Workshop Wednesday: Edmond Praybe {Part 1}
Artist, Edmond Praybe, Oil on Yupo paper, 2020. Private Collection.
All painters have a list of other painters they admire for one aspect or another. Some artists are admired for technique, others for the conceptual idea behind the work itself. Edmond Praybe for me falls right in the middle of both considerations. He is one of my favorite contemporary painters working in a very modern feel of realism, one full of abstraction and yet his paintings are still ripe with mood, representation and sense of place. The perfect mix if you ask me. And I am not alone in my admiration of Edmond’s work. He was one of the 2021 finalists of the Bethesda Painting Award, a recipient of the Hohenburg Travel Grant, a two time Mercedes Matter Award winner and was recently profiled in the Painting Perceptions Blog by Larry Groff.
I was lucky enough to get a spot in his “Floral” class at the Winslow Art Center in January of this year when we were still under lock down and at a time before the vaccines were widely available. Winslow Art Center was one of the first to pivot to online classes during the pandemic and it continues doing so with a really robust line up of classes including more from Praybe in the future.
The following are my notes (and screen shots) that I took in class that I will happily share with you here over two blog posts (that will be published a week apart). I found his class intellectually fascinating on so many levels and definitely left feeling inspired. So much so that I taken two more classes with him since then and will happily sign up for more.
Week 1, 02 Jan 2021
-”Treat the flowers as a portrait. Treat them as an entity. (Painting flowers) can become cliché when the attention to specificity is lost.”
“Think about yourself as a botanist when approaching your flowers. The specific shapes - the light catching certain planes, the shards of color. Patterns of shape & lines & value.”
Edmond likes to save flowers after they have dried for a “spot of color” in his still lifes. (And a bonus being that they don’t change after they are dried).
Week 1 was comprised of two demos of the same hibiscus flower (students were assigned later the same exercise). In an effort to maximize his time Edmond, prepped both studies with a simple under-drawing that he did beforehand. He painted on Arches oil paper for both exercises. Same toned ground.
Week 1 , Value Study of Hibiscus Flower
First Exercise: Tonal Value study
Palette: Titanium White & a Neutral Dark (Mixed Up of Primaries).
The goal in this exercise is to decipher the internal shapes and forms of the flower, not paying too much attention to the composition. To be used more as a value study for the second color painting.
Limited palette painting of the same hibiscus flower.
Second Exercise: Limited Palette Painting of the Same Subject
Palette: Indian Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue and Titanium White.
-“Think about basic shapes, breaking it down by values.”
-“Working with a palette knife helps you to make broad decisions about value without getting too fussy.”
-Generally starts his paintings by laying down the darkest darks and lightest lights from the start.
-Is interested in specific shapes and how they exist in space. “What is moving toward me, what is moving away.”
-“You will mostly be operating in the middle values. Ask yourself how do you translate saturation into a value that makes sense?”
-”Scrape down and simplify when things get too overly complicated. When the painting gets “too brushy” etc. Chances are it will make more sense the second time around.”
“Constantly re-evaluate the edges. How soft is it? How hard? How about the proportions? Keep your view point constant.”
“The spaces in between forms (negative shapes) will key you into what is the true form of your subject.”
-”Keep asking yourself, "What is the value next to that value?”
-”You can be as “detailed” as you want or as “open/painterly” as you want.”
-”Don’t lose sight of the big planes if you are the type of person who likes to dive into detail.”
-Uses a palette knife to soften edges and transition values.
-”Slowly a sense of the movement of the forms begins to emerge.”
“Always ask yourself: “How light is this light? How dark in that dark?”
-”Never assume that the values are the same as you move across your subject. Most of the time there is a shift. Look for the dynamism.”
Limited palette painting demo using the previously painted value study as a guide.
Limited Palette Demo
-Use the Value Study as a guide for the underpainting on the limited palette.
-In addition to using the palette knife to soften edges, Edmond also uses it to fill in surface, re-state/erase form.
-Uses Impasto Medium for thick passages (C.A.S. Alkyd Texture Impasto Medium).
