Painting exists on two levels as does everything else in life. According to Eastern Philosophy these two opposite yet complimentary extremes are called yin and yang. Every thing in life is a function of balance. We light fire to stave off the cold of winter. We go swimming to counter the heat of summer.
In painting the two extremes we try to balance are the physical property of the paint (the physical) and the spirit of the artist (the ethereal). If either one is in short supply the other suffers. There have been many debates about the validity of "modern vs classical" and I hope this thread doesn't degrade into that. It's a horse we've more than beaten to death.
The point I would like to make is that the greatest painters had an abundance of technical ability which allowed them the freedom to express their spirituality.
In this regard I would argue that Duchamp was far less successful than Ingres (aren't we all) in either respect.
I personally think it is foolhardy to rationalize that too much technique will somehow give you a better opportunity to operate on a higher artistic plane. I've yet to see that wish come true.
However, I believe that to rely only on one's technical ability may only get you half way there but without the facility to express your ideas in paint without compromise, you can't get there at all.
The mastery of painting cannot take place if one tries to copy or match what is before them. Pigments offer a limited scope in their ability to capture the world around us. Value-wise the brilliance of the sun compared to the shadow accents of velvet in a dark cave are literally thousands of times greater than the range between black and white paint. No pigment can match the brilliance of a scarlet rose in sunlight.
To recreate the sensation of said rose, one would have to subdue the colors around it, if indeed the goal was to replicate its brilliance. In order to paint the luminosity of a lit match, I would darken the values around it. How can a fire seem aglow if I were to depict the value of a white shirt with very light or white paint. If I want to appear slim I hang out with Sumo wrestlers.
So trying to match a color to what is in front of us is impossible unless we work in a limited range of values, hues and chromas which conform to the properties inherent to paint.
"My" Paxton, Bouguereau, and Vermeer chose to depict value at the sacrifice of copying the exact colors around them. So do Pino and Wyeth for that matter. Does this mean that they chose to ignore color. Obviously not. They created beautiful color effects because of the arrangements of color relationships and not by copying the colors exactly.
Sorolla on the other hand went for the color at the expense of his values and sometimes his paintings have areas that are visually confusing.
A camera attempts to copy the colors and values it sees and translates this to film. The lightest areas get bleached out and/or the darkest areas clog up with black. The range of photo paper is very similar to that of paint.
Living in New York and going to the auction previews at Christie's and Sotheby's I've seen over one hundred Bouguereau paintings. His flesh tones are not realistic at all, if you analyze them stroke for stroke. But they are incredibly lifelike by virtue of the interplay between his color notes. Paxton's skin tones glow due to the same phenomena. Paxton came as close as anyone in recreating the look of accurate color and accurate values but never copied. This is "trickery" of color and tone at the highest level.
As a teacher I feel it is my responsibility to remember what it is like to not know how to do whatever it is I'm trying to teach. To be able to teach how to solve the problem at hand, one must start from the position of not knowing, just like the student. Then we discover the answer together.
Obviously the goal is to mix the color we desire and if we can shoot from the hip all the better, but the best way to learn anything is to break it down into digestible parts not trying to hip shoot.
Be it color or spirit what you see is what you paint. You can't paint what you are not looking for, be it color, spirit or value. Capturing one's essence is only possible when you are sensitive enough to see it. You can't paint what you don't know is there. Too many are happy to just paint the features well.
My own personal definition of a portrait is a soul with a person painted around it. You can be the judge as to whether I achieved that end in this detail from my portrait of Julia.
http://www.fineartportrait.com/julia.html
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