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White on white
June 06, 2003

Dear Artist,

There's a marvelous painting by John Singer Sargent called The Artist in his Studio. It shows a balding man in obviously reduced circumstances, his canvas half onto his mussed bed. He's attempting to match colours from what appears to be a postcard. We've illustrated this painting at the top of the previous clickback http://www.painterskeys.com/clickbacks/red.asp

The painting is bitter-sweet, and in a way, sad. By the window's clean light, the old fellow is trying to get it right. It's even sadder when we realize that these days "trying to get it right" is in danger of becoming a lost art. We are in the days of anything goes. Verisimilitude is often suspect, and many artists bend toward fashion, decoration and expediency. In times such as ours, matching suffers.

In one of my earlier incarnations I took a flyer at ornithological art. Birds. In those days I laboured over found kills--"road pizza"--the remains of falcons or bluebirds. Pinning out the wings I attempted to match the colours of nature. There was the miraculous gray-blue of a heron's breast and the iridescent head of a mallard drake. Local colour aside, this sort of work is complicated by the colour of the ground, and nearby colours reflecting their light on the subject. I can tell you that the job turns decent young chaps into incoherent babblers. Maybe that's why bird artists are such odd ducks.

But what lessons these efforts hold! What an education is in the wings of a teal. I don't regret a feather. Next time you're looking over your subject--a head of sandy hair, a sandbar, a Sandhill Crane--ask yourself--how do I match that colour? Nowadays you have your choice--you may not have to get it right. But it's good to know that you can.

How? Patience. Trial and error. Going to bed with your tubes. Like the old man in the Sargent painting--getting by the window-light and looking--back and forth--really looking and seeing. Mixing and matching. Did I mention patience?

Best regards,

Robert

PS: "Any ground subtracts its own hue from the colors which it carries and therefore influences." (Josef Albers) "Drawing is feeling. Color is an act of reason." (Pierre Bonnard)

Esoterica: Many artists have realized that you can match most of the tones found in nature with a variety of pigments, from a variety of directions. Furthermore, some ingredients seem to simply disappear in the brew, and yet they make their contribution. Bright cadmiums, as mentioned in my last letter, are surprisingly useful for neutralizing and sophisticating earth tones into luminous grays.

Thanks for writing rgenn@saraphina.com

Whistler the designer
B. J. Adams, Washington, DC, CGAdamsSR@aol.com, More thoughts by B. J. Adams...

Last week I went to see Whistler, His Women and Fashion at the Frick in New York. Upstairs in the oval room were the large paintings of his society portraits and downstairs were the drawings of clothes he had designed for his subjects to wear. Included were some of the actual dresses or look-alikes. Other than giving a glimpse into Whistler's up-and-down life there were some enlightening color observations. There was a bit of red stocking worn only by "out-going" women. Whistler never seemed to use more than one color (or a slight variation) in any costume in the drawings or on his subjects. The 'fussy' lines on the sleeves of The White Girl turned out to be gathering of sheer fabric that you could see in an actual dress. I'm going back to the National Gallery to see the painting, yet again, next week. We are fortunate, here in DC, in that the Freer Gallery of Art also has a collection of Whistler's work along with his "Peacock Room."

Mixed white
Pamela Simpson, CT, USA, pamelot@rcn.com, More thoughts by Pamela Simpson...

For white I use a Rembrandt product that is called "Mixed White" and is a mixture of Zinc and Titanium. It gives you the best qualities of both. It isn't a 50-50 mix, when I try to mix my own I can't quite get the proportions. I'm a plein air painter, but I like to set something up underneath the painting when I do a block in so that the colors I put down later will have something to work with. This white helps me with my lights--it is transparent enough to show some of my underneath color but it is opaque enough that I can get it to cover well if I am just a little more heavy handed with it. I like colorful whites and I feel with this paint I can get that effect in a variety of ways.

Use white with caution
Doran W. Cannon, CA, USA, dwc@writingacademy.com, More thoughts by Doran W. Cannon...

