Hi everybody! Welcome to Great Artists Steal! My name is Ian Ellis and Iím just going to be focusing on Cezanne's color mixing. We'll look a little bit of the technique as well and try and think about the color contrast a little bit as well. I mean if you're looking at Cezanne's painting this is actually 'Still Life With Fruit Bowl' painted in 1879 to 80. It took him quite a long time to do. if you look at the painting you can see there's very much a kind of warm and cool contrast in the painting lots of blue and lots of warm colors, blue perhaps dictates a little bit, takes over the painting, and there's bits of warm appearing in the painting. What's interesting about Cezanne is when I was studying his work a few years ago I came across the Technical Bulletin team from of the National Gallery and what they they then listed for one of the paintings they've got in the National Gallery 'Mountains at Provence' where they've listed how he mixed, and I was really surprised to see how much he was using black. So he wasn't really following the two-color mixing the way say Monet would do, or maybe Hopper as well, but he'd be using black and so be using like a an Old Master palette mixing using black which we'll look at in the future - I think that we're going to be looking at Lucien Freud soon enough and you'll see how black can be used and for using a very small palette. But he's using it with a really big palette so it's kind of mixed between the two. So it's got the list of colors you see in Monet's palette but it's also got black and white and the black will be then used to darken the colors. Now what's really odd is the fact there's no evidence whatsoever in any of his mixing of colors in the Technical Bulletin team of complementary mixing, which is strange. Complementary mixing was the thing at the time and everybody was kind of aware of how you can make a black using two complementary colors. I spoke a bit about that in the last painting, one of Luc Tuymans. And what you'll find is that instead of using complementaries he's using black. so Iím using a bit of white so it's not just using black say like Matisse would do to darken the blue, you would use it to actually make a gray as well and make a gray tone with a color a tone being a color mixed with gray. So what we've got is a few gray tones in here and you'll see this gray at the back here. Now what Iíve done to start my painting is Iíve put down a yellow ocher with white with acrylic paint and I used a felt tip pen to trace this image. So Iíll very quickly do a little color study. I won't do the whole painting obviously, what Iíll do is a little bit, some fragments of it. A bit like the way Cezanne paints - he will start with a little detail and then brings in a few colors around the painting to hold it together. But you see him focusing in on little parts. And one of the strengths of Cezanne's paintings, what made him really quite unique, was what we call the 'negative space' which again I mentioned in the last one with Luc Tuymans' paintings, where the negative space really is as powerful. The bit around the back is painted just as much as the object so there isn't a kind of like a definition of an object like you find with a realist painter and the background being less important. there may be a few marks or simple flat colors and lots of work going into the real, into the object. But what he's doing he's got lots of broken paint divided equally around the painting, a bit like the impressionists. It was actually he learned how to paint like this actually going out painting with Pizarro, his friend, and he actually copied one of Pizarro's paintings. And he seemed to, I don't know what has happened with Cezanne he seems to to understand the spatial kind of idea of the whole thing, which makes him quite unique. And this is something we won't cover at the moment but we're just looking at the technique. And Iím just going to go for um a bit of mixing. The palette Iíve got here the huge palette if you want to look it up yourself you'll find it's a palette by Emil Bernard he actually it's about 30 colors so I won't list them it'd be too much, but what if you look at that up for yourself you can actually see the the huge list of list of colors has used for his palettes and obviously I think what he'd do was to select colors from that big range. And this one Iíve selected colors like yellow ochre, burnt sienna, vermilion alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue cobalt blue, Iíve got prussian blue there as well viridian green, emerald green. Emerald green is a real favorite of Cezanne's. You see a lot of it in his paintings, He really likes this color I think it was quite a new color at the time. And we call it brilliant yellow. What Iíve done Iíve mixed my lemon yellow with cadmium yellow to get this yellow slightly more in between. Now Iím going to start with the gray colors. Say that someone like van Gogh or Monet perhaps would use complementary colors, oranges and blues or the brown and the blue but again there's no evidence of that so what Iím going to do is just go the way that Cezanne would. Iím going to paint it mix it and go for the mix the color first and then in pure sense perhaps using the emerald green with the ultramarine blue to get the green... A green-blue Iíve got down here a bit white with it so we can see the color. And then this color is actually I can gray that color by using mixing a black and white. Just a little bit more blue there