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Harold Speed on Flat and Gradated Tones

Welcome to the GJ Book Club. Today well cover pages 187-192 of the chapter on "Tone and Colour Design," from Harold Speeds 1924 art instruction book Oil Painting Techniques and Materials.

Ill present Speeds main points in boldface type either verbatim or paraphrased, followed by my comments. If you want to add a comment, please use the numbered points to refer to the relevant section of the chapter.

1. Gradated and Flat Tones
Speed covered this topic in his book on drawing as well. He suggests planning the picture in flat tones and to "let your gradations be the result of such tones melting into each other where necessary." Form that is conceived in planar terms has more vigor, he argues, compared to smoothly curving form, which can start looking effete or feeble.

Turner - Norham Castle Sunrise

2. Lost Edges
Speed says that a good place to put gradations is in the edges between the big flat shapes. "The larger the number of these lost edges the more gracious the expression, and the larger the number of hard edges, the more forceful and less gracious the expression." As with all painterly aesthetics, an intelligent mix of both is the best bet.

3. Range of Tone
Heres another principle: "The smaller the range of tone used, the quieter and more peaceful the result." In the Turner sunrise painting, the values are kept close and the edges are kept soft, creating a gentle effect, like a shimmering tremolo on the violin. Note that he didnt use pure white for the sun, but shifted hue and chroma from a light gray sky to a high-chroma yellow sun. The piece is high in key and is saved by the solitary dark accent of the cow (or is it a horse? I cant tell).

Whether Turner pushes his effects too far in his late work is a matter of taste; I prefer his earlier work where the effects are more understated. I think Frederic Church is better at Turner than Turner is.

The reverse is also effective: a mostly dark painting with a single light accent, as with the Bierstadt nocturne below:

Bierstadt Ships at Night

Speed says: "When the full scale is used and the tones strongly contrasted you get the most dramatic effects. But when the full scale is used but the tones are not strongly contrasted but gradate quietly into the other, you get an effect that is neither dramatic nor peaceful but simply a strong normal effect."

Giorgiones Holy Family with Saints

4. Giorgiones Holy Family with Saints
Note the central position of the Madonna, but the varied handling of the flanking figures.


5. Giorgiones Fête Champêtre (Pastoral Concert)
Speed admires the wide range of tone without dramatic edge contrasts. Contrast between gentle form modeling on figures to staccato accents on the drapery.


6. Poussins Flight into Egypt
Speed seems to greatly admire this painting. He analyzes the piece by sketching a tone plan and a diagram of line rhythms, and he breaks down the composition in tonal terms. Personally, I dont see this as being a very exemplary work. It has so many confused centers of interest and awkward, stiff passages. What is the baby Jesus most worried about: the concrete clouds, the heavy handed foreshadowing, or his distracted parents? Sorry, Ive just never been a big fan of Poussin.

Next week—Well continue with the Veronese on page 192.
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Harold Speed on Unity and Variety

Today well cover pages 181-187 of the chapter on "Tone and Colour Design," from Harold Speeds 1924 art instruction book Oil Painting Techniques and Materials. This is another very long section of the book that well have to break into parts.

Ill present Speeds main points in boldface type either verbatim or paraphrased, followed by my comments. If you want to add a comment, please use the numbered points to refer to the relevant section of the chapter.

Andrew Wyeth The Sleepers

1. "Art may be expression, but if nothing has been communicated, nothing has been expressed in any effective way."
The distinction between expression and communication is an important one, since the latter requires someone to receive the message. Expression can happen when an artist is all alone on the beach writing something on the sand. One thing the Internet has given artists is the ability to see right away how their work is received by real people. I dont know if being conscious of the audiences reaction is a good thing or a bad thing, but it sure is a thing. Its hard to ignore the audience and I wonder how it affects us in the long run.

2. Natural appearance vs. rhythm
Speed is setting up a distinction between something that looks convincingly real and a something that uses design principles to have an effective emotional impact. These two objectives in painting arent necessarily in opposition. The way I think about it is that there are many kinds of realism, or many ways to paint something so that it looks convincingly real. You might for example focus on the texture or the atmospherics or the silhouette or the warm glowing colors, or whatever expresses your idea. And then there are all the qualities of paint handling. Each of us has to choose which type of realism best serves the idea.

3. Page 184, paragraph beginning: "It is not rather that...." Speed says: "We are continually seeking to transform the things of this existence into terms of this inner, more permanent realm."
Speed gets philosophical here, and the language is a bit difficult to unravel, but what hes saying is profound, connecting the world of our inner mental life with the external world that we perceive and interpret through art. Andrew Wyeth talks a lot about this. He doesnt head out looking for a scene to paint. He starts with an inner idea and builds it from the inside out. The result may be realistic to the eye, but it all starts with dreams and memories.


Tone Design
4. Flat tones create unity. A lot of light-to-dark modeling can create variety.
In the Raphael above, theres a lot of modeling within each form, and each form is distinguished from its surrounding background, creating a choppy effect. Thomas Hart Benton also has a tendency to define his forms all the way around. The tones are much more unified in the Cornwell below. One is not necessarily better than the other. 

