Paul Ingbretson Talks About Painting

This is the second part of an interview by a former Ingbretson student and professional painter and teacher in his own right. It covers the several Gammell years when ‘academic’ thinking began to be incorporated into his base and he was introduced to the Boston School. In Response to Alastair. QUESTION: I just listened to your #148 and appreciated how clear and methodical you tried to be in breaking it down and illustrating. I would ask (and I think this is what I mentioned to you on the phone a few weeks ago) what skills in patience, dexterity, shape and line making and systems of assessing proportions does the painter need to acquire to effectively incorporate the system of seeing relationally you laid out in #148? Alastair

A former Ingbretson student and now Paul’s son-in-law does an interview exploring Paul’s history at the Art Student’s League and Gammell’s atelier, His idea is to attempt to flesh out keys to his thinking and approach to painting today. In Response to Alastair QUESTION: I just listened to your #148 and appreciated how clear and methodical you tried to be in breaking it down and illustrating. I would ask (and I think this is what I mentioned to you on the phone a few weeks ago) what skills in patience, dexterity, shape and line making and systems of assessing proportions does the painter need to acquire to effectively incorporate the system of seeing relationally you laid out in #148?

This is a description of a discussion Paul had with R. H. Ives Gammell about who the greatest painters are followed by a suggestion about the need for such queries when gaining understanding as a young painter. In Response to Anon QUESTION:Some say you can't teach 'taste' but when talking about wines exposure to more and more wines eventually gives your palate the capacity to recognize the better ones. So is there similarly a way to educate your eyes to what is best in painting?

Pictures have a dominant value, an overall value, that must be considered along with darkest dark and lightest light when deciding the values to use in a painting. While the uninitiated think we match values one-to-one experience painting from life soon disabuses one of that idea and we are forced to see relationally after all. In Response to Anon QUESTION:What is the 'general tonality' you refer to and is there a 'general color' as well?

Response to query about going about self teaching art. Some practical advice and suggestions emphasizing the importance of working relationally. In response to Richard II QUESTION:The idea around the importance of studying the visual impression had never been presented to me before and the laying out of what makes up all painted imagery is very useful for me to refer to and use as a base. In relation to the Art fundamentals question and this drawing question I asked, I wonder if you have any advice further for someone who is trying to “self” teach themselves art? Could you offer your advice further on best practices and/or the best ways to practice and structure study? Finally what is the best way to study the visual impression in art practice. Richard II

When R. H. Ives Gammell suggests that the term impressionism really could cover all work done directly from what one sees before him and attempts to express that truthfully he creates difficulties for those who see Impressionism as explicitly the Monet formula. This is a brief comparison of a real Monet imitator, Henri Hensche, with ‘impressionism’ taken more broadly. In Response to David QUESTION:Could you say more about the differences between the R. H. Ives Gammell and Henry Hensche approaches to impressionism? David

A discussion of the work of Benson in the light of his point to his daughter that one is always designing in making a picture. The “impressionist” mind, unlike some imaginative painters does not simply resolve his design at the start and then noodle up the likeness of the components making a few final, if important, corrections at the end. In response to Richard I QUESTION: “You will always get into trouble unless you design all the time you are painting. Stop designing and you are in trouble. “ This bit from Benson’s notes to his daughter got me wondering: Does this mean that one should always be “painting the design” i.e. not necessarily adding, subtracting, or moving parts, though that may be needed, but to always think in terms of painting the arabesque or main features of the design, irrespective of particular objects, using light effects as key elements from start to finish? Richard I

Showing shots from an online video demonstration of what the painter calls the comparative method as opposed to sight-size, this discussion elaborates on how that in using construction drawing and other methods it is incompatible with our and the Boston School way of working. In Response to Richie98

Painting effectively, its mastery depends on knowing the names of what you are working with and then how to be effective in their use. This covers several things that will help you with separating values from colors and then assessing them relationally. In response to Mesut QUESTION: How can I train my eyes to see the value of the colors? İt is easier to make a value study or color study in terms of cool or warm but for me it is really hard to see the value of the color in front of me. Mesut

