Two Tugs Dockside

Two hardworking tugboats wait at dockside in this small oil study.

Two Tugs, oil on panel, 6 x 8 inches, plein-air

One is still running its engine, judging from the puff of smoke. Hazy sunshine comes in from the left, allowing me to lose the edges in the lower right of the picture. The pinkish priming color peeks through in a few places, but the rest is mostly gray. 

Drawing Over a Painting

I painted this dairy barn in gouache with a quirky technique, using brushes/paint first, and pencils/pens last. 

My new video on YouTube takes you through the process. 

Try out my custom-trained AI chatbot, who is happy to answer your questions about art.

What did Andrew Wyeth mean by "drybrush?"

What did Andrew Wyeth mean when he called his paintings "drybrush?"

Undersnow by Andrew Wyeth, drybrush, 1977

I've found Wyeth's use of the term misleading, because Wyeth's "drybrush" paintings often have a lot of very wet passages. Wyeth didn't think like other artists, and his notions about his use of the medium are mixed in with a lot of emotions and instincts. Here's what Wyeth himself said: 

"Drybrush is for more contemplative works (as compared with watercolor), or when a work arrives at a profound emotional stage. I use a smaller brush, dip into the color, splay out the bristles, squeeze out a good deal of the moisture and color with my fingers so that only a very small amount of paint is left." Drybrush is layer upon layer — a definite 'weaving process.' Source of quote: Thomas Hoving in conversation with Andrew Wyeth, From Handprint

Wyeth also said to Hoving: “Now drybrush comes to me through the fact that after I finish a tempera I may feel exhausted. I may have worked four or five or six months on it and I’m desperately tired. But then I may see something that interests me and watercolor doesn’t have the strength somehow. I start with a watercolor sometimes and realise, damn it all, I feel stronger than that. I want to go into it with a little more detail so I start working in drybrush.... " 

Garret Room" (right) is a very good example.

Wyeth continues: “When I stroke the paper with the dried brush, it will make various distinct strokes at once, and I start to develop the forms of whatever object it is until they start to have real body. But, if you want to have it come to life underneath, you must have an exciting undertone of wash. Otherwise, if you just work drybrush over a white surface, it will look too much like drybrush."

It was rare for Wyeth to allow other artists to watch him paint, but he made a few exceptions, and what follows are some quotes from what these observers noticed about his materials and methods.

Les Linton says: "I met Andrew Wyeth in March of 1976 and was able to not only speak to him about his materials, but also ask about his techniques. He was usually reticent about tech talk, but for some reason he warmed up to me and I was able to spend an entire afternoon asking questions.

Les continues: His paint box was there on the table by the back door and that's when I got the first clue about his use of gouache. I did notice he had a tube of Shiva casein white in there also. When I asked him about it he said once it dried, it was less likely to pick up when painted over again. I think that was the opaque white he used most in his watercolors and drybrush paintings, but I can't swear to it."

According to Linton and other observers, "most of the paper was Imperial (22" x 30") 140 lb. Cold Press (or "Not," which in Brit-speak means not smooth or rough) woven linen, not cotton, and handmade. This is why the sizing was "harder," unlike the softer cotton watercolor paper later revived under the Whatman name (and mould made mimicking the original Whatman handmade texture). This harder surface is one of the reasons why Wyeth was able to abuse the surface of the paper so easily. He used sandpaper, knives, steel wool, and just about anything else he could find. Wyeth also had a large supply of rough Whatman Imperial sheets on hand as well."

"Many of Wyeth's drybrush watercolors were painted on extremely smooth 3-ply, plate finish (Bristol) from Strathmore. Some of the earlier Bristol paper he used (50's & 60's) was not archival, but current production is. You can see yellowing in some of his earlier studies and drawings on that particular paper.

"Mr. Wyeth used Winsor & Newton watercolors (with a few Grumbacher colors) and also made much use of W/N Gouache in his darker, earthier passages. The opaque watercolor came in handy in his drybrush watercolors painted in a more detailed egg tempera technique. He occasionally added alcohol (or whiskey) to his water when painting outdoors in cold weather to retard freezing."

