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AMERICANARTIST®

B A S I C & A DVA N C E D I N S T R U C T I O N

WorkshopFOR OIL & ACRYLIC PAINTERS ®

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How toPick, Mix, and Paint ColorsT E C H N I Q U E S O F

Acrylic Painting

DISPLAY UNTIL SEPTEMBER 11 , 2006

SUMMER 2006 www.myamericanartist.com

WKSHP SUM 06 - Cover 5/8/06 5:36 PM

STRESSING THE

NOT LINES OR VALUES

Relationshipof Colors,

J O H N E B E R S B E R G E R :

The 19th-century Impressionists pointed out that planes of light and shadow can be described by the relationship of colors. Several con-temporary artists now help other artists understand how to use high-intensity pigments to capture the way light reveals figures, still lifes,and landscapes. Maryland artist John Ebersberger is one of the mostarticulate and enthusiastic of these Impressionist painters and teachers.

by M. Stephen Doherty

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Ebersberger helped Nancy McCarra with her initial drawing of colored blocks.

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that by mixing across the color wheel,color intensity can be adjusted accu-rately. “Mixing down from a brighterrange of pigments to achieve a specificcolor is far better than arbitrarilyadding a brown or black color to makea color darker.”

When asked if he pushes colors tomake the relationships between them more obvious—thatis, if he makes the shadows bluer or the sunlit surfaces moreyellow than they really are—Ebersberger responds by sayingthat opaque oil paints are limited in their ability to rival thebrilliance of light observed directly from nature. “Any paintthat artists select will be a translation of the colors innature,” he explains. “It is not a distortion of the truth for anartist to use any available means to recreate the illusion oflight. Making a strong color statement at the outset of apainting will lay a solid foundation for its development.”

One way of keeping a wide range of tube colors brightand intense is to apply thick oil paint with a palette kniferather than a paintbrush. “When Charles Hawthorne(1872–1930) first started teaching this approach, he had hisstudents apply paint with a putty knife,” Ebersberger pointsout. “His reasoning was that if students were forced toapply lots of paint and only concern themselves with bigshapes, they were more apt to appreciate the beauty of thecolor relationships rather than the outlines.” Hawthorne’s

John Ebersberger wrote in literature distributed to artistswho recently participated in his still-life painting workshopin Edgewater, Maryland, just south of Annapolis. “Color isused to depict light and the illusion of objects in a specificlight environment. It is the relationship of the colors thatcreates the illusion of light—the light plane vs. the shadowplane, or the silhouette of an object seen against the light.”

In simple terms, Ebersberger is dedicated to helpingartists understand that one effective way of creating theappearance of light and shadow in an oil painting is to bal-ance the relationship of colors rather than values. Insteadof modeling an object with lighter and darker versions ofthe same color, he points out that the light plane of anobject is actually a different color than the shadow plane.“Although this is true in all cases, it is most easily seen out-side on a bright, sunny day. For example, a pink shirt insunlight might lean toward a tint of bright scarlet, but theshadow plane, influenced by the illumination of the sky,will be a shade of violet.” Ebersberger goes on to explain

“Impressionism is an advancement of thepainter’s visual language from value-oriented, tone-based pictures to creatingpaintings with a full spectrum of color,”

OPPOSITE PAGE, BELOW

A palette made by artistLee Boynton with all therecommended colorsarranged on it.

OPPOSITE PAGE, ABOVE

Ebersberger showedstudents reproductionsof Impressionistpaintings in art books.


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Demonstration: Triumph of Spirit

Step 1 The still-life arrangement from whichEbersberger completed the painting.

Step 2Ebersberger first used charcoal and whitepastel to sketch a preparatory drawing oncardboard then trimmed the cardboard to theactual size of the painting.

Step 3Moving to the actual board on which the subjectwould be painted, Ebersberger drew a moredetailed charcoal drawing of the setup.


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Step 4Next, the artist began the initial lay-in of the mainmasses of color. “At this stage I am establishing therelationship of the color in the light to the color inshadow,” the artist says. “This creates the illusionof an object in a specific light environment.”

Step 5 (LEFT)

Filling in the white areas of the canvas “so asnot to influence my perception of the colors,”Ebersberger completed the main masses.

