Henry Hensche - A Modern Impressionist Master?

[Michael McGuire]

I did a couple of workshops a few years back with Californian artist, Susan Sarback, (www.lightandcolor.com). Susan studied for many years with Provincetown-based artist Henry Hensche and was one of the people originally involved in the Hensche Foundation (http://www.thehenschefoundation.org/index.html), a website dedicated to his legacy and teaching approaches.

 

In many ways Hensche is still a controversial figure, arousing equal extremes of passion in both his students and detractors. By all accounts he was a much better painter than teacher, who put his students through possibly unnecessary gruelling, repetitive exercises, which, in turn, perhaps coloured the judgement of some of them because of the sheer time invested over the years.

 

Without getting into it too much, Hensche's core painting philosophy involved a new way of seeing rather than a painting methodology. This required his students to "forget" everything they had learnt in art college and begin to trust their own vision. The resulting paintings, which may appear a little "garish" in his early years are undoubtedly, to my eyes anyway, imbued with a light quality reminiscent of the work of Claude Monet in the 1880's and early 90's. I do however feel than many of them, other than the very latest works, lack subtlety in both colour variation and the treatment of edges. 

 

Hensche would be labled today as a colourist, but he never labelled himself as anything other than someone responding honestly to what he saw within the limit of his painting skills. When it comes to colourist vs tonalist, I like to think of them as different painting "languages", neither one being right or wrong. But then again some languages sound more poetic than others, so perhaps depending on the subject matter one or other approaches is most appropriate!

 

Have a look at the Hensche Foundation site (there are some really good large images there - Sarback's images are very small and don't really do her justice) and let me know what you think.

 

If anyone else has some interesting links on colourist/tonalist approaches to plein air painting, please share them here.

[ken massey]

Hi Michael...noticed this site when i googled the Hensche Foundation site... just making a hopefully brief response to some of the comments here....

Re..Susan S. and my objections ...i felt the so called (paraphrasing) "...Monet in Four Steps.." misrepresented and misinterpreted what is and was actually involved in learning how to paint...ie. how to paint using color or hue as the starting point (as different than starting with values of local object color)...what Susan left out was the necessity for the painter to slog their way through the color modeling exercises that HH helped us learn how to do....HH had us study the color modeling of form, I think, because it is what replaces learning to model tonal values of non descriptive color neutrals....if the teacher (eg. susan) leaves out the learning stage of color modeling, which can be a very big/long/difficult/ step...the student never gets to the point of visual understanding of the form in the light key.... HH made it clear in his published work that the student had to go through levels or stages of visual growth before they could resolve the color modeling of form in the light key problem....

The misinterpretation is that many think of it as a formula for painting, when it is actually an exercise for visual growth and increased visual awareness... Susan's "construct" as you refer to it...oversimplifies to the point of misleading students to think that color modeling is not even necessary in order to learn what is demonstrated in Henry Hensche's works...

Re. Lois..simply put HH never taught the idea of color compliments as a starting or ending or study point...while it may be something easy for a person to understand, HH stated it was a very limited concept... meaning it limited your visual awareness....

My objections to either Susan or Lois have nothing to do with their careers...only with the fact that their students equate what they hear or read as a duplication of what HH was actually teaching and demonstrating...

Revisions to HH ideas are not his ideas...and his teaching ideas and methods were very carefully considered and arrived at long before Susan or Lois arrived on the scene to study with him...what i have attempted to do on the wetcanvas or other discussions is recreate the wording and idea without revisions....

Michael McGuire said:

Here is a good link, Kathryn, in which Ken Massey tries to explain the issues he has with Sarback and Griffel:-

http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/archive/index.php?t-124113.html

He does tend to go on a bit, partly perhaps in an attempt to display his knowledge, but if you ignore the repeated jargon, there is a consistency in what he says. His chief criticisms of Sarback boil down to two things. He claims she:-

- gets students to block in the main masses in pure hues plus white, and

- proposes that sunlit and shadow masses be painted in warm and cool colours respectively.

Apparently, Hensche never taught anything like this, but rather encouraged students to develop and trust their own vision, so that they could block in the main masses in flat areas of colour which were mixtures of several colours including "earth" colours, i.e. not pure hue plus white.

That does seem clear enough. The only problem though is that he misinterprets what Sarback teaches. It is certainly true that Sarback suggests that all masses be started in pure hues plus white and warm/cool for suunlight/shadow respectively. The key word here is "started" because Sarback suggests that no more than 5-10 minutes be devoted to what she describes as "Stage 1", the main purpose of which is to get the values right. In "Stage 2", she asks students to refine their initial block-in by adding whatever color mixtures are necessary so that the main masses read correct relative to one another, this establishing the "light key".

