Provence Art Experience Workshop, Luberon, September 7-16, 2020

Study Color and Light Theory with Michael Newberry

Newberry, Red Sand, oil on canvas, 9×12″. Though there are no red poppies in this painting, it was a very hot day in Florida in Ft Desoto, and I was sunburned, and sometimes I transfer that feeling into color. Regardless, you can see how the red starts as orange-red scarlet and shifts towards pink-violet patches as the color recedes towards the sea.

Excited thinking about what to teach for the Provence workshop Fall 2020. And I think it would be great to explore color and light theory based on space! When we paint for instance a field of red poppies, way too many people paint the red the same, and it pretty much kills rhythm, movement, and any chance to excite the eye (the eye needs difference no matter how minute). Van Gogh, was a champion of varying the color through space. So out of his playbook, going back to the red poppies, if you add more blue as they recede and more orange as they come forward, you create a dance of variations of red, that will delight the eye, excite the mind, and capture your spirit.

If you have any other suggestions shoot me an email, mtnewberry at gmail dot com.

Our first 2019 Workshop was incredible with our great host Mathieu Brousses. And the aesthetic theme of finding the shadows and bringing out the light proved to be a very successful lesson series.

For Fall 2020 we plan to use Luberon as our hub, discovering new places (though Mathieu will know them) and different time of the year. Samples of our possible itineraries:

Our host Mathieu Brousses

Some pics from last month’s workshop in Provence, May 2019.

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From our teacher, Michael Newberry: I taught several plein air painting and pastel workshops in NY, Mexico, Greece, Santa Monica, Italy, and France. And I formally taught Life Drawing, Composition, and Painting at the prestigious Otis College of Art and Design. When I am not teaching you will find me painting in my cabin studio under the monumental granite outcrop of Tahquitz Rock in Idyllwild, California, accompanied by my studio assistant doggy, Frida. More info on my extensive bio here.

If you are interested in attending please contact me, mtnewberry@gmail.com or Mathieu at mathieu.brousses@gmail.com and we can plan accordingly and make a spectacular and meaningful experience happen.

Colors of Light and Shadow

Light and shadow are two of the most challenging problems facing a painter. Painters can’t harness real light and shadow; instead they must rely on subtle gradations of color to create the illusion.

Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, 1634. Galleria degli Uffizi

In general, I use “light” in painting to mean all those areas which are directly lit by a light source.  For example, in this Rembrandt self-portrait most of his face, the glow behind him, some of his hair, and the front of his coat are in the light. The “shadows” are all those areas which fall outside of the light. To demonstrate the division between light and shadow, I cut and pasted squares of color taken from this painting, and divided them into two groups below.

 

Creating Denouement

Creating Denouement by Michael Newberry

Denouement, 1987, oil on linen, 54×78 inches.

Why this painting?

Painting Denouement was a chance to live inside glowing, colorful light and to express through art what love feels like to me.

Influences

Puccini, Polyclitus, Aristophanes, Beethoven, and Michelangelo rock my world. In their time, they were innovators with a love of beauty, humanity, and passion. Their art was a constant source of inspiration.

There were visual influences for Denouement. But most of the epic works were from “brown” painters, classic technique with a limited pallet in which dark things are brown and black hues. The French Impressionists had a fantastic sense of color harmonies in light and shadow. What I had in mind was to take the best of both and integrate them.

Integration, Part 2: Color

Integration, Part 2: Color by Michael Newberry

Newberry, Counterpose, 1990, oil on linen, 36×42″

In the tutorial, Integration of Light, Part 1, I mentioned that the theme of Counterpose is about a harmony of contrast. I showed how I painted extreme contrasts in light and dark. In this tutorial, I am showing how, keeping to the theme of contrast, I painted extremes of color contrasts.