This is a demonstration of how to review and note the great value Idea of a picture composed visually. We are doing it in the context of an online composition class and using Degas as our point of departure. In Response to A Zoom Failure During my Online Composition Class

This is a continuation of the discussion about drawing from the previous two videos. The question focuses more closely on our thinking regarding drawing contours as distinct from drawing effects and the reasons why and when a Boston School impressionist might do memory drawings of outlines. In Response to Kofi QUESTION: At 15:04 you talk about drawing objects vs drawing effects. What do "objects" and "effects" mean to you? What you call subject is what I mean by object. I'm assuming you're alluding to a type of drawing where marks are used to circumnavigate an imagined conception of the subject's volumes/planes, vs drawing where marks are used to replicate shapes of value seen with the eye. Michelangelo vs Seurat. If that's the case, where would you place your drawings from memory? Lines hardly ever appear in nature, so using lines in those drawings, were you relationally measuring the contours of your imagined forms? And at 10:45 was Degas referring to lines around an imagined object, or was he referring to the flat placement of lines on the paper, derived from 2D shapes observed on the retina? What about your Holbein and Ingres studies? If you agree that Holbein and Ingres both fall into the object camp, what would copying them according to your tradition be like? You often describe the "visual order" and at 14:15 an "order of appearance". This you will have to clarify.How does drawing contours fall into that? Kofi

After seeing our video on Ensemble Drawing a viewer expressed a sensed inability to locate points to help establish the drawing on a canvas. This is a more comprehensive look at the idea with suggestions for how to accomplish this part of the setup. In Response to Shawn QUESTION: Can you possibly elaborate on how to determine where the "right" place to put a point in relation to the whole is? An untrained eye can tell if the placement is not correct simply by way of visual dissonance or imbalance, but does the trained eye use more precise, or specific, methods for determining placement? Shawn

Drawing the visual impression from the outside in requires different thinking than getting the objects in the right places and the right sizes. This focuses on how the process of establishing the initial points in a scene seen through a viewfinder works. QUESTION: I thought we had to choose an object in a still life and get it the right size as a starting effort but you aren’t actually doing that in a visual ensemble are you?

Critique of a landscape composition dealing with a main line problem. In Response to Anonymous QUESTION:Appreciate it if you could help me resolve the problems in my landscape of the Boston Gardens. Just not coming around quite. Anonymous

The Dutch had seen Oriental art in many forms so it would be surprising if painting wasn’t affected by it in some ways. Philip Hale refers to the possibility of Vermeer being among them though most viewers might wonder how. This discusses Japanese painting from the same era and talks about some of its qualities that might be shared by Vermeer and others.. In Response to Christian. QUESTION:I just recently read Hale's book on Vermeer. In this book, Hale states that Japanese prints influenced Vermeer's composition. I also noticed that some compositions of your students' paintings of flowers reminded me of Japanese cherry blossoms. Is this deliberate? Are you interested in Japanese prints and its relationship to impressionist painting? If so, can you please expand on the subject. Christian

Further observations on ‘broken color’ based using the work and development of a New York and Paris trained painter, Dennis Miller Bunker. Bunker’s move to Boston was almost symbolic of his move toward impressionism. QUESTION: Inspired by a conversation with Lindesay about Monet’s and Dennis Miller Bunker’s use of broken color.

Conversion revolves around the relative merits of a fine low-intensity minimal-color painting by Carlsen and shifts to a discussion of meaning and a kind of poetic content in painting. QUESTION:I love paintings like this in addition to paintings with a large color range. I can’t see myself being able to set up something so subtle. Is this just developed, from trial... maybe could you talk about why this painting works? Margie

This is an overview of some of the remarkably high number of great American painters focusing mostly on those born between 1820 and 1880. American artists were rising to pretentious heights and by the time of the famous White City, Chicago, Columbian Exposition, in 1893 were showing signs of beginning to truly hold their own in Western art. Few American art histories give any idea of the greatness of American art at that time. QUESTION: Was American painting ever very strong and, if so, does it deserve greater exposure, recognition, and celebration in relation to the Western world at large?