My experience with white during the eight years I painted (I'm back to writing and teaching writing and haven't painted in six years now) was that my first mentor, a Pasadena landscapist, told me that white should never be used. I knew he had to be wrong, simply because there has never been a rule not designed to be bent, and my second mentor, the wonderful Oak Group (environmentalists) member of Santa Barbara, Michael Drury, disciple of Ray Strong, who in turn, at 96 is a disciple of Guy Rose, told me that white can be used 'judiciously.'

Zinc white
Warren Criswell, AK, USA, wcris@warrencriswell.com, More thoughts by Warren Criswell...

After some 30 years of oil painting I have just recently discovered zinc white. I rejected it years ago as a recently invented (1845) wimpish paint with no hiding power and an insipid, deathly coldness. I've always used good old poisonous flake white, preferably Kremnitz white. Originally, Kremnitz white was made from litharge (lead monoxide, PbO), which made it long and stringy, as opposed to the more buttery flake white (made from lead carbonate and lead hydroxide). Schminke Mussini makes (or used to make) a paint they call Cremnitz White, which I've used for years. I'm pretty sure it's not real Kremnitz, made from litharge, but they've evidently tried to simulate the original. I valued this paint for its warmth, texture and permanence but mostly for its opacity. --Except that I was always mixing it with my wax medium to produce translucent scumbles or velaturas. For some reason it never occurred to me that zinc white was already translucent! I'm not sure what triggered this revelation, but now I use zinc all the time. Even its coolness is useful, but of course this is affected by the color underneath. So I have not reversed my opinion of zinc white. However, I still think titanium white is--in the words of Steve Martin, giving his opinion of a lunar eclipse--"a cheap and gaudy affair."

With regard to your daughter Sara's remarks in the last clickbacks--No, Sara, it's not exactly that we're "so old and conservative" that we think "art that is any good is a lost art." It's just that we're further along the trajectory than you. We've done Malevich and have returned, older if not wiser, to Whistler, having discovered to our dismay that nature is way more inventive and creative than we are. No part of the trajectory is any better than any other part. You're "getting it right" too. It's just that the definition of "right" keeps changing as we grope blindly down the road--discovering amazing new things, like zinc white.

Avoiding colour toxicity
Carol Hama Chang, cajo@moderndigital.net

The response by Michael D Fiedler of PA USA reminded me of the reasons why I have edited my palette severely: Toxicity in paints, even in watercolours! I use the three primaries and one extra to get that "alizarin crimson" hue without its fugitive nature. I use the Maimeriblu (Watercolours) Primary Magenta #256, Primary Yellow (Process Yellow) #116, Primary Blue (Cyan) #400, and Rosso Permanente Scuro #253, and those are all the colours I need to mix absolutely every conceivable colour. Not a cadmium, cobalt, manganese, barium, chromium, lead etc. among them. I use this system to teach beginners how to mix colours, and to teach the intermediates the finer points of analogous-complementary colour mixing. It's a darned good system, and the quality of the paint is second to none and it is very reasonable in price as compared to Winsor and Newton.

I am always aware of toxins, and use their Maimeri Puro oils with the same "efficiency" of colours. I am glad I use this four colour system because I can ill afford a tube of their Ultramarine blue...about $200 for a 40 ml tube... it's the REAL stuff, none of this French Ultramarine imitation...I can say I've seen a demo of its carrying power: powerful! And, with soap and water to clean up I've done away with special non-toxic cleaners. No need to buy those expensive water-soluble oils, either!

I urge artists to try out this system of these wonderful hues. Leave behind those heavy metals...Only the yellow is semi transparent, all the others are transparent... No mud!

(RG note) Michael D. Fiedler's letter, Red Alert, along with other artists' letters can be read at http://www.painterskeys.com/clickbacks/red.asp

Photographic white
Bruce Meisterman, bmeiste2@midsouth.rr.com, More thoughts by Bruce Meisterman...

White... to a photographer white IS light. Whitest white (or the brightest white without detail in Ansel Adams' "Zone System") provides the tension to its opposite, blackest black (black without any detail). In both, either nothing is revealed or all can be shown. As one moves toward the grays from these extremes, details begin almost immediately to appear.