I've actually corresponded with her quite a bit about Massey's criticisms. Her explanation for what she teaches is very simple. The only difference is that she has added another stage (Stage 1) to make it easier for students to learn. Her "Stage 2" is identical to Hensche's initial block-in of the main masses. Therefore, Massey's criticisms do not stand up in that respect. However, the warm/cool thing is a divergence from Hensche's teaching, and it is something which is easily seen to be wrong, when observing light and shadow in nature. To my eyes anyway, the nearest vertical shadow areas are nearly always dark and warm rather than cool. And it is also true of course that cast shadows from a North light source are usually warm.

From what I can remember, Griffel also advocates a very structured approach, involving the use of complimentary colours. Massey feels even more strongly that she is misrepresenting what Hensche taught. But again, perhaps he is misrepresenting her to some degree (if you can condense what Griffel advocates in a few simple sentences, I would be in a better position to comment).

A lot of what is going on here may just be plain old jealousy. As in all walks of life, some do better than others. Hensche's students enjoy varying degrees of commercial success, both as artists and teachers, and the less successful may resent the success of others to some extent. But having said that, there is a sincerity about Massey that appeals to me. I do feel his heart is in the right place about all of this, and there is no doubt that Hensche influenced him to the point of obsession and he has a deep respect and love for the man.

My advice to you, Kathryn, and anyone else who may be following this thread is to be aware that Hensche's big idea was that every plane change represents a hue shift as well as a value/chroma shift. After that he just ground his students down by repeated exercises until such time as they were able to represent this almost automatically on the canvas. So be wary of "painting systems" purporting to be based on Hensche's teaching, which are overly-formulaic and prescriptive. There are no short-cuts. It comes down to developing your vision through putting in the long hours and then having the confidence and skill to reproduce that on the canvas.

Kathryn Townsend said:

It was interesting to me that Lois' name is not listed on the HH Facebook student list--I wondered if there was some philosophical divergence. There is depth to the discussion, but in many ways it is cryptic to me. The thing that stood out to me was the description of the difference between a value approach and a color approach. That made a lot of sense. I also remembered this statement about current HH teachers from reading it before: "In many cases these personal styles are a reflection of what he taught as beginning lessons of over coloring and exaggeration of color to get the impact of light on the eye and break peoples habits of looking at values instead of colors and these are important lessons and it is a beautiful stage of development but is not the end but is the beginning of color study.

If Ken Massey believes Lois went in her own direction away from what HH taught, I'm really curious if he said more specifically what he meant by that. I don't pretend to know anything about what HH taught--but I find that the approach speaks to me and the description in Lois' book was at least a big clue about what it all meant.

[Kathryn Townsend]

Hi Ken,

Thanks for jumping in on this discussion. I get the feeling that Michael and I are somewhat in the same boat--we both are attracted to HH's work and to the concepts and approaches of his work, but without being there, its hard to figure out more specifically what HH taught and how and in what stages. I see paintings from HH students, some of which I find interesting, some beautiful and some garish and unpleasant. The latter I saw enough of initially to turn me off nearly completely to HH--if this is what people were raving about--get me to the nearest exit. But then other people convinced me to go back and take another look and to actually try painting block studies in outdoor light. That's when I got really interested.

If Lois talks about starting with complements in her book, then I missed it completely, as that's not what I got from it. What I got from her book is the idea of starting the first statement with colors of the light keys in both light and shadow. Is that off the mark? I have heard people describe Camille's approach as using complements. But I've never taken a class from either Camille or Lois.

So is there any other book or document that more nearly describes HH's ideas, approach, stages of development and the process of beginning to learn color modelling? I've had instructors over the years who are reluctant to tell students anything specific because the teacher is terrified that students are so stupid that they will take it as a "rule," and consequently the instructor never actually teaches anything. I said earlier that I like Lois' book because she walks you step by step through her thinking process. It may not in the end be HH's thinking process or my thinking process or approach, but it gave me insight into one person's way of thinking about it--specific enough to learn something from. All the discussions I've read on the HH websites are tantalizing but more philosophical than anything like pragmatic suggestions about approach. The one thing I really got from the HH Facebook discussion was the idea of thinking first about color rather than value. So what you say about color modelling fits in with that. And yes, I am of the opinion that you have to slog through many, many studies in order to begin to understand a concept.

So if you can point us to some good discussions, specific guidelines, books, references or anything related to what you consider the real teaching of HH, that would be really wonderful.

ken massey said:

Hi Michael...noticed this site when i googled the Hensche Foundation site... just making a hopefully brief response to some of the comments here....
Re..Susan S. and my objections ...i felt the so called (paraphrasing) "...Monet in Four Steps.." misrepresented and misinterpreted what is and was actually involved in learning how to paint...ie. how to paint using color or hue as the starting point (as different than starting with values of local object color)...what Susan left out was the necessity for the painter to slog their way through the color modeling exercises that HH helped us learn how to do....HH had us study the color modeling of form, I think, because it is what replaces learning to model tonal values of non descriptive color neutrals....if the teacher (eg. susan) leaves out the learning stage of color modeling, which can be a very big/long/difficult/ step...the student never gets to the point of visual understanding of the form in the light key.... HH made it clear in his published work that the student had to go through levels or stages of visual growth before they could resolve the color modeling of form in the light key problem.... The misinterpretation is that many think of it as a formula for painting, when it is actually an exercise for visual growth and increased visual awareness... Susan's "construct" as you refer to it...oversimplifies to the point of misleading students to think that color modeling is not even necessary in order to learn what is demonstrated in Henry Hensche's works...