Copying accurately what a painter sees which might be a beautiful scene could be effectively photography so wherein lies the difference between that and the representations or likenesses an artist makes? Also, does the difference between traditional representations have more to do with willful, artsy, distortion or with the driving vision arising from what they see? In Response to Antiguos QUESTION:The old definition of Beauty by way of Alberti was the adjustment of all parts proportionately so that one cannot add or subtract or change without impairing the harmony of the whole. Would you agree that beauty can be based on what we see as painters as you describe ,and beauty that has to do with making a painting or drawing beautiful in itself? A drawing of Degas, Ingres, Sargent can be beautiful ,It is obvious if you put these three painters in a room with the same model they would draw and paint different... then beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder as each painter will represent the same model different, one idealized, the other short and Sargent elongated... Nature is beautiful indeed, but then why a photo and a painting differ? I read old books where they speak of the painter as being capable to capture it. In my life drawing sessions it takes me 3 hours to actually “see” ,the longer I paint something the more I see. Antiguos

Brief review of the remarkably beautiful seascapes of New Hampshire born Alfred Thompson Bricher to respond to a simple question about ‘form.’ Form in representation is understood to be creating the illusion of depth or roundness on a flat surface and yet, in concept, flatness itself is among the form ideas that must be expressed. In response to Norma QUESTION: Can you talk about the form discussion relative to master seascapes? When you have a large body of calm, flat water, like in some of the paintings of Alfred Bricher, for example, how do you address form of the calm water? One can see the form in the rocks, ships, clouds, even large waves, but it's not clear how to think about form in the large areas of calm water. Norma

Pointing out the various uses of broken color and showing it as a sound color ‘search’ methodology as well as a way of getting greater vibrancy as with Monet. It’s use in fantasy and the ‘decorative’ painting of Degas is also discussed. In Response to Zoran QUESTION: I was thinking in last couple of videos would you be able to give us some more pointers about broken color concept. How to introduce it into your work and how to apply it to things we see. Greetings from Netherlands, Zoran

Laying out of our process followed by a critique of a student’s initial color work. Plan is to follow her and others as they/you try this method of making a start, making a painting. Play along if you like. In Response to Many of You QUESTION: Please show us how you begin methodically.accommodating both color and drawing. Anon

Should painters think about the purpose of their form, the value of what they do, or just merrily paint away? What follows is a series of questions for meditation proposed and dealt with by painters themselves from time immemorial.. QUESTION: What are the larger questions about the art of painting - and why bother?

Responding to a regularly heard but confusing comparison between this elusive but grandiose thing called ‘Fine Art’ and its apparently diminutive second rate cousin called ‘Decorative Art.’ This is an attempt to provide a way to separate the categories of the visual art forms and the categories of quality within them. In Response to Elizabeth QUESTION:Can you please define Fine Art, and Decorative Art. Lots of people mix decorative art as fine art. Furthermore galleries will not define fine art, they say it’s up to museums to determine it. After hearing this debate on the Xanadu Gallery site it has me puzzled what artists and well established galleries think of this definition. Hope you can shed some light. Elizabeth

Discussing the distinction between the eyes and the other senses in painting. Painting at its most basic is color-values on a flat surface. Since the canvas is flat there is no form, only the illusion of it. There is likewise no light, only the illusion of it. What skills therefore are the most likely to be helpful in expressing those and other content that comes through the retina to the brain? In Response to I...Genius2 and Antiguos QUESTION: Western painting has a sculptural optical tradition. The problem with just painting the optical, is that the figure will lack form and weight. The problem with Sargent as a painter, is that his work lacks weight, and often poor modelling of arms and hands. I...Genius2 Also an argument pro form and not only shape is easy to prove...In space everything is black, only by the interplay of light and matter that we see color. Form is matter and color light...in painting you may have color, but without form it won’t resemble nature. As soon as you think of color you are conceptualizing an idea as you pointed out. Nature doesn’t put labels on things, but a painter must, to pick and choose what he depicts. The old idea was based on form which is tactile, and so color as glazes because color cannot be seen in the dark, yet that cube still exists when we touch it. One of the reasons Davinci recommended to start with a toned canvas and add light to reveal form...then color... the impressionist seem to work backwards they look for sensations of color and give the illusion of form Antiguos