Painting Fleeting Effects #117

About painting fleeting effects and impressionist vs. illustrative necessities. The inherent difficulties and limits, especially outdoors, of just sitting down and painting what you see and when, if ever, to use studies or photographic data.

In Response to
James

QUESTION:
I understand your aversion to photo references, but could you address the logistic issues of painting in natural light without such? In this example, that shadow is going to move across the wall and be out of the frame in an hour or so. A landscape might be more forgiving, but any natural light impression is going to be gone by evening. I can imagine how Cezanne or Monet could finish most of their pictures in a couple of hours, but the kind of work you and the Boston school painters do must take many days or weeks. I know the story about John Singer Sargent dragging his models out to the garden every day at exactly the same time for two summers in a row to complete “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose” in just the right light, but even he couldn’t do that all the time. Do you make sketches and color studies and work from them as a reference? Do you try to get the key “visual order” spots down and do the rest from memory? Or is there another way?
James