Re. Lois..simply put HH never taught the idea of color compliments as a starting or ending or study point...while it may be something easy for a person to understand, HH stated it was a very limited concept... meaning it limited your visual awareness....

My objections to either Susan or Lois have nothing to do with their careers...only with the fact that their students equate what they hear or read as a duplication of what HH was actually teaching and demonstrating...

Revisions to HH ideas are not his ideas...and his teaching ideas and methods were very carefully considered and arrived at long before Susan or Lois arrived on the scene to study with him...what i have attempted to do on the wetcanvas or other discussions is recreate the wording and idea without revisions....

[ken massey]

Hi Kathryn...HH was deliberately vague (imo) in regard to an easy to follow/step by step/ step 1,2,3,4/ everyone do this/ here is my formula/ use this formula/ light is warm,shade is cool,/ light planes are these, shades are these color pigments/ and so on and on....he had no formula that he taught students... therefore...there is no clarifying document that reveals any formula that HH followed....there are two books ART OF SEEING AND PAINTING, by Henry Hensche, soon to be posted on the HENRY HENSCHE FOUNDATION website, and HENSCHE ON PAINTING by John Robichaux, available from John...as far as I know... both these works reveal what HH thought about painting and what he thought he could teach the student....

What I studied, and what was taught at the school (THE CAPE SCHOOL) was learning how to model form in the light key...many students came to the school who were proficient in tonal form modeling in studio painting...realist painters....also many students came who had no training in painting or modeling forms in the studio...all of these students were in the same boat when it came to learning color modeling in outdoor daylight....the primary goal was first to recognize, visually, the essential difference in hue between the mass of form in direct light and the mass of form in shade.... first the painter had to learn how to state these two grand or major divisions as differences in hues...after that was understood the student could then begin to learn how to state the actual light and atmospheric key by making the light and shade masses color mixtures that were very specific adjustments for the key....IOW...the student first had to learn to see hue as the foundation of color composition and differences in light and shade...then to make mixtures of different pigments that further clarified and refined these hue differences...simple large masses of light or shade were further developed by introducing variations of hues within those masses...the way masses and variations were developed was always by specific variation in hue, but also shape and proportion...HH made it clear that if the student did not see the shape of a color note or its proportion to the surrounding coloring, they did not see the color accurately....

So that is the essential document, guideline, or procedure used by HH...he could not be more specific because each student had their particular level of visual color awareness...some crude, some too refined...some this..some that...he was criticized by Sarback and others for not being specific...the reality is the students were so visually crude and undeveloped...and so used to following paint by number or other formulas...that they could not fathom the fact that the results of the their efforts depended entirely on their own visual color recognition....and the color modeling discipline required each student to learn to see more specifically, and more broadly....
It has been opinioned here that HH was not as good a teacher as a painter... the fact is he was a very specific teacher...no student was lumped into a group...each was taught specifically...assuming the student listened to the teacher...the fact is most students were not as good a student as they thought themselves to be....they couldn't learn what was being taught to them because it required far more change in their thinking and perceptual awareness than they were willing to make....

Kathryn Townsend said:

Hi Ken,

Thanks for jumping in on this discussion. I get the feeling that Michael and I are somewhat in the same boat--we both are attracted to HH's work and to the concepts and approaches of his work, but without being there, its hard to figure out more specifically what HH taught and how and in what stages. I see paintings from HH students, some of which I find interesting, some beautiful and some garish and unpleasant. The latter I saw enough of initially to turn me off nearly completely to HH--if this is what people were raving about--get me to the nearest exit. But then other people convinced me to go back and take another look and to actually try painting block studies in outdoor light. That's when I got really interested.

If Lois talks about starting with complements in her book, then I missed it completely, as that's not what I got from it. What I got from her book is the idea of starting the first statement with colors of the light keys in both light and shadow. Is that off the mark? I have heard people describe Camille's approach as using complements. But I've never taken a class from either Camille or Lois.

So is there any other book or document that more nearly describes HH's ideas, approach, stages of development and the process of beginning to learn color modelling? I've had instructors over the years who are reluctant to tell students anything specific because the teacher is terrified that students are so stupid that they will take it as a "rule," and consequently the instructor never actually teaches anything. I said earlier that I like Lois' book because she walks you step by step through her thinking process. It may not in the end be HH's thinking process or my thinking process or approach, but it gave me insight into one person's way of thinking about it--specific enough to learn something from. All the discussions I've read on the HH websites are tantalizing but more philosophical than anything like pragmatic suggestions about approach. The one thing I really got from the HH Facebook discussion was the idea of thinking first about color rather than value. So what you say about color modelling fits in with that. And yes, I am of the opinion that you have to slog through many, many studies in order to begin to understand a concept.