Step 6 (ABOVE)

The artist continued to refine the main massesand began studying the major variations of color,including the halftone on the torso of the figure.

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Demonstration: Triumph of Spirit

Step 7Ebersberger completed the major variations,including the shadow shapes of the figure.

Step 8Breaking each of the major areas of color intominor variations, the artist worked the painting tocompletion, adding details and accents as needed.


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Triumph of Spirit2005, oil, 32 x 24.Collection Emile Henault.


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student and artistic heir was Henry Hensche (1899–1992),who switched from putty knives to flexible palette knives. “Iwas introduced to Hensche in 1982 by Cedric Egeli(1936–), with whom I was studying portraiture and figurepainting. I subsequently studied with Hensche during thelast 10 years of his life.”

Ebersberger, his students, and others who trained in thistradition of Impressionist painting now create the proof ofthe theories handed down from Hawthorne to Hensche toEgeli. There is a growing community of Impressionistartists in the Baltimore/Annapolis/Washington, DC, areawho capture the brilliance and variety of light effects inboth studio and outdoor paintings.

One of the basic exercises used by Ebersberger and oth-ers who teach an Impressionist approach to oil painting isto have students paint colored blocks sitting in the sunlight.“Henry Hensche had beginners working outside inProvincetown, Massachusetts, paint colored blocks of wood,and it really was a good way to address the fundamentalaspects of painting planes of light and shadow,” Ebersbergerexplains. “The procedure is to divide each facet of a blockinto a colored shape for the light plane and a coloredshape for the shadow plane, each of them painted with oilcolors applied with a palette knife. The students only paintthe large, flat, simple shapes of color and then adjust therelationship.

“With more experience, students are ready to paint still-life arrangements of objects with simple shapes and sur-faces, such as ceramic crockery, undecorated bowls, andfruit,” Ebersberger continues. “Once again, they begin bypainting the simple, overall forms of the objects beforebreaking up the shapes into smaller areas.” As studentsfocus on the individual surfaces and divide those masses,Ebersberger encourages them to ask the following questions:

1. Where are the darkest darks?2. Where is the lightest light?3. Which are the brightest, most saturated colors?4. Which are the muted, duller colors?

As a next step, Ebersberger encourages the students tocontinue dividing each of the main masses into major vari-ations, or color shapes, of smaller size that model theforms. Those include halftones on cylindrical and sphericalforms painted distinctly with different colors, not the samecolor adjusted in value.

In the literature distributed to workshop participants,

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Student Rick Casali laidin the masses of colorwith a palette knife.

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Casali continued todevelop his still-lifepainting.


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Ebersberger advisedAbigail McBride as shebegan her painting.

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McBride worked on herstill life.

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A comparison ofMcBride’s painting withthe objects she waspainting.


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Students’ Work

1

2

Ebersberger offered the following hints to help studentsbetter understand the concepts he presented:

1. Think beyond local colors. You are recreating a visualimpression, not a literal description.

2. Do not think in terms of relative values. Make theshadow plane a different color than the light plane. Ifyou get the color right, the value will automatically becorrect.

3. Mix across the color wheel to attain your neutralgrays, browns, and muted colors. This allows for agreater and more specific range of neutrals. Forexample, mix cerulean blue with scarlet for a grayand adjust the combination of pigments to make thegray warmer or cooler.

4. All shadow colors are not blue. Do not trade in atonal prejudice of seeing brown shadows with anImpressionist prejudice of seeing blue and purpleshadows. In a north-lit studio, the primary illumina-tion is the blue sky and the light planes will probablybe cooler than the cast shadows. The most importantthing is to paint what you see, not your preconceivednotions about color relationships.

5. When establishing the shapes of major and minorvariations, make shapes that help to define andmodel the form of the object.

Most of the students participating in Ebersberger’srecent workshop were experienced painters who hadstudied in his weekly classes at Maryland Hall for theCreative Arts, in Annapolis. “I’ve been teaching theresince 1984, and most of the people attending this work-shop learned the basics of Impressionist painting some-time during the past 10 years,” Ebersberger explains.“They didn’t need as much help making elementarystudies or learning the fundamental principles. Instead,they were ready to work on more subtle refinementsthat lend beauty to oil paintings.”

