The finished Week 3 Full color palette painting demo by Edmond Praybe.

This post is a continuation of last week’s post on Edmond Praybe’s 4 week “Floral” class that I took with him through the Winslow Art Center back in January of this year. The following are my notes and screen grabs that I took during the final Week 3 and Week 4 classes.

Week 3, 05 Feb 2021

-”When working in a secondary palette it is helpful to approach it as if you were working in black & white. Approach your color decisions more as temperature decisions. This is especially helpful in landscapes when you have too much green.”

-”You can introduce and element of change to a painting by repainting an object again in a slightly different location on the canvas (elevating the object, etc.) or by painting it again at a different time of the day.”

-Edmond will move an object in a painting. Often painting it out and putting it back in. “It opens up the painting in a fresh way.”

- The "Euglow approach is to look at the subject frankly each session and to redo the painting each time, not just add details on top.

-You can experiment with a fresh, (quick) first pass in acrylic and then paint in oil on top of that.

-”It is the color of the flower that draws us in. Today we let loose with a full color palette idea.”

-Consider the 4 main aspects of Color: Hue, Value, Saturation, Temperature.

-Simultaneous contrast: what color is next to a color influences the reading of the color. See Joseph Alber’s color experiments.

-”Sometimes it is the colors that are around something that are not working. It is all about the context.”

-”It is helpful to “name” what is wrong with your color. Is the temperature off? Give a vocabulary to the phenomenon that is happening in your painting. Be more analytical.”

-Edmond will sometimes use colored tissue paper as backdrops for still lifes.

Full Color Palette Painting Demo

Palette: Titanium White, Tin Yellow, Cad Yellow Light, Indian Yellow, Cad Orange, Cad Red Medium, Quin Red, Manganese Violet, Alizarin Crimson, Ultra blue, Cobalt blue, Cerulean blue, Cobalt Green, Pthalo Green & Mars Black

-Edmond instructed us to “Use any of the above colors and any tint (color + white) mixture in your paintings this week” for our assignment. In addition we were allowed to create up to 4 specific mixtures as needed during the development of our paintings. The result of this exercise was that the majority of our paintings would be painted from the tint strings or pure color.

-”Pthalo green and Indian Yellow will make some really beautiful greens.”

-A good strategy in this exercise is to save two of the discretionary mixes for the end of the painting to use as needed. Or use only tints in the beginning and then create your mixes to bridge any color gaps.

-”The idea is to give everything a very nameable color. Be very direct with how you are seeing the color.”

-For this exercise Edmond will leave a little space blank in between objects and fill it in later so as not to unintentionally mix the adjoining colors.

-Add fast drying mediums from the beginning so it dries quickly enough to work in layers without the layers mixing.

-Edmond will do this exercise in his studio after he has been doing too many “grey” paintings to remind himself that painting is all about handling color.

-”It may be pretty blunt at first which is fine, you start fine tuning as you go. Give up the idea that this is about beautiful painting. This (exercise) is about understanding color - but there will be sections that turn out very interesting. These discoveries are what can inform future paintings.”

-”(On abstraction) Look at flat pieces of form and less modeling. Accent the idea of certain types of flatness. A flat form and then two flat forms coming together. Let them sit together not blending them too much.”

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Edmond Praybe’s Week 3 Full Color Demo early on. Notice how he began first with the bottle on the left and then works his way through the composition.

-“Henshe would use the saturation of color as a light in his paintings. Even his passages of white have color in them. “

-Look at Carl Plansky’s work (founder of Williamsburg Paints).

-”Think of (this) color string assignment as a collage that you are adding pieces of color on top of each other. You can scrape down. Yes, you can refine shapes smaller and smaller as you go.”

-”Sita Saxe thought that this type of exercise got you closer to a Diebenkorn and Bay area way of painting. Pure color in shadow, etc.”

-”This exercise is meant to heighten your sense of color.”

Week 4, 12 Feb 2021

-”This week’s assignment is about complexity and composition in the floral arrangements.”

-”(On composition) Consider placement of objects: on floor, on shelf. Where is it in relation to the foreground, background? Where are the objects in relation to each other? How many things are you using and what is their placement?“

-”Start out with a couple items then decide what you want to add of take out. Then analyze and step back".

Edmond Praybe’s demo on arranging still life objects.

-”Paint” the objects (in your mind) first by how carefully you consider the set up the still life itself.”

-”There is no real right answer (compositional solution). It is about finding the balance or off balance between objects.”

-Edmond admits to often spending half a day to set up his still lifes.

-Use a color family or strong color association as your basis for your composition.

-Edmond is thinking about “fun shapes of color” when he composes. He is thinking more about the color and their relationships to objects. Composing purely on color and shape. What the objects are about is not as important. Working in this way pushes the sense of abstraction and the design of his paintings.

“Don’t neglect the power of lighting situations to create interest in your still life.”

-Think of breaking up edges in a fun way. How the color of a white plate on a white fabric flows together.

-”Paint abstractly - but with your objects.”

—”Groupings are a fun way to set up a painting. Clusters of things.”

—Edmond will tape out the edges of the composition of his still life objects so that he doesn’t “get lost”. This helps him to see the actual proportion of shape in a more complicated painting.”

-Edmond thinks that “Susan Jane Welp paintings break all composition rules”.

Week 4 Demo

-In this week’s demo Edmond will use the approach that he calls “quick painting”. He will get some kind of notation of where the placement goes and color and then come back to it the next day so that he doesn’t get too stuck in describing it.

-”Constantly bouncing back and forth between one color or another, one element or another.”

-”It is important to get “notes”, some kind of feeling, for what is happening in the broader areas (background). I think the sooner that you get around into putting these notes of the broad areas of color, the better. It forces you to make color decisions and it will make the painting have a better sense of unity and harmony overall.”

“The important thing is not what it is but where it is. What is the main color, etc? You don’t have to draw everything perfectly but where you put things matters.”

-”This way of working (color notation) is really good for very literal painters.”

-Quadrangulating and triangulating where things will be. Considering your corners in relation to where things will be.

-”You are having a dialog of comparisons.”

-’That struggle of back and forth gives the painting a sense of energy that cannot be achieved by locking in right away.”

-”I kind of enjoy when the painting doesn’t look like anything for a while. I hold onto that feeling. The paintings come out better. There is a more pronounced sense of being seen.”

-“I try to resist the urges to finish a line, resist the urge to draw out the edges and contours of everything just because I know it is there,”

-”As I think of “notes” I am thinking of temperature shifts.”

-”Slowly things emerge out. Like the fog is lifting.”

-”Another good trick is to use brushes that are two sizes too big for what you need in the initial block in if you have a tendency to get too detailed in the beginning.”

-”If you leave too much of a “halo” around objects you don’t really understand how the colors are interacting.”

Edmond Praybe’s Week 4 demo painting at the end of the session.

The final finished painting by Edmond Praybe.

I want to thank Edmond Praybe for allowing me to share my notes and images with you during this post and the first blog post I wrote on him. He is an extremely generous teacher as you can see from all that I have shared. If you have enjoyed what I have shared with you today, then I really would encourage you to take a class with him yourself if you have the opportunity.

Thank you Edmond!

Workshop Wednesday: Edmond Praybe {Part 2}