"The paint thickener came from liquid gum arabic as well. These passages look thicker, 'juicier,' and are characterized by little bubbles (not possible with just water). He used an old, beat up, folding, enameled metal watercolor palette when I saw it in the 70s. I'm pretty sure his own watercolor palette was made in the U.S., but the nearest thing I've seen to it is the large, black, metal folding palette made by Holbein of Japan - most likely a copy of that same design. He favored W/N Series 7 Kolinsky sable rounds and used to buy the size #1's "by the fistful," again according to Berndt (who used to baby sit Andy when he was a child!). I've always assumed these very small brushes were purchased for his temperas and drybrush paintings and he wore them out readily."

"The main thing I came away with from my visit was Mr. Wyeth's willingness to break 'the rules' and use anything that gave him the effect he wanted in a painting. There were studies littered all over the floor of his studio, some with dusty shoe prints where he'd walked on them. 

Frederic Church's Area-by-Area Process

This plein-air oil study by Frederic Church was left unfinished, which gives us a glimpse into his process.

Bavarian Landscape; Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900)

USA; brush and oil, pencil on academy board.; 27.3 x 30 cm (10 3/4 x 11 13/16 in.)

Church first outlined big areas of the scene in pencil over a sealed and toned paper surface. He then covered them in oil paint from the top to the bottom. 

This area-by-area method of painting is sometimes called "window shading" because it's like pulling down a window shade.

Your Questions about Plein-Air Painting in Oil

On Instagram, I posted about this plein-air still life in oil, and some of you had questions:

fefecru: "Can I ask you what umbrella is that? Anyone in particular you’ll recommend? 

A: It’s a Jullian umbrella, designed to clamp onto a French easel, but I keep it on a C-stand so that it doesn’t blow over and bring my painting into the wreckage."

agustin.poratti "How'd you build that camera trípod easel?"

A: That’s an Open Box M easel, which may not be made anymore, but there are others like it, and there's a Facebook group about building your own.

bencrastinate "Does painting with an easel help? Ive always painted my canvas flat on my desk. What are the benefits of painting on a vertical surface?"

A: I find it helps my speed and accuracy to have my painting set up perpendicular to my line of sight, and directly adjacent to, the same size as, and in the same light as my subject.

grinningink "Since you used oil here, wasn’t it still wet when you sold it that same day? Was there something to protect it when the customer took it?"

A: Yes, this was for a paint-out. I framed it and it was auctioned same day. I knew the owner, and after it was thoroughly dry I borrowed it back to varnish and photograph it.

thefrankryan "Is this palette approach inspired by Carolous Duran’s method?"

A: A lot of oil painters have used premixed colors. I was thinking mainly of Frank Reilly, but using an adapted version of his practice.

janice_skivington "Please list the names of oil colors on the pallet, looks like three primaries and white." 

It’s the 5-color palette recommended by John Stobart in his book The Pleasures of Painting Outdoors: titanium white, cad yellow light, pyrrole red, burnt sienna, and ultramarine blue. You can paint almost anything with those five colors.

tomkatermurr "Would you also premix your colors when you paint with other mediums?"

In theory you could premix with water media, but the pools of color would tend to dry too fast.

Related previous posts: Painting Pumpkins 

Artists Collaborate with Museums to Explore Techniques

A growing number of art museums have teamed up with practicing artists to explore the painting methods of historical painters.  

 

Watercolor expert Mike Chaplin heads outdoors to demonstrate how J.M.W. Turner may have thought about tone (Link to YouTube). Instead of trying to copy a Turner, he paints directly from nature using materials and methods similar to what Turner might have used. Chaplin teamed with the Tate to produce similar videos with line and color.

London's National Gallery examines Titian's technique with commentary from art historians, conservators, and a practicing painter.  (Link to YouTube)

The Victoria and Albert Museum has demonstrated techniques of Renaissance artists (Link to YouTube).

Other museums such as the Yale Art Gallery have hosted illustrated lectures by conservators about painting methods, but it's not quite as engaging as watching someone try to replicate antique methods. It's a difficult gig for the living artist and it requires considerable humility.