Image: Dean Cornwell

5. For broader effect, "assemble the light masses together and unite the dark masses also, so that the light and dark tones, instead of playing together throughout the picture, are divided and grouped separately."
Hey, this sounds like shapewelding, something that I discussed in a previous post.
6. In a mostly dark-toned picture, the light masses will attract attention. 
Speed says: "This is why portrait painters so favour a dark background, as it so easily makes the light head the dominating interest in the picture."

Next week—Well continue on page 187 with his discussion of gradated and flat tones.
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Harold Speed Discusses Color and Taste

Welcome to the GJ Book Club. Today well cover pages 192-216 of the chapter on "Tone and Colour Design," from Harold Speeds 1924 art instruction book Oil Painting Techniques and Materials.

Ill present Speeds main points in boldface type either verbatim or paraphrased, followed by my comments. If you want to add a comment, please use the numbered points to refer to the relevant section of the chapter.

Veronese—Allegory of Love: Infidelity

1. Veronese analysis

Seago --Thames Embankment

Sargent Wyndham sisters.

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Harold Speed on Oil Painting Mediums

Welcome to the GJ Book Club. Today well cover pages 217-227 of the chapter on "Materials," from Harold Speeds 1924 art instruction book Oil Painting Techniques and Materials.

Ill present Speeds main points in boldface type either verbatim or paraphrased, followed by my comments. If you want to add a comment, please use the numbered points to refer to the relevant section of the chapter.

1. Oil is a more challenging medium than watercolor because it often tends toward muddiness and it doesnt lend itself to accidental effects.
Another way to say it is that in inexperienced hands, its easier to get an awful painting in oil, but harder to get a great painting in watercolor.

Oil painting by G. Hayes before and after cleaning (and maybe some Photoshop) from Oil Painting Restoration blog

2. Modern painters should use a more primitive medium, such as mosaic tiles.
How about aerosol spray cans, silk screen, and house paint? Its as if Speed got his wish. Oil paints are expensive, slow to apply, slow drying, and comparatively dull, so its no wonder that modern painters adopted other methods.
3. Artists should have the experience of mixing their own paints.
He says we can learn something from house painters, who in Speeds day would still mix their own paints. By mixing your own paints, you can control all the variables of the paint mixture

House painter circa 1915-1920

4. House painters mix their early coats "sharp" 

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Harold Speed on Pigments

Welcome to the GJ Book Club. Today well cover pages 227-237 of the chapter on "Materials," from Harold Speeds 1924 art instruction book Oil Painting Techniques and Materials.

Ill present Speeds main points in boldface type either verbatim or paraphrased, followed by my comments. If you want to add a comment, please use the numbered points to refer to the relevant section of the chapter.

In this section of the chapter, Speed discusses the pigments available to artists in his day.

Portrait by Harold Speed

1. Permanency: "The oils and mediums used, and repainting before the under coat is thoroughly dry are much more the usual causes of lack of permanency [than the pigments] in modern painting." 
I hadnt heard this before. Also, when he talks about permanency, I wonder if he means lightfastness or stability/cracking of the emulsion.

2. "The fewest colors possible should always be used."
This in contradiction to the usual advice to have a warm and cool red, warm and cool blue, plus earth colors, etc. Speed goes on to say: "The more brilliant colours have a fascination for the young students. Prone to messy handling and dirty brushes, they rush to the brighter pigments in the hope of getting themselves out of a mess; whereas with cleaner handling what is wanted could better be got by simple earth colours, the use of which gives one an excellent training in clean handling. The fine, dignified colouring of a Titian, or, among the moderns, a Watts, is greatly due to their extensive use of earth colours."

3. Flake (lead) white: more crisp, better body than zinc. Blackens when exposed to sulpheretted hydrogen" from gaslight. 
Zinc White: shower at drying.
Speed describes titanium white as a "new white, said to be permanent, that has recently been discovered."

4. Earth colors are permanent with good body.  He says: "Always do as much as you can with earth colors, especially early in the early stages of a picture."
I agree. Best to stay restrained in chroma and value in the underpainting, and save punch for final painting.

5. Ivory black
Safe, but slow drier. You can use an accelerator like copal to speed it up. Use for rich shadows. Good to have a blue-black to and to use warm and cool blacks.

6. Notes on specific pigments
Yellow ochre. Useful. Can mix with cadmium to brighten.
Terra vert. Olive green, good permanency, poor body. Good for modifying reds in flesh. Used by early painters for underpaintings.
Cadmium Yellows. He raises permanence issues, but I believe they have been settled in the pigments favor according to modern manufacturing standards.
Emerald Oxide of Chromium. Speed recommends care because its dangerous in the sense of being a strong acid color that can overpower a painting.
Madder reds. Again Speed cautions against intense red pigments in inexperienced hands, and he hadnt even seen the quinacridones and the naphthols invented after his day.
Alizarins. Modern substitutes are more permanent.
Rose doré. Good tinting strength.
Vermilion. He recognizes that the traditional pigment turns black (and is toxic).
Cobalt blue. "most useful blue on the palette."
French ultramarine. Best for dark shadows. Permanent. Not as opaque as cobalt.
Cyanine blue. Mixture of cobalt and Prussian.
Cobalt green. "beautiful opaque blue-green."
Cerulean blue. "opaque blue of lighter tone." Good in tints.
Lemon Yellow. "pale brilliant yellow of very light tone."

Available link for download