Which is More Important: Color or Drawing?

-

 
    Philip Koch, Morning: Acadia, vine charcoal, 10 1/2 x 14", 2013

My title asked a trick question. One for which there is no answer.

 To me there's more connection than separation between drawing and painting. Drawing implies leaving a great deal of the surface of the paper exposed, while painting suggests covering over most or all of the ground of paper or canvas. I usually tell my painting students that "painting is mostly drawing," It is an exaggeration I know, but it does get their attention.

 The most magical thing about painting for me is of course color, as it is for most of us. But color is so powerfully fluid and multifaceted that it can easily elude us. A painting that is only about color would be like trying to get a drink in a parched desert without a cup.  You need a vessel.  Drawing in a great set of shapes "holds" the colors in place for your eyes to drink them in. 

 Shapes, and by that I mean the flat silhouettes that are the building blocks of drawing and painting, need to come first. They are a little easier grasp and hold in mind. I think of them as a hand railing to help negotiate the slippery terrain you enter when juggling dozens of colors.

And color is opinionated!  The colors call out for adjustments of your original drawing ideas- this shape must be made larger, that one asks that you soften its bottom edge and sharpen its top. As I work in color I always find changing a color also means adjusting a shape. Color and drawing insist on working hand in hand.

 Following are three drawings I did over the course of several years. The first was done with my portable easel set up on the beach just below Edward Hopper's studio in S. Truro, MA on Cape Cod Bay.



Philip Koch, Truro Beach, vine charcoal, 8 x 12", 2005



Working from that charcoal drawing, I made two pastels. Look at how the focus and the proportions change in each of them. 
Philip Koch, Cape Dunes, pastel, 5 x 7 1/2", 2009





Philip Koch, Study for The Reach, pastel, 5 x 7 1/2"


Exploring an idea with a series of color pastel drawings is my way of learning what it is I'm after. The second of the two preceding pastels formed the basis of one of my favorite major oils below.


Philip Koch, The Reach IV, oil on linen, 40 x 60", 2011 
at George Billis Gallery, New York

Popular posts from this blog

Edward Hopper- Looking Out

-
Image
Edward Hopper, Cape Cod Morning,   oil on canvas, 1950,  Smithsonian American Art Museum Above is a painting I've loved for some forty years. I'm fortunate to be able to see it often as it lives in the SAAM in Washington, D.C. . This painting contains a real clue to Hopper's art. I visit there often as it helps me learn how to see better. Often writers will talk about the loneliness of Hopper's paintings or how his figures feel isolated and rarely interact with one another. While there is some of that in Hopper's painting, it begs a question- why is Hopper's art so widely loved? I'd offer a couple of answers. First, he's one of the most talented painters and was able to invent visual equivalents for strong emotions we humans experience as we live our lives.  He saw color combining in unexpected ways and offered up generous servings of the most delicious color combinations. Yum. Usually, as in the SAAM's Cape Cod Morning above, when he paints
Read more

Ever Wonder What's in the Next Room in Hopper's Rooms by the Sea?

-
Image
Edward Hopper, Rooms by the Sea , oil on canvas, 1951, Yale University Art Gallery One of Edward Hopper's best known paintings is Rooms by the Sea that was based on his studio in Truro, MA. Its mysterious doorway leading to the ocean captivates our eye.  Did you ever wonder what the room through the painting's other doorway looked like? Last week a collector asked to see some of the drawings I made during my residencies in the historic studio so I photographed this drawing. Philip Koch,  Edward Hopper's Truro Bedroom: Afternoon  Sunlight , vine charcoal, 9 x 12 inches, 2012. To make the drawing I set up my French easel in the bedroom Hopper shared with his wife Jo for the three decades they lived in the studio. One of the room's two small closets centers the drawing. At the right is the doorway leading into Hopper's big painting room with his studio easel in the distance.  What inspired me to make the drawing were the intense patterns the afternoon sunlight made ove
Read more

Edward Hopper's Poetry of Empty Rooms

-
Image
I've just been invited by Rachael Solomon who is the Program Director of the  Edward Hopper House Art Center in Nyack, NY to have a mini solo show in one of their galleries.. We'll be showing some of my paintings of the interior of Edward Hopper's Cape Cod studio where I've had the great pleasure of enjoying 13 residencies since 1983. The Edward Hopper House Art Center is the boyhood home of the famous American realist artist. So much of what Hopper became stemmed from his early years there. So I'm excited to do the exhibit. It will be coming up in March through May of 2012.   Hopper didn't teach. Yet I learned more about how to become a good painter by studying his work than by any other single thing. Art after all is visual. Words, even beautifully and aptly spoken can get in the way. And Hopper was legendarily tactiturn. I suspect had someone asked Hopper how to paint an empty room, his terse reply would have been "Don't!".  Above is one of h
Read more