Collaborations between artists and museum experts help to bring historical artists to life and make their work more approachable. Are you aware of other museum / artist collaborations? Please share them in the comments.

"Make every stroke count"

Stop and think for a second before you place a stroke. Consider how the stroke is going to look before you lay it down. Then commit to it. Don't move the brush three times when once will do.

Painting in gouache helps train this awareness. When you paint in water media, leave a passage alone once it starts to dry. Let it dry fully before you add more. Place the wettest layers on the first pass, and use drier strokes later in the process as you build opaque colors.

I learned all this stuff from my early years doing calligraphy, where you only get one chance to make a stroke, and you can't change a goof. I also picked up the idea from two of my early heroes, Jack Leynnwood (plastic-model box illustrator) and John Berkey (science fiction illustrator). I met each of them and watch them paint a little. As Jack used to say, "Make every stroke count." 

The purpose of this deliberation is not to make a particular virtue of technique, nor is it to make the brushwork stand out. Heaven forfend! 

The goal is economy and efficiency, just as it is in writing. Style gurus Strunk and White put it this way: "Omit needless works. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts." 

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Quote from Strunk and White's book, "The Elements of Style"

Combining Pencil and Oil

 

Our boat brought us to a settlement of crested hadrosaurs and their human assistants, where we spent a few days drying out in the smoky attics of their houses" 

The painting is done in oil wash over pencil on illustration board, which has been sealed first with some workable fixative spray and then with a thin layer of acrylic matte medium. 

Dinotopian flight instructor Oolu holds a lightweight skybax saddle. 

This technique is fast, direct, and reproduces well. 

handeyeoriginals asks: "What do you thin the oils with to make the wash?"

Answer: Liquin (a fast-drying alkyd medium) and Gamsol (a mineral solvent). Note that both of those are toxic, so you need good ventilation and protection for the skin of your hands.

joeybruceartWhat’s the advantage of an oil wash instead of watercolour?
Colour? Vibrancy?


Answer: It's workable for a longer period and it blends well with opaques.
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Illustrations from Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time.

Illustration Techniques of Robert McGinnis

Robert McGinnis (born 1926) painted glamorous women and gun-toting spies for paperback covers and movie posters.  

A video by producer Paul Jilbert introduces McGinnis and his work and puts it in context. Jilbert also produced a video showing the process of painting a standing semi-nude in egg tempera. 

The drawing is enlarged from photo reference on a Balopticon, similar to the one used by Norman Rockwell and Mort Kunstler.  

Book: The Art of Robert E. McGinnis 

Robert McGinnis on Wikipedia

Review of Thomas Blackshear's Illustration Master Course

Thomas Blackshear has produced a series of instructional videos called the Illustration Master Course. I have had an opportunity to watch most of the videos in the series and can highly recommend them. 

If you're not familiar with his work, Thomas Blackshear emerged in the '80s and '90s as an illustrator, creating about 30 US postage stamp designs, plus posters, art prints, and 3D figurines.

He trained in Chicago and worked for Hallmark Cards and the Godbold/Richter Studio. 

At that stage of his career he was inspired by Mark English, Bernie Fuchs, Drew Struzan, and David Grove, and he either learned directly from them or figured out their techniques. 

The first volumes in the series demonstrate these unusual techniques with gouache and acrylic.

In Volume 4 he demonstrates the "lifting out" technique, where you apply a gouache base layer over a pencil drawing and lift out light areas with a wet brush or Q-tip.

He has since pursued a gallery career for his original paintings, developing his own style that he calls 'Western Nouveau,' inspired by a variety of painters of the past such as Maynard Dixon and Alphonse Mucha. 

Most of his gallery paintings start in acrylic and finish in oil, sometimes with special touches of gold leaf.

His videos take you through the entire process, with closeups of his palette, his brushwork, and his special techniques, which he explains at each stage in a clearly recorded voiceover. 

The video occasionally cuts away to him sitting in his studio explaining the thinking behind what he's doing. His process is 100% 'old school,' using pencil, brush, tracing paper, and acetate overlays.