Beauty is something Ebersberger talks about frequent-ly when discussing the aims of his workshops or his ownfigure and landscape paintings. “Beauty beckons an artistinto the studio or out into the landscape, andImpressionism is one of the natural vehicles for express-ing the beauty of nature as revealed in the light,” he saysenthusiastically. “It’s beauty that compels me to paint fig-ures outdoors in the light, still-life arrangements set up


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1. Abigail McBride2. Michele Donovan3. Caroline Sims4. Rick Casali5. Nancy McCarra

4

3

5


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Ebersberger’s Work

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The Wanderer II2005, oil, 27 x 31.Courtesy McBrideGallery, Annapolis,Maryland.

Bottled Light2005, oil, 16 x 12.Collection DouglasWalters.

Elizabeth2005, oil, 19 x 16.Collection the artist.

The Cellist2005, oil, 25 x 17.Collection the artist.

Rose Cascade2005, oil, 30 x 24.Courtesy Edgartown ArtGallery, Edgartown,Massachusetts.


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in the garden beside my home, models posing in the stu-dio, or portrait clients in their homes. Sometimes I’m capti-vated by the rich, somber tones I find indoors; and othertimes it’s the strong light and shadow of the morning thatmotivate me.”

Ebersberger prefers to work directly from his subject sohe can study the subtle color relationships, although hedoes occasionally work from photographs to complete com-missioned portraits. “When painting outdoors, I generallylimit my painting time to about 90 minutes because thelight—and therefore the relationship between colors—changes after that interval of time,” he explains. “Towardthe end of the day, the opposition of the warm light planesto the cooler shadow notes is dramatic. The light changesvery rapidly, so the painting time is shorter. The middaylight has its own beauty and, because the color shift is sub-tler, the painting time can be extended.”

Sometimes Ebersberger paints the same outdoor loca-tion over several days. In those situations he might put hiswet palette in a freezer chest overnight to keep the paintsfrom drying out before the next day’s session. “That’s obvi-ously not necessary when I’m painting during the wintermonths in the Northeastern section of the country,” he sayswith a laugh. “For the past 20 years a group of us havepainted outdoors at Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, during theholidays between Christmas and New Year’s, and we leaveour wet palettes outside the cabin. They might be coveredwith ice in the morning, but the paint hasn’t dried.” !

M. Stephen Doherty is the editor-in-chief of Workshop.

“Beauty beckons an artist into thestudio or out into the landscape,and Impressionism is one of thenatural vehicles for expressingthe beauty of nature as revealedin the light.”

Ebersberger’s MaterialsPALETTE! titanium white! viridian! cadmium yellow light! cadmium yellow! cadmium orange! cadmium red deep! scarlet lake or cadmium scarlet! permanent rose! ultramarine blue! cerulean blue! permanent green light

OTHER SUPPLIES! Loew-Cornell J-1 or RGM 44 or Dick Blick stainless-

steel palette knives! gessoed Masonite hard board (16" x 20" or 12" x 16")! large wooden or acrylic palette! Bounty paper towels! visor or baseball cap with brim! Grumbacher extra-soft vine charcoal

John Ebersberger graduated with a B.F.A. degreefrom the Maryland Institute College of Art, in Baltimore,and then began an intensive period of study with artistCedric Egeli. He also studied extensively with HenryHensche and sculptor Steve Perkins. He is a co-founderof the Mid-Atlantic Plein Air Painters Association, an artistmember of the Maryland Society of Portrait Painters, andan instructor at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, inAnnapolis. He has exhibited with galleries throughout theUnited States, and his paintings are included in the col-lections of the U.S. Naval Academy, Lockheed MartinCorporation, the First Alabama Bank, and the FederalReserve Bank of Maryland. For more information, visit hiswebsite: www.johnebersberger.com.

About the Artist

Reprinted from Workshop Summer: Copyright © 2006 by VNU Business Media, Inc. All rights reserved.


Summer 2006 83

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Casali completed themajor variations in hispainting.

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A comparison of twostudent paintings of thesame still-lifearrangement.

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McCarra’s painting inwhich most of themasses have beenpainted.


photos & advice from teachers american … cover1_p-1.pdf · ers who teach an impressionist...

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