with that to make it more of a blue-gray. Iím getting these colors in there, just a little bit hint of blue with that. now Iím just going to look at some of these other blues in the background there. Iíve got the emerald green with the blue to get the darker color. And I can keep adding the green to get the range of different blues in there slightly going towards more green. I just see bits of green around the back this is a bit dark around here and they're going a bit lighter over that side which I've already got. I don't need to use any black just yet. here we've got the dark brown here and we'll look at that. Iíve got the viridian green or the emerald green I could use to get the dark yellow-brown so Iím going to go for the burnt sienna with the ultramarine blue sorry with the viridian green. And you get this really lovely dark browns with a kind of lovely kind of going off towards more yellowish browns in there go into more more green. And if you think about it when you're darkening brown if it starts moving more greenish it's actually going over the yellow. It will never hit green it's the opposite color but you will get kind of green. If I keep adding a bit of green to that I can see Iíve got it goes to a lovely kind of yellow dark yellow color and you see there's a green in there and you can see this kind of movement between the colors in there. Some colors are a bit lighter a bit more green with the brown bit white with it and just see these - not much white. Brownís a bit of a dodgy color with white, you've got to be really careful with it! But that's just bringing me some of those browns down there. Itís something to do with that gets a bit very pasty gray easily, and you see this yellow ocher in there as well so with the yellow ocher the movement of color you can see between the sienna and the brown using bits of white. So just keep using the white to just try and gray it slightly. These colors down there again yellow ocher on its own with white, perhaps a little bit yellow with it just to make it... more white... You get these colors slightly more yellow it's moving across so you can see the color mix shifting across there. Looking a bit strong just down there a bit. A bit of black needed just not much, be careful with the black you've got to be so careful with it. See how dirty it goes... Thatís more like it, just getting a bit more... just a tiny bit of black. Do you see how I just dab the black onto my palette knife it's just something I do to take off the amount of black so Iíve just got a tiny bit of black. And learning to mix colors really is again I keep stressing this its tiny bits added to mix and find the color. Rather if you're a bit clumsy with the mixing which you can be I mean Iím guilty of that as you see when Iím painting and you're trying to rush a color a bit, trying to get it. But see those lovely combinations of colors over there. and these are quite similar to the colors in the apples as well. So it's a way of holding the painting together. If you notice he's got these blue-greens and they're in the cloth as well. And it's a kind of device a lot of painters were using in impressionist painting and the pointillists were doing the same thing, were holding the painting together with colors repeated around the painting. So there's no coincidence there's the same yellow ochers over here in and in the fruit, a little bit a touch of ocher in the back there that will help hold it together a little bit as well. Some lovely colors! so you can see those, already straight away they're looking great. Well let's go for the reds. the reds look to me quite strong. it may be just a little bit of a sienna with that, with the red itself, we're looking very strong if I use that. So for vermilion and looking very strong so... Now obviously this is a print so it might be a bit brighter Iím looking at print there. But Iím going for the color in the print and if I was going to darken that could I usually use a bit of brown? So I don't need to use a black bit brown might do it a bit of white maybe? Just to again calm it down again. back to the brown. And that's going down that's not too bad a bit more brown... Itís amazing how dull these colors our brain naturally sees them as quite bright It looks a little bit like a bit little my red looks maybe as if it's a bit too orange. So Iím putting a bit of alizarin crimson with that just to bring it back over to the red. Iíve just gone over to brown so that's more like it. Again there's a lovely combination of colors aren't they straight away within that. Now one thing to look at with Cezanne that I mentioned is the negative space but it's also what we call the 'hidden edges'. This is something you see in a lot of paintings by classical painters. They hold the painting together by letting one thing run into another. And you can see the whole painting of the blue breaks into this part. You hardly see the the bowl there that just the end of the edge of the actual blue, and obviously the glass is hidden as it would be because of all the colors around the back. But this is a way way in which your eye comes around the painting. It gets a wonderful movement in the painting which is the flat movement you get in in in Cezanne's words where he gets your eye to travel around. Iíve called him an abstract painter really, kind of there's a realism there, but he's doing it in an abstract way and he's very much aware of how flat the world is, and appears to us and is actually