He often does a very detailed and complete pencil drawing and several color studies before he starts the finished painting, and the quality of his final results proves the value of solving all the problems sequentially.

Blackshear puts a lot of emphasis on getting the drawing right, no matter how much effort it takes, before proceeding into the paint. He hires models and shoots photo reference, but he freely interprets his reference to make it better.

There are six episodes so far, produced by Thaxton Studios. Each video is about an hour long, and priced at $45 for either a download or a DVD. Each is a standalone exercise and you don't have to follow them in order. I would suggest starting with whichever one that sounds closest to your interest. 

You can get info about Thomas Blackshear's Illustration Master Course at this link. The videos are also available at Gumroad as digital downloads or streaming videos.

Muddy Colors did a blog post featuring his gouache 'pick-out' technique as featured in the magazine Step by Step Graphics. (Thanks, Matt Dicke and Dan Dos Santos)

Brushstroke Tips

The painting knife in #5 refers to oil painters. In #6, I'm talking about the opposite pointed end of the brush. The purpose of these tips is to help us get us to #10—to guide our imaginations beyond the surface of the painting so we can live inside it. 

Good brush technique happens when you convey the most information with the least effort. But we don't want technique to be the subject. It's easy to make a painting look like paint; the viewer's awareness of the surface is a given. Painterly execution should invite the viewer beyond the brushstrokes.

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Previously: "Ten Tips for Better Brushstrokes"

Painting a Backlit Parked Car in Casein

I painted this casein study while Jeanette was in the market, so I had about 45 minutes.

I took a gamble on the car staying parked, and lost the gamble twice, but kept going anyway.

(Link to video)

Over an underpainting color of Cadmium Orange casein, I used Cobalt Blue, Venetian Red, Ivory Black, and Titanium White and focused on a simple warm/cool 

How do you mix a color you're looking at?

Malcolm Marcus asked: "I would really like to see a video on how to understand what colors you are looking at. Sounds kind of nutty, but for those of us relatively new to painting, it's often hard to figure out what color something actually is."

Oil study by Charles Hawthorne (1872-1930)

Answer: The color you're looking at is a consequence of four main factors: 

1. The local color (or surface color) of the object.

2. The relative color of the light shining on it.

3. The relative amount of light shining on it.

3. The quality of atmosphere between the observer and the object.

You have to mentally combine all those factors in order to arrive at the color you will have to mix for that paint stroke.

For example, the girl's hat at left is a medium-value blue because it's a white hat lit by blue skylight which is less bright than the sunshine, and there's much atmosphere intervening.

The underside of her sleeve is a medium dull orange because it's in shadow, too, but this time the white material is picking up some bounced light from the warm-colored ground surface below her. Her skin is a dark brown because it's a light-skinned tan local color in relatively dim illumination. Backlit white subjects are popular with impressionist painters because they make make Factors #2 and #3 vividly clear. 

Most beginning painters see only the local color, because they don't yet recognize how their perceptual systems are filtering out the effects of the next three factors.

Learning to paint involves recognizing how those perceptual filters work. Once you understand them, you can analyze a subject in terms of the the relative influence of the four factors. 

I would recommend setting up a backlit white object on a sunny day and painting what you see. You could use a volleyball, skull, white cardboard box, or t-shirt. The experience of mixing the resulting colors will make these principles vividly clear.

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There's a lot of beginning painting instruction on my new Gumroad tutorial "Color in Practice: Black, White, and Complements." and in my book Color and Light, available signed from my webstore or from Amazon. There's also a lot of information in my book: Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist.

Why use mixed media?

A few questions came up in the comments of my recent YouTube video about painting techniques with watercolor and gouache:

William Trost Richards, Mackerel Cover,  courtesy Smithsonian
Pen and black ink, brush and watercolor, gouache, 
crayon, traces of graphite on heavy gray wove paper

Sujanith Tottempudi  says, "I can't understand why use mixed media....when each medium has specific principles..."