So if you can point us to some good discussions, specific guidelines, books, references or anything related to what you consider the real teaching of HH, that would be really wonderful.

ken massey said:

Hi Michael...noticed this site when i googled the Hensche Foundation site... just making a hopefully brief response to some of the comments here....
Re..Susan S. and my objections ...i felt the so called (paraphrasing) "...Monet in Four Steps.." misrepresented and misinterpreted what is and was actually involved in learning how to paint...ie. how to paint using color or hue as the starting point (as different than starting with values of local object color)...what Susan left out was the necessity for the painter to slog their way through the color modeling exercises that HH helped us learn how to do....HH had us study the color modeling of form, I think, because it is what replaces learning to model tonal values of non descriptive color neutrals....if the teacher (eg. susan) leaves out the learning stage of color modeling, which can be a very big/long/difficult/ step...the student never gets to the point of visual understanding of the form in the light key.... HH made it clear in his published work that the student had to go through levels or stages of visual growth before they could resolve the color modeling of form in the light key problem.... The misinterpretation is that many think of it as a formula for painting, when it is actually an exercise for visual growth and increased visual awareness... Susan's "construct" as you refer to it...oversimplifies to the point of misleading students to think that color modeling is not even necessary in order to learn what is demonstrated in Henry Hensche's works...

Re. Lois..simply put HH never taught the idea of color compliments as a starting or ending or study point...while it may be something easy for a person to understand, HH stated it was a very limited concept... meaning it limited your visual awareness....

My objections to either Susan or Lois have nothing to do with their careers...only with the fact that their students equate what they hear or read as a duplication of what HH was actually teaching and demonstrating...

Revisions to HH ideas are not his ideas...and his teaching ideas and methods were very carefully considered and arrived at long before Susan or Lois arrived on the scene to study with him...what i have attempted to do on the wetcanvas or other discussions is recreate the wording and idea without revisions....

[Michael McGuire]

Hi Ken, and thanks for chipping in here. If I understand correctly, when you say "light key", this was a term Hensche used to describe the colour of the prevailing light/atmosphere, and "modelling form" simply means getting things to look three dimensional.

So the core of Hensche's teaching was that hue changes rather than just value/tonal variation should be used to make an object read as three dimensional, if the artist's goal is to make it look like what the human eye sees ("visual reality"), and those hue changes will vary with the "light key" and whether the object is in the light or shadow plane. Then one can see that a formulaic approach which tells the student what colours to use cannot work, because the "light key" is infinitely variable and can only be captured by direct observation and skill based on years of practice.

In fairness to Susan Sarback, she doesn't tell students what colours to use in her books, or at her workshops (based on my experience) - I can still remember my first workshop where she had us painting an orange on a white tablecloth under a halogen lamp (close to the colour of mid-day sunlight). The shadow side of the orange had a distinct green cast, and about half of the group got it fairly quickly, but she just kept encouraging the others to keep scanning and comparing until they finally figured it out for themselves. So the core of what she teaches is a way of seeing rather than a "paint by numbers" approach.

As I said above, what she teaches appears to differ from Hensche in only two respects:-

Firstly, she has added what she calls "Stage 1", where she gets students to start by blocking in each main mass in a pure hue plus white, but getting the relative values correct. Her "Stage 2", involves refining the main masses (by adding whatever other colours are necessary to the pure hues)until they read correct. She told me when I queried this some time back, that her "Stage 2" is where Hensche got students to start and she added "Stage 1" to make it easier to learn. That makes sense to me.

The second deviation from Hensche is something I have more of an issue with, that is starting the sunlit and shadow planes in warm and cool colours respectively, and I know from Ken and others that Hensche never said that. Also, as I stated previously in this thread, it is very clear from direct observation that there can often be a dominant warm cast in the nearest shadow planes, especially in vertical planes.

But even with the above proviso, I think that Susan Sarback's book is certainly thought provoking and worth getting, for any artist interested in capturing light effects in a way which mimics human vision.

[ken massey]

Hi Michael...
What HH had students do depended on what the student had previously mastered or learned...
The beginning student was asked to begin large masses of light or shade as a single hue right out of the tube..often without any white...that starting exercise was to be repeated on small boards often left as starts without any more development...
The next level of development was for the student to begin starting masses with mixed colors (pigments), while still maintaining the difference in dominant hue between the large masses...this could be done from mixing directly on the panel or from a mixture made on the palette...this level of study was to begin description of the light and atmospheric conditions (the light key) as seen in the large masses....
The next level of study, after some success in stating the key in the masses, was to begin making hue changes within the large masses that indicated a form/plane change within that mass....the goal was to make a clear hue change without destroying the unity within the mass, and to make any color change a particular shape and proportion...HH said often that if the student could not see the shape of color, then they could not see the color either....