emphasizing that. But it's funny - David Hockney talks about the difference between Caravaggio and Cezanne, and you look at the two and if you put the compare the two, he compares the two and I think he's right to say I think Cezanne's paintings actually look more real than Caravaggio's basket of fruit, who he uses an example. And they look really super real, I mean best place for where you are when you'll be looking at it is from a distance. and they look real - it's quite big painting. But I do think they're an amazing paintings. Cezanne's quote was that he 'wanted to conquer the world with an apple'! Well he did - it's really quite an amazing painting and just painting apples, the most banal things in the world, and making them the most beautiful thing to paint. Weíll just play with the space now, Iím just going to do a little bit of painting. What Iíve found with the technique of Cezanne, I call him a I call him a semi-opaque glazer, if you know what I mean. Sometimes the paints are put on quite opaque and heavily, but sometimes that he's getting the amount of liquid on the paint. And what Iíve got here is a mix between Zest-it and (or you could use the white spirit or turps) with linseed oil. Now Zest-it is really strong so what I have to do is put more linseed oil with it, because what happens if you mix them together is if you just use the oil I think it'd be too glossy, too shiny and if you just use the Zest-it or turps, it will just come out matt. So if you mix them together then when it dries it should still look like the paint's just come out the tube. And I think it's more like skin, a kind of sheen, a kind of eggshell-like quality if you like that. You don't lose the quality of the color. now if the colors fade that's what happens is if you use your turps or Zest-it the colors will fade. But with Cezanne he makes the... glazing traditionally is not (mixing) using white. And then using colors on them, use your white underneath, or the dark colors underneath and you glaze over the top. But with Cezanne what I do is mix colors with white and do kind of like semi-glaze. so that the color underneath - that's this is one, it's a very light yellow ocher or like an egg yolk yellow, but it should slightly come through especially where the warm colors are. So you get that coming through so you don't kill the painting by putting on paint too thick. Iíll just do a little example: say if I put that paint there and then if I put a little bit of oil with my paint and do the same thing you can see it looks lighter. it's perhaps hard to see where you're looking, but it's just a bit thinner it's just a bit thinner, just enough for that to come through and that's one of the things where how he manages to get his paintings to glow. Rather than say Van Gogh, look - you get the warm and the cool, and you've got the kind of complementaries, you've got the idea of green and blue which he seems to know about, which is odd why he'd never actually mix them. Perhaps didn't want to mix the the opposites to get the black but he's certainly aware of complementaries and he's aware of the effects of light and shade on the eye. And so the complementaries, you can see that that's a green-blue that's a warm red, mix those together you get black which is he doesn't do. Anyway Iím just going to put a little bit of paint on. And when he's painting you can see he's got little brush marks. again and those little brush marks function as a kind of spatial thing of course. They overlap each other the way the objects do and they create space. A bit like a landscape painting, if anything else where you would expect to see that kind of atmosphere in a painting, where the things go back in depth with the blue. But he was obsessed with his landscape paintings, and the landscape paintings I think come into his still life. So it gets some kind of, makes them a bit surreal as well because he creates loads of space. So you wouldn't get that depth of blue but you would do in a landscape, and it's putting that into his painting. And he makes some really beautiful paintings. But I would put Cezanne down as a landscape painter, really even though he loves still life but the way he paints, the way he paints portraits there's a sense of of kind of distance and aerial perspective which helps create this strange kind of space. Now like I can see that I need to make sure each brush mark I have makes a very strong line, and I go back to say what you're attempting to do is to actually keep working on the painting until you until the paint goes too dry. And don't do that - you've got to keep putting paint on so it takes time. He'd take ages doing this painting because he was making sure the brush marks were right. But it's a very magical thing looking at Cezanne's paintings because when they come together it's really really exciting, and Iíve copied a few of them before and they really are. Really I would recommend everyone to do that because it's really a treat to look at how these things are so flat but how spatial they look as well, which is really part of the beauty. Now I'm just going to go for a few whites in there as well. Iím going to put some light darks in there. Iíve got the white paint with some blue, just a bit of blue within the white and that looks lovely against that. You can see that color coming through, looks a bit too green-blue so Iím going to bring a bit more of a white in there, a cleaner white, and put a bit more ultramarine with that. (I was looking