Hawthorne: Learning to Paint

"Girl in White" by Charles Hawthorne

"The only way to learn to paint is by painting. To really study, you must start out with large tubes of paint and large palette and not stint in any way as far as materials go. If you look into the past of the successful painter you will find square miles of canvas behind him. It is work that counts, experience in seeing color. 

Painting is just getting one spot of color in relation to another spot of color - after you have covered acres of canvas you will know. Don't be in a hurry to do something more - think how young you are. Suppose you spend ten years of your life just putting things together - think what an equipment you will have.

Don't try to be an artist all at once, be very much of a student. Be always searching, never settle to do something you've done before. Always be looking for the unexpected in nature - you can have no formulas for anything; search constantly. Don't learn how to do things, keep on inquiring how. You must keep up an attitude of continuous study and so develop yourself. I don't know a better definition of an artist than one who is eternally curious. Every successful canvas has been painted from the point of view of a student, for a great painter is always a student.

Make notes that will help fasten your conception of beauty. The more you study in the right way, the more you progress. Each day's study makes you crazy to go back and do over and do better what you did the day before. Do studies, not pictures. Know when you are licked - start another. Be alive, stop when your interest is lost. Put off finish as it takes a lifetime - wait until later to try to finish things - make a lot of starts. It is so hard and long before a student comes to a realization that these few large simple spots in right relations are the most important things in the study of painting. They are the fundamentals of all painting."

To be continued

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

 

Charles Hawthorne: Seeing Beauty

"A Study in White"
by Charles Hawthorne

"A great composer could find inspiration for a symphony in a subject as simple as the tinkle of water in a dish pan. So can we find beauty in ordinary places and subjects. The untrained eye does not see beauty in all things - it's our profession to train ourselves to see it and transmit it to the less fortunate. The layman cares for incident in a picture but the artist cares rather for the beauty of one spot of color coming against another, not a literary beauty. There are just so many tones in music and just so many colors but it's the beautiful combination that makes a masterpiece.

It is beautifully simple, painting - all we have to do is to get the color notes in their proper relations. The juxtaposition of spots of color is the only way and he who sees that the finest is the greatest man. I want you to learn to see more beautifully, just as if you were studying music and tried to get the finer harmony more and more truly all the time.

You must find the beauty of the thing before you start. You cannot bring reason to bear on painting - the eye looks up and gets an impression and that is what you want to register. Good painting is an excitement, an aesthetic emotion..." 

To be continued

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

 

Charles Hawthorne: On Beauty

"Artist in Plein Air" by Charles Hawthorne

"Anything under the sun is beautiful if you have the vision - it is the seeing of the thing that makes it so. The world is waiting for men with vision - it is not interested in mere pictures. What people subconsciously are interested in is the expression of beauty, something that helps them through the humdrum day, something that shocks them out of themselves and something that makes them believe in the beauty and the glory of human existence.

 The painter will never achieve this by merely painting pictures. The only way that he can appeal to humanity is in the guise of the high priest. He must show people more - more than they already see, and he must show them with so much human sympathy and understanding that they will recognize it as if they themselves had seen the beauty and the glory. Here is where the artist comes in.

We go to art school and classes to learn to paint pictures, to learn our job. Our job is to be an artist, which is to be a poet, a preacher if you will, to be of some use in the world by adding to the sum total of beauty in it. We like to do it. There always have been and always will be people of our kind, who like to look at nature and make representations, and others who like to look at what we do.

We must teach ourselves to see the beauty of the ugly, to see the beauty of the commonplace. It is so much greater to make much out of little than to make little out of much - better to make a big thing out of a little subject than to make a little thing out of a big one. In every town the one ugliest spot is the railroad station, and yet there is beauty there for anyone who can see it. Don't strain for a grand subject - anything is painter's fodder."

To be continued

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