The more advanced students would often begin their studies with the large variations within a mass...sometimes this would fail and the entire mass would need to be remixed as a single unit of color to state the light key...

The stage 1 referred to as something added by Susan S. to help painters was always the starting point for beginning students at The Cape School...even if the beginner was a skilled tonal/value studio painter.... I can only speculate why she thought otherwise...but i won't...

In order to understand the seeing and painting of light keys, the student had to study several distinctly different light keys...in outdoor light... and because any key can change subtly the less experienced students may not be aware of the change...HH wanted any student to change the color of variations quickly..in order to minimize the kind of fatigue that can come by over analyzing the visual quality of colors...

Michael McGuire said:

Hi Ken, and thanks for chipping in here. If I understand correctly, when you say "light key", this was a term Hensche used to describe the colour of the prevailing light/atmosphere, and "modelling form" simply means getting things to look three dimensional.

So the core of Hensche's teaching was that hue changes rather than just value/tonal variation should be used to make an object read as three dimensional, if the artist's goal is to make it look like what the human eye sees ("visual reality"), and those hue changes will vary with the "light key" and whether the object is in the light or shadow plane. Then one can see that a formulaic approach which tells the student what colours to use cannot work, because the "light key" is infinitely variable and can only be captured by direct observation and skill based on years of practice.

In fairness to Susan Sarback, she doesn't tell students what colours to use in her books, or at her workshops (based on my experience) - I can still remember my first workshop where she had us painting an orange on a white tablecloth under a halogen lamp (close to the colour of mid-day sunlight). The shadow side of the orange had a distinct green cast, and about half of the group got it fairly quickly, but she just kept encouraging the others to keep scanning and comparing until they finally figured it out for themselves. So the core of what she teaches is a way of seeing rather than a "paint by numbers" approach.

As I said above, what she teaches appears to differ from Hensche in only two respects:-

Firstly, she has added what she calls "Stage 1", where she gets students to start by blocking in each main mass in a pure hue plus white, but getting the relative values correct. Her "Stage 2", involves refining the main masses (by adding whatever other colours are necessary to the pure hues)until they read correct. She told me when I queried this some time back, that her "Stage 2" is where Hensche got students to start and she added "Stage 1" to make it easier to learn. That makes sense to me.

The second deviation from Hensche is something I have more of an issue with, that is starting the sunlit and shadow planes in warm and cool colours respectively, and I know from Ken and others that Hensche never said that. Also, as I stated previously in this thread, it is very clear from direct observation that there can often be a dominant warm cast in the nearest shadow planes, especially in vertical planes.

But even with the above proviso, I think that Susan Sarback's book is certainly thought provoking and worth getting, for any artist interested in capturing light effects in a way which mimics human vision.

[Kathryn Townsend]

Hi Ken--can you say more about what you mean by this:

"HH wanted any student to change the color of variations quickly..in order to minimize the kind of fatigue that can come by over analyzing the visual quality of colors..."

I imagine what you are saying is that when you over analyze a particular color, you stop seeing it in relation to the colors around it. At least that's what I've observed about my own painting--that when I stare at a color too long, my eyes actually adjust to it in some way and I stop seeing it in its freshness as I initially did.

It seems like whenever a genius painter comes along, whatever the students get from it will be based on their own skill and understanding, and so each of their approaches is just one angle of the pie. What anyone else gets from those people is similarly based on their skill and understanding. But in the end, maybe you can't get very much from what anybody *says* about it or even what they show in a book, unless you try it out for yourself. A friend of mine convinced me last summer to do block exercises outside, and so I did 50 of them. But it wasn't until I was halfway through that I realized I didn't know what the heck I was doing it for--that's when I began researching everything I could find about what Henshe taught.

I don't know anything about Susan's work or her methods, but I'll take what anybody says to try to get a picture of the whole concept--even if I don't particularly like their work. I think sometimes instructors are too afraid of being specific--its like they don't trust the integrity or the rationality of their students--and that seems ultimately arrogant to me. I had an instructor like that years ago--and he used the same type of language--fear that the student would do paint-by-numbers--so he engendered more confusion than light. Sometimes a single, specific guided exercise is enough to turn on the lightbulbs to a whole range of possibility.

So I'll check out the documents that you mention. Also thanks for your comment on my painting. Believe it or not, going through the exercises in Lois' book created some ah-ha moments for me.

[ken massey]

Hi Kathryn,

I learned a bit from HH about instructing other painters...mainly it was to be specific in terms of that painter's level of visual development....and there is a wide range...so I probably agree with your pov that teaching painting is better for the student when the lesson has specific reachable conclusions....which this approach certainly has... but one has to realize..it is not helpful , to a student, to be too specific until the teacher can see what the student already understands....each critique or lesson, though generalized , has to be tailored to the student who may be confounded or bored by it...now that too can be a problem...such as in the situation where the student has not yet exhausted themselves in a sincere effort to solve a specific problem...and this was the problem at the Cape School...HH gave us a simple task..but it required weeks or years of study to begin to solve the problem in a meaningful way....anyone could see how their efforts failed...but it was more difficult to understand how a small success was attained....

