"Paintings With Personality"

This is the ruined Laugharne Castle, in Wales, it was destroyed during the civil war. The stones from the castle can be found all over town. I depicted the castle in this way because it shows the slight hill the rickety, once strong castle still stands. It is a 6x9 inche collage and mixed media on acid free paper.

Honey and I took one of our granddaughters to see the John S. Sargent exhibit at the Metropolitan in NYC last week. Our granddaughter will soon be starting her second year of college with a graphic design major. Not only did she want to see the show, she also wanted to go back to school in Florida and brag to her friends that she had seen all that original art.

I already knew Sargent was a very private man whose parents were wealthy, expatriate Americans. I also knew he made his reputation as a portrait painter, but grew to hate painting them because he wanted to do his own work. I knew very little about how he created his art. So, when we got home, I researched Sargent, his design and his way of painting.

Below, I have listed 6 of my new discoveries about Sargent:

1. Worked With Preliminary Sketches - John Sargent made a lot of preliminary sketches of his of his subject before beginning a painting. He said, ″You can’t do sketches enough. Sketch everything and keep everything and keep your curiosity fresh.″ His planned his sketches over and over again until he was finally satisfied with an arrangement for a painting.
2. Worked from Life - Sargent seldom worked from a photograph. For landscapes, he believed that the light could only be captured when he was experiencing it. For portrait work, he walked around his model, viewing and sketching the person from every direction. He also backed away in order to better see the values and perspective. Sargent actually wore a path in the carpet walking back and forth from his easel. When he ran into trouble, as every artist does, he would rush at his canvas, with raised brush, yelling, “Demons, demons.”
3. Worked With Large Masses - Sargent began his paintings by first drawing the large masses. He said if the basic structure was right the details would fall into place. He never tried to repaint an eye, believing if either eye was wrong then the structure underneath it was wrong. Instead he scraped and painted the head over from the very beginning.
4. Used Large Brushes and Plenty of Paint - Sargent used a lot of paint and big brushes. He thought the strokes would look weak if only a little paint was used. He drew with his brush, beginning with the shadow planes, gradually separating his figure from the background with large, loose masses of value.
5. Concentrated on Values - Sargent worked with middle values, saving the darks and lights as accents when the painting was almost finished. He once told a student not to concentrate so much on the features. He said, “Paint the head. The features are only like spots on an apple." Sargent also said, “Color is an inborn gift, but appreciation of value is merely training of the eye, which everyone ought to be able to acquire.”
6. Self-Critique - John Sargent was tough on his own paintings. He was able to look at his work objectively and murk over (with paint) or scrap away weeks of work. Sometimes, he did an entire painting over when his revisions on the original appeared too obvious.

I used several sources in writing this blog, although most of my information came from the booklet found at http://www.thomaskitts.com/2015/04/advice-on-painting-from-john-singer.html. I learned just enough to make me want to know more. What can you tell me about Sargent that I missed? Please comment below.

Later, Judy

www.judyballance.com