Day Eighty Four: Remembrance of Lake Garda by Camille Corot
Hello and welcome to day eighty four of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Remembrance of Lake Garda' by Camille Corot.
As I've written in previous blog posts where we featured paintings by Camille, he is not actually a Tonalist painter. He is a member of the Barbizon school. He is in this series because his influence on Tonalism was extensive and also because I wanted to learn more about how he put paintings together. Today's video features a track off my album The Light in Darkness.
Continuing on with our current discussion regarding my personal history as a Tonalist landscape painter; as I was saying in our last blog post it was in 2009 that I had become inspired by exposure to actual Tonalist paintings that I saw at the de Young Museum.
From this point forward I started digging into what Tonalism was and how I could manage to do paintings in this manner. I was off to a good start by using wood panels. They already gave my paintings a more interesting surface finish than a standard canvas board would.
The next discovery that I made was lead white paint. On the surface it might seem that white is white but the reality is that there are three white pigments currently in use by artists. These are lead white, titanium white and zinc white.
Lead white has been in use by human beings to make art since before time was measured. As a matter of fact, on the scale that is used to assign codes to pigments, lead white is PB1. In other words, lead white is the first pigment that is named. Lead has fallen out of favor in recent times for two reasons. The first being that it was a common ingredient in house paints for many years and when lead white starts peeling off of a house, the chips taste sweet. Unfortunately children will often eat these lead chips and as we all know it's not very good for human consumption in any way.
The second reason that lead white has fallen out of favor was the invention of titanium white. Titanium white is a very opaque and cool white. This is the primary pigment that you will get in any tube of white paint that is not labeled in any way. The third white that is used these days is zinc white. Zinc white is far more transparent and translucent than titanium white and for this reason it is often mixed with titanium white (it is in many tubes of paint that are labeled as just titanium white). There is a huge problem with zinc white though, and that it is very prone to cracking. I try to use it not at all in my work.
The reason why lead white is important to our discussion of Tonalism and Tonalist landscape painting is that lead white has properties that are very unique especially in comparison to the now more popular titanium white. Where titanium white is cool lead white is warm. Where titanium white mixed with other colors will give a chalky feeling, lead white is far more friendly and easy to use. Lead white has many unique properties and I highly recommend that if you are a painter that you try out the tube.
Personally, I like to mix my lead white with titanium white. This way I get the best of both worlds. I get the coverage of titanium white and the warm, yielding on chalkiness of lead white. I came up with the idea to mix them together several years ago, when it occurred to me that I would have to use quite a lot of lead white paint to get coverage in certain areas of my painting. If I had to choose between the two, I would choose lead white every time. It's just more giving and cooperative than titanium white.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Remembrance of Lake Garda'; I'm very pleased with the way the study turned out, my actual reference image was very lo rez (see below) and for that reason I could make out almost no detail. I really enjoy Corot's composition here and I was glad that I was able to pull off a good study from the limited reference that I had to hand.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Remembrance of Lake Garda by Camille Corot, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
As I've written in previous blog posts where we featured paintings by Camille, he is not actually a Tonalist painter. He is a member of the Barbizon school. He is in this series because his influence on Tonalism was extensive and also because I wanted to learn more about how he put paintings together. Today's video features a track off my album The Light in Darkness.
Continuing on with our current discussion regarding my personal history as a Tonalist landscape painter; as I was saying in our last blog post it was in 2009 that I had become inspired by exposure to actual Tonalist paintings that I saw at the de Young Museum.
From this point forward I started digging into what Tonalism was and how I could manage to do paintings in this manner. I was off to a good start by using wood panels. They already gave my paintings a more interesting surface finish than a standard canvas board would.
The next discovery that I made was lead white paint. On the surface it might seem that white is white but the reality is that there are three white pigments currently in use by artists. These are lead white, titanium white and zinc white.
Lead white has been in use by human beings to make art since before time was measured. As a matter of fact, on the scale that is used to assign codes to pigments, lead white is PB1. In other words, lead white is the first pigment that is named. Lead has fallen out of favor in recent times for two reasons. The first being that it was a common ingredient in house paints for many years and when lead white starts peeling off of a house, the chips taste sweet. Unfortunately children will often eat these lead chips and as we all know it's not very good for human consumption in any way.
The second reason that lead white has fallen out of favor was the invention of titanium white. Titanium white is a very opaque and cool white. This is the primary pigment that you will get in any tube of white paint that is not labeled in any way. The third white that is used these days is zinc white. Zinc white is far more transparent and translucent than titanium white and for this reason it is often mixed with titanium white (it is in many tubes of paint that are labeled as just titanium white). There is a huge problem with zinc white though, and that it is very prone to cracking. I try to use it not at all in my work.
The reason why lead white is important to our discussion of Tonalism and Tonalist landscape painting is that lead white has properties that are very unique especially in comparison to the now more popular titanium white. Where titanium white is cool lead white is warm. Where titanium white mixed with other colors will give a chalky feeling, lead white is far more friendly and easy to use. Lead white has many unique properties and I highly recommend that if you are a painter that you try out the tube.
Personally, I like to mix my lead white with titanium white. This way I get the best of both worlds. I get the coverage of titanium white and the warm, yielding on chalkiness of lead white. I came up with the idea to mix them together several years ago, when it occurred to me that I would have to use quite a lot of lead white paint to get coverage in certain areas of my painting. If I had to choose between the two, I would choose lead white every time. It's just more giving and cooperative than titanium white.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Remembrance of Lake Garda by Camille Corot |