Re. the "fatigue of over analyzing...etc." ... a lot of that fatigue is visual, it seems... fresh visual awareness wears off....the idea of scanning, or blinking, or moving the head from side to side,(or any other technique one may think of) to keep the visual sensation sharp or fresh helps to ward off that effect...
But there is also a kind of mental fatigue from color modeling analysis, which is a necessary part of learning, that can set in....and fatigue may not be the best noun to describe it....the effect of over analyzing coloring can be the losing visual awareness of the grand divisions in color....by working quickly, as HH suggested, there is a better chance the painter will not try to analyze coloring mentally, but will access color visually...learning to react rather than to memorize a procedure...

Kathryn Townsend said:

Hi Ken--can you say more about what you mean by this:

"HH wanted any student to change the color of variations quickly..in order to minimize the kind of fatigue that can come by over analyzing the visual quality of colors..."

I imagine what you are saying is that when you over analyze a particular color, you stop seeing it in relation to the colors around it. At least that's what I've observed about my own painting--that when I stare at a color too long, my eyes actually adjust to it in some way and I stop seeing it in its freshness as I initially did.

It seems like whenever a genius painter comes along, whatever the students get from it will be based on their own skill and understanding, and so each of their approaches is just one angle of the pie. What anyone else gets from those people is similarly based on their skill and understanding. But in the end, maybe you can't get very much from what anybody *says* about it or even what they show in a book, unless you try it out for yourself. A friend of mine convinced me last summer to do block exercises outside, and so I did 50 of them. But it wasn't until I was halfway through that I realized I didn't know what the heck I was doing it for--that's when I began researching everything I could find about what Henshe taught.

I don't know anything about Susan's work or her methods, but I'll take what anybody says to try to get a picture of the whole concept--even if I don't particularly like their work. I think sometimes instructors are too afraid of being specific--its like they don't trust the integrity or the rationality of their students--and that seems ultimately arrogant to me. I had an instructor like that years ago--and he used the same type of language--fear that the student would do paint-by-numbers--so he engendered more confusion than light. Sometimes a single, specific guided exercise is enough to turn on the lightbulbs to a whole range of possibility.

So I'll check out the documents that you mention. Also thanks for your comment on my painting. Believe it or not, going through the exercises in Lois' book created some ah-ha moments for me.

[Kathryn Townsend]

Hi Ken,
That makes sense to me. I've noticed that my ability to hear what a teacher has to say is in direct proportion to my readiness to hear it and/or my desperately wanting to know something, and the readiness has to do with having struggled and failed for a considerable time--like the saying (Hamlet?) "the readiness is all." Then the smallest thing can be a door rather than a wall.

So when you talk about painting fast, what is "fast?" I'm not asking for specific rules, just trying to get an idea about what you mean by the word. There are a lot of different ways to do things fast, such as setting a timer or doing limited strokes or stopping after the initial lay-in. I'd like to know what you mean by "fast" and if that was part of the class ritual or a sometimes exercise (this part of the question is curiosity!)

Thanks--K

ken massey said:

Hi Kathryn,

I learned a bit from HH about instructing other painters...mainly it was to be specific in terms of that painter's level of visual development....and there is a wide range...so I probably agree with your pov that teaching painting is better for the student when the lesson has specific reachable conclusions....which this approach certainly has... but one has to realize..it is not helpful , to a student, to be too specific until the teacher can see what the student already understands....each critique or lesson, though generalized , has to be tailored to the student who may be confounded or bored by it...now that too can be a problem...such as in the situation where the student has not yet exhausted themselves in a sincere effort to solve a specific problem...and this was the problem at the Cape School...HH gave us a simple task..but it required weeks or years of study to begin to solve the problem in a meaningful way....anyone could see how their efforts failed...but it was more difficult to understand how a small success was attained....

Re. the "fatigue of over analyzing...etc." ... a lot of that fatigue is visual, it seems... fresh visual awareness wears off....the idea of scanning, or blinking, or moving the head from side to side,(or any other technique one may think of) to keep the visual sensation sharp or fresh helps to ward off that effect...
But there is also a kind of mental fatigue from color modeling analysis, which is a necessary part of learning, that can set in....and fatigue may not be the best noun to describe it....the effect of over analyzing coloring can be the losing visual awareness of the grand divisions in color....by working quickly, as HH suggested, there is a better chance the painter will not try to analyze coloring mentally, but will access color visually...learning to react rather than to memorize a procedure...