for this brush but it was in my hand!) Okay, so just a little bit. Iím using my brush to mix with which is a bit naughty, but Iím just looking at the... you should be using a palette knife really if you want to be correct. And you've got this really powerful white, really loads and loads of white makes it what the... almost the cloth look more kind of... looks a little bit too pure actually. I think if you can try using white you can see it still looks a bit too gross, so Iím just going to put a little bit of black with that just to get it a bit grayer. A little bit more green-blue as well with that. Still looks a little bit... bring more this gray I had before with the blue-green blue-grey... Thatís better, and I can start bringing that in. Looks a little bit more purple when it's grayer that's the thing that threw me a bit! and - clean brush - and going for some of those blues at the back again. Iím looking for these blue colors around the back here breaking into the pot. Using a little bit more liquid, it's not so dry the paint. Some of it is though you can see he's got a few dry points in there and Iím working up to the negative... Clean my brush! and then some of these ochers appearing in the fruit. And Iím going to go for a very dark color very quickly, bringing in the black-brown, dark brown-green that I mixed earlier. And the negative space is very important here to bring that forward. Again it's so important even in the dark areas to get the broken brush marks. You can see there's more other colors breaking in with the brown Iíve got there Iím using... And again there's some much darker colors in the between some of the fruit at the back... It's very important to get these dark colors on quite early because then you can see how bright the other colors need to be. so if you were doing this - I mean it's easy for me because Iím copying the painting - but when you're doing your own painting what's very difficult is to control the quality of the lights and darks in the painting how dark they need to be. The problem is if you didn't put the dark colors in then you would perhaps make all the other colors too light, trying to get the brightness. So when you bring the darkness in when doing your own painting you're actually controlling the the contrast in your painting, so you can see how bright the reds need to be. So Iíll bring in my reds now - I need to clean my brush. A bit more liquid... and this was looks very bright when you see it up against these browns you see here. Perhaps maybe if you've not put the dark colors in there, Iíd perhaps go a little bit too far. Youíre controlling the painting around there just a little bit. And these some of the dark colors Iíve got here against the apple breaks into the apple here and this is where you've got to be brave enough to do this to allow that to happen, where you've got the the brush it actually literally goes over the edge. And a lot of students I've found when they're painting find that really hard to do, to actually go over an edge and let it break in... Line as well was important for Cezanne. When he's using line, the line isn't like a cartoon like it's like a negative, so the line of this is like a negative shape of that or it's part of the object, part of the knife. So you've got that edge which becomes part of the apple here, but then there's another negative shape it's around the back. So the line always functions like that... just here you've got this dark blue in the glass. Itís like it's actually part of the background that part, blue and then part of the glass this side so it's controlling the space of the painting. Iím just going through a few more really dark colors now. Iím going to go for my black let's get these dark colors around the back here, this really heavy black Iíve got there... And there's a lot of drawing going on here and again the line, and that line is something really interesting because what it does when you put line in the painting our eye naturally follows around it so that helps create movement. So you can see he enjoys the line in the in the decoration in the back of the painting, which I would bring in looking at that. But just to finish off Iím just going to do a little bit mixing with the emerald green and the ocher to get the green of the glass of the of the apple. And I think it's just a little bit white with it... so Iíve got the emerald green and this will set all the colors off nicely. Excuse a big brush, a bit too big that brush. Iím just putting it in very quickly, very loosely there which is a few more colors around here and in the back there... And you can see the painting starting to look back. Itís a little bit of the same greens in the back around the painting, a little bit in the cloth as well so it's kind of holding it together. Anyway - you can see how it's developing and obviously Iíd recommend you to have a go. I mean it's not necessarily this painting, but he's really such a great painter to look at. And there's still life you can set up at home, and the during lockdown you could really do a bit of painting! Set something up and see if you can do some painting, maybe using the same palette - it's up to you. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that everybody! Please remember, don't forget to subscribe! And the next painting Iíve been looking at is 'Guernica' and it's the second one of the interpretation videos. So I hope you enjoyed that and I look forward to seeing you then! Bye everybody!!