-When laying out his limited palette Edmond will often mix up the secondary colors; an orange, a violet & green. Then adds white to each to make a mid-tone & light value of each (he likes to have the visual of what gamut of colors and values he has available when working with a limited palette).
-He has a solvent free brush cleaning routine. Just uses Linseed oil. soap and water to clean his brushes.
-Starts painting the red flower with a mid-tone red. Then paints a light red and the background at the same time, varying the color along the contour.
-”Striping off the excess paint with a knife allows you to get more of that ground through and makes things more luminous.”
-Will “blast in a little color” broadly & suggestively when describing form then will come back and describe negative space (which simultaneously describes the subject). This is also a good way to re-evaluate your shapes when working.
-”The color of the area that trumpets out of the flower is always the most subtle. Has more green in it, is duller. If you get it right it makes the color “pop”. A bright colored neutral scumbled in {will do it}.”
-Lays in a mass of color again at the end of the stamen - then cuts back into it to create the form.
-During the lecture portion of class he shows a slideshow of art work to consider and advises, ”Look at Conrad Gesner’s work (German botanical artist). And Margaret Meed. Also Jim Dine’s Sunflower charcoal drawing and Antonio Lopez Garcia. (Look at) Euan Uglow’s Freesia painting.”
-”Morandi painted a lot of dried flowers.”
-Edmond works from life on toned Arches oil paper saying that “Even with figurative work, the secret to (successful painting) is engagement. You get more out of it working firsthand and you get a sense of time that creeps in. It creates a sense of depth.”
-He will often follow the decay of the bloom or will use a “stunt model” and substitute a blossom as needed.
Week 2, 29 Jan 2021
Assignment: Create two paintings from a limited palette, one limited time exercise and one from long observation
-Some painters benefit from time frames to help them focus.
-Edmond sometimes works on Yupo paper. Just puts a layer of oil paint on top (it is made of plastic, no need to prime).
-”You can get away with “mushy transitions” if there is a bigger shape to hold it in. Otherwise you will get the amateur look of everything being blended to the same degree.”
-At the end of a day of painting Edmond will scrape down all of his paint in to neutral piles and add a tint of white to these mixtures. He will then use these grey piles to neutralize his colors if needed on the the next studio day. Edmond will also use these mixtures to tone his canvases and papers.
-”Find a visual lynch pin in your object then compare out from there. Especially helpful for something complicated like a pine cone. It also helps you figure out distortions.”
-”Be open to allowing the painting to develop as it wants to. If it wants to be a 2 hour painting - then let it”.
Week 2 demo. Notice how Edmond paints the objects as he goes along (as opposed to drawing the items and then filling it in with color).
Week 2 Demo
Limited Palette: Titanium White, Cad Yellow Lemon, Cad Red Medium, Cobalt blue, Thalo Green.
-Starts by adding a note of color and then draws the shape of the water in the vase.
-”This is roughly where this blue is going to be” he says while adding his notes of color & initial drawing to canvas.
-He paints very ambiguously not really defining things initially. “Be accurate with color but lose with drawing (in the beginning).”
-”If something isn’t working don’t be afraid to come back in with a rag or palette knife and get that paint off.”
-His demo grows from one point out. ”Build your form out with the paint - not just color it in.”
-If a mark is too forceful he scrapes it down to make it push back into the space better.
-Balance giving enough accuracy to make sense as an image but do not lose the gestural quality of the paint itself (which you get in faster sketches).
-”Sometimes the best solution for a tricky part is just to let it rest & come back to it.”
-Uses his palette knife a lot to incorporate the object in the background.
-As yourself, “Is it there vs. do I need to state it?”. “Do I need it to further the main goal of the painting?”
-”The areas that I try the least are the best, the areas that I focus on too much I overwork.”
-Edmond tries to approach a fast painting like a Diebenkorn with areas of transparency in the paint application.
Week 2 limited palette
Stay tuned until next week for Part 2 which will cover Weeks 3 and 4 from Edmond’s “Floral” class.
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