[ken massey]

Well the instruction to change color quickly or fast was given as a fundamental imperative for study....ie. by making clear, decisive changes in the color, first of initial mass colorings, then of any large variations within mass colorings, the student was developing an essential habit for color study....ie....it is very likely any painter will get stuck...they may start with a bang...lay in a few simple mass color notes...they may like what they have done...and then fail to make meaningful changes to the initial color notes....either as large variations or as a mass...iow...study color by changing the color where it does not work....(by color we mean hue,and hue mixtures, as the fundamental composition being developed and studied)

So quickly means keeping up with the fact of the changing light situation...ie. you do not have very much time, on the clock.... when studying an area of the composition, glance across it, access how it differs from what you have already noted as color, and immediately change it to what you see as different from the previous notation...eg. if what was first stated tends toward blue , but what you now see tends to be toward a red, or a green, change the color statement quickly toward what is seen...
Quickly means you may have less than one hour before the entire key and composition has changed, so do not dawdle, just make quick new color notes as you see them...

Also, if you cannot see any change of color, just stop...



Kathryn Townsend said:

Hi Ken,
That makes sense to me. I've noticed that my ability to hear what a teacher has to say is in direct proportion to my readiness to hear it and/or my desperately wanting to know something, and the readiness has to do with having struggled and failed for a considerable time--like the saying (Hamlet?) "the readiness is all." Then the smallest thing can be a door rather than a wall.

So when you talk about painting fast, what is "fast?" I'm not asking for specific rules, just trying to get an idea about what you mean by the word. There are a lot of different ways to do things fast, such as setting a timer or doing limited strokes or stopping after the initial lay-in. I'd like to know what you mean by "fast" and if that was part of the class ritual or a sometimes exercise (this part of the question is curiosity!)

Thanks--K

ken massey said:

Hi Kathryn,

I learned a bit from HH about instructing other painters...mainly it was to be specific in terms of that painter's level of visual development....and there is a wide range...so I probably agree with your pov that teaching painting is better for the student when the lesson has specific reachable conclusions....which this approach certainly has... but one has to realize..it is not helpful , to a student, to be too specific until the teacher can see what the student already understands....each critique or lesson, though generalized , has to be tailored to the student who may be confounded or bored by it...now that too can be a problem...such as in the situation where the student has not yet exhausted themselves in a sincere effort to solve a specific problem...and this was the problem at the Cape School...HH gave us a simple task..but it required weeks or years of study to begin to solve the problem in a meaningful way....anyone could see how their efforts failed...but it was more difficult to understand how a small success was attained....

Re. the "fatigue of over analyzing...etc." ... a lot of that fatigue is visual, it seems... fresh visual awareness wears off....the idea of scanning, or blinking, or moving the head from side to side,(or any other technique one may think of) to keep the visual sensation sharp or fresh helps to ward off that effect...
But there is also a kind of mental fatigue from color modeling analysis, which is a necessary part of learning, that can set in....and fatigue may not be the best noun to describe it....the effect of over analyzing coloring can be the losing visual awareness of the grand divisions in color....by working quickly, as HH suggested, there is a better chance the painter will not try to analyze coloring mentally, but will access color visually...learning to react rather than to memorize a procedure...

[Kathryn Townsend]

OK, that makes sense, too. My outside time limit for an outdoor painting is usually 1 hour--just usually how it works out. But I'm assuming that changing the color based on seeing it differently is in perception of what the color is, not because the light has changed?? You're not chasing the light, or are you? I mean sometimes that does happen, for example if you are painting within 1/2 hour of the sun going down or a situation like that, but I am curious if you mean change of perception of color as opposed to actual change of light/color.

Also as far as color modeling, what I understand that to be from reading the Wall discussions is modeling by change of color rather than value and I also understand that HH used different terms to describe the value of color, such as "intensity." So do you find that when you make divisions into color shapes of light and shadow areas that you can do that thinking only color, depth or intensity of color, or whatever, without thinking "value?" I actually find this a fascinating thought shift, so I'm curious about it.

ken massey said:

Well the instruction to change color quickly or fast was given as a fundamental imperative for study....ie. by making clear, decisive changes in the color, first of initial mass colorings, then of any large variations within mass colorings, the student was developing an essential habit for color study....ie....it is very likely any painter will get stuck...they may start with a bang...lay in a few simple mass color notes...they may like what they have done...and then fail to make meaningful changes to the initial color notes....either as large variations or as a mass...iow...study color by changing the color where it does not work....(by color we mean hue,and hue mixtures, as the fundamental composition being developed and studied)

So quickly means keeping up with the fact of the changing light situation...ie. you do not have very much time, on the clock.... when studying an area of the composition, glance across it, access how it differs from what you have already noted as color, and immediately change it to what you see as different from the previous notation...eg. if what was first stated tends toward blue , but what you now see tends to be toward a red, or a green, change the color statement quickly toward what is seen...
Quickly means you may have less than one hour before the entire key and composition has changed, so do not dawdle, just make quick new color notes as you see them...

Also, if you cannot see any change of color, just stop...