White/light allows my medium to function. Even in the darkest of images, it may be just that small pinpoint of light that becomes the story. But while white/light itself is the foundation of my work, I use it sparingly. It becomes hope and promise in dark images; it can also be unremittingly romantic or painfully harsh or fantastical. It can be the light at the end of the tunnel or as the joke has it an oncoming train. White has such unbelievable power.

Conversely, black has equal power and I use it unsparingly: mystery, fear, the inky darkness of total night, sexuality, and the sense of the unknown. Different sides of the same coin, white could not exist without black and vice-versa. It is the currency and medium we work with every day.

Culturally, we portray white/light as goodness (princesses, godliness, purity, etc); black/dark as evil (Darth Vader and the dark side, Jung's shadow, etc.) Some of these perceptions were born out of fairy-tales, others can be prejudicial in origin: both inform our work. What we do with those two and all the ones in between will determine how successful is our work.

Process rather than product
Enid Baker , enidbaker@telus.net

As I'm a process rather than product person, I tend to enjoy having several UFOs around. But when I do finish a project I tend to reward myself with something peanut buttery. My biggest puzzlement is "When do you know your project is finished?"

(RG note) "A painting is finished when to have done less would be considered a sin and more a crime." (Ted Godwin)

Need to get permission?
Lee Cowan, lee@stonecountyart.com

I'm a new artist, reader of the twice weekly letter for about a year and first time writer. I want to make the four suggestions in a recent letter (go to your room, work regular hours, etc) into a poster for myself. If I should later sell the poster (off the beaten path open studio tour coming up in September), please help me know how to give proper credit/reimbursement. A percentage of the sale? Something written on the back of the picture/poster? Do I first need to get permission if I'm thinking that later I might sell it?

(RG note) We appreciate when artists and others let us know when they are doing things with these letters. My greatest high is hearing about positive effects. Please go ahead and use the material as you see fit. Let me know if your posters ever generate a positive cash flow, and we can take another look at the "deal." In the meantime please give credit to The Painter's Keys or the RGTWL on the front of the poster. Thanks.

I'm totally lost
Cindy Cindy, GA, USA, cindy_hnsv@yahoo.com, More thoughts by Cindy Cindy...

I'm 36 and started painting 8 years ago; never picked up a brush until then. I thoroughly enjoy painting with acrylics. For the first few years I didn't paint seriously, just occasionally. Recently, I have painted constantly and it seems the more I paint, the more I want to paint. About a month ago, I did a mural of a seascape for a friend. I've gotten a very large response since from people wanting me to paint for them. The problem I'm having is pricing. I'm relatively new to this. No one does my kind of thing around here. I'm not sure if this would affect the pricing. Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated. I'm totally lost. Also, I've never had any formal training. Does this matter that much to collectors? I was given an art set by a friend who had watched me looking at paintings and saying, "I think I could do this". I love art and I would love to do this for a living.

(RG note) In our business a degree is not a prerequisite. Work and application are. Application means formal training that you give yourself. As a beginning artist you should price your paintings very reasonably—and raise them if and when the demand warrants. You can see what other artists have had to say about pricing art at http://www.painterskeys.com/clickbacks/pricing.htm

White
Jack Bartlett, jlb10@tellcon.net, More thoughts by Jack Bartlett...

White is the essence of light,
son of the sun, stranger to night,
bounty of the retinal sphere,
not just one color but the sum of color
where, each morning a permanent promise
is broadcast and delivered.

White hides in glass,
is the pinnacle of heat,
the antipathy of shadow,
heat reliever, snow stacker,
ice body, where a shade is dissolved
and darkness denied.

White breaks in just through a door,
it allows an Arctic evening to tint its core,
and by its value all else is measured
in tone, leaving hues and grays in dismay,
touching the face of sight
which, without it, would be blind.

White breaks the horizon at sea,
discontinues the night, commemorates the morning,
gives measure to days marked by numbers
on pages, often white.
It is the mother of growth, vitreous realm,
the garden where words are often placed in black
upon its face.