[ken massey]

Right...try to work quickly, changing coloring quickly, but within the key that is being studied...if you change to another key...well, that is a different problem...
The reality of learning is that many painters are not aware of any changes in the light and atmosphere (the key) unless the changes are so dramatic that everyone notes them....so...if you realize you are working in a different key than when the study was begun, change the entire massing to describe the new key....and start a different study for the original or earlier key....

What I have found to be most direct, is to think first in terms of hue...ie. ask yourself what hue do i see (in the context of the surrounding coloring)... All the terminology, such as intensity, temperature, purity, value, and so on, is secondary....any analysis based first on the secondary characteristics of coloring will only serve to keep you preoccupied with IT...

All visual sensations are sensations of hues, then hues in a particular chromatic range...when you see the hue, quickly note it, then begin to study its shape and proportion to the surrounding coloring...that will further clarify the chromatic range...in color painting all value is chromatic value....it is a different ballpark than monochromatic value....hue, shape, and proportions lead to resolving all color relationships in any visual sensation....

Ofcourse, the student has to be able to correctly analyze the geometric relationships in vision...you have to be able to triangulate all the compositional elements together to resolve the visual problem....

Kathryn Townsend said:

OK, that makes sense, too. My outside time limit for an outdoor painting is usually 1 hour--just usually how it works out. But I'm assuming that changing the color based on seeing it differently is in perception of what the color is, not because the light has changed?? You're not chasing the light, or are you? I mean sometimes that does happen, for example if you are painting within 1/2 hour of the sun going down or a situation like that, but I am curious if you mean change of perception of color as opposed to actual change of light/color.

Also as far as color modeling, what I understand that to be from reading the Wall discussions is modeling by change of color rather than value and I also understand that HH used different terms to describe the value of color, such as "intensity." So do you find that when you make divisions into color shapes of light and shadow areas that you can do that thinking only color, depth or intensity of color, or whatever, without thinking "value?" I actually find this a fascinating thought shift, so I'm curious about it.

ken massey said:

Well the instruction to change color quickly or fast was given as a fundamental imperative for study....ie. by making clear, decisive changes in the color, first of initial mass colorings, then of any large variations within mass colorings, the student was developing an essential habit for color study....ie....it is very likely any painter will get stuck...they may start with a bang...lay in a few simple mass color notes...they may like what they have done...and then fail to make meaningful changes to the initial color notes....either as large variations or as a mass...iow...study color by changing the color where it does not work....(by color we mean hue,and hue mixtures, as the fundamental composition being developed and studied)

So quickly means keeping up with the fact of the changing light situation...ie. you do not have very much time, on the clock.... when studying an area of the composition, glance across it, access how it differs from what you have already noted as color, and immediately change it to what you see as different from the previous notation...eg. if what was first stated tends toward blue , but what you now see tends to be toward a red, or a green, change the color statement quickly toward what is seen...
Quickly means you may have less than one hour before the entire key and composition has changed, so do not dawdle, just make quick new color notes as you see them...

Also, if you cannot see any change of color, just stop...

[Kathryn Townsend]

Ken--thanks for going into detail about these concepts. I am curious about something--after doing these types of studies for a long time, as you have obviously done, have you become familiar or attuned to different light keys so that you more or less know the color variations within that key? Or is it that each time you sit down to paint you have to construct visually the variations of color for the key? I'm not suggesting that you would learn a formula for these things, but I'm wondering if there is a rationale for a particular color key--a logic to it and if so, what to you the general principles of that logic are.

Also, what I think you are saying is that the term "chromatic range" refers to different values of the hue, but in a color sense, rather than a value (black to white) sense. Is that how you are using that term or is it something else? Maybe you could post a painting of yours to illustrate some of the things you are talking about. It gets pretty esoteric without that.

Thanks--interesting discussion.

ken massey said:

Right...try to work quickly, changing coloring quickly, but within the key that is being studied...if you change to another key...well, that is a different problem...
The reality of learning is that many painters are not aware of any changes in the light and atmosphere (the key) unless the changes are so dramatic that everyone notes them....so...if you realize you are working in a different key than when the study was begun, change the entire massing to describe the new key....and start a different study for the original or earlier key....

What I have found to be most direct, is to think first in terms of hue...ie. ask yourself what hue do i see (in the context of the surrounding coloring)... All the terminology, such as intensity, temperature, purity, value, and so on, is secondary....any analysis based first on the secondary characteristics of coloring will only serve to keep you preoccupied with IT...

All visual sensations are sensations of hues, then hues in a particular chromatic range...when you see the hue, quickly note it, then begin to study its shape and proportion to the surrounding coloring...that will further clarify the chromatic range...in color painting all value is chromatic value....it is a different ballpark than monochromatic value....hue, shape, and proportions lead to resolving all color relationships in any visual sensation....

Ofcourse, the student has to be able to correctly analyze the geometric relationships in vision...you have to be able to triangulate all the compositional elements together to resolve the visual problem....