James Gurney says: Maybe it's semantics, but I don't see it as mixed media. Watercolor and gouache are both made of pigment, gum arabic, and water. They're really very similar. By using a variety of techniques (transparent, opaque, wet, drybrush, etc.), you get the same range of effects that you would get with oil paint or any other medium.

You can paint with pure transparent watercolor and save out your whites if you want. It's a very attractive technique, but that's just one way of working. The medium doesn't come with absolute principles about what techniques you can do with it.

Veaudor  says: "Did you say that there's black on your pallette?? Mon dieu! I never had a teacher that ever recommended black. I swoon! ;*) (PS I'm gonna try this...)"

Gurney: Yes, try it out. I don't always use black. I often mix my "blacks" out of a dark warm color and a dark cool color in order to maintain some color character in my blacks. But black as a pigment can be helpful, especially if you need those ultra dark accents. I also love it for doing black and white grisailles. Some teachers discourage it because if students always use black to darken colors, it can deaden the mixtures. But if Sargent, Zorn, and Velazquez used it, I think I will include it in my kit of options.

Oğulcan Yolcu  asks: "Which white color do you use?" 

Gurney: I'm using M. Graham titanium white. I've used zinc white, too, but not as much.

ROBERTO HILARIO LOPEZ GARAY  "How can you paint in such small surface?"
Gurney: I'm inspired by the gouaches of Adolph Menzel and William Trost Richards, which are tighter and often smaller than mine.

ryan de carte  asks:"How do use ultramarine in washes without getting so much sediment and separating from the mixture when it dries? I’m not sure how it is in oil but gouache, watercolor and acrylic have this with ultramarine."

Gurney "I haven't had that issue with sediment in ultramarine. More so with the heavy inorganic pigments like manganese blue or cobalt. That sediment texture can be very desirable. If you want flatness you can get a flat color out of any sedimenting watercolor by adding a little white or using smoother paper.
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Watch my newest YouTube video about painting realistically in gouache and watercolor.

How to Start a Watercolor

How should you start a watercolor? There are many ways, but this time I start loose, knowing I can use gouache to make corrections and paint my white accents.

After a colored pencil lay-in, I lightly establish the local color, then the background tones, and finally I use white gouache to sharpen edges and paint the lighter values.



(Link to Video on YouTube) Here are the watercolor pigments I'm using:
Raw sienna
Lemon yellow
Cadmium red 
Transparent red oxide
Alizarin crimson
Anthraquinone blue
Titanium white (gouache)

Other ways to start a watercolor (YouTube links):
Detailed, transparent only
Urban streetscape with fountain pen
Watercolor and colored pencils

I Rub Out a Painting and Try Again

The weather changes from sunny to overcast. Should I rub out my painting and chase the light? (Link to YouTube)

Grafton Street near Trinity College, gouache, 5 x 8 inches

With a warm underpainting in casein, I can rub out the gouache layer without the casein lifting up.

PAINTS
White gouache (gouache)
Cadmium yellow light (watercolor)
Yellow ochre (watercolor)
Transparent red oxide (watercolor)
Neutral Tint
Underpainting in casein colors

OTHER MATERIALS
Empty watercolor tin
Pentalic Aqua Journal sketchbook
Liner brush (synthetic)
Winsor & Newton Series 995 synthetic flat brush

Richeson Travel brush set
Water cup
Water-soluble colored pencils

VIDEO TUTORIAL
"Gouache in the Wild" (Download on Gumroad)

How Turner Painted in Watercolor

Sketchbook pages by J.M.W. Turner

John Ruskin said this about J.M.W. Turner's method of painting in watercolor:

"The large early [watercolor]-drawings of Turner were sponged without friction, or were finished piece by piece on white paper; as he advanced he laid the chief masses first in broad tints, never effacing anything, but working the details over these broad tints. While still wet, he brought out the soft lights with the point of a brush, the brighter ones with the end of a stick; often, too, driving the wet colour in a darker line to the edge of the light, in order to represent the outlines of hills."

J. M. W. Turner, "Red Rigi," 12 x 18 in. 1847, National Gallery Victoria

 "His touches were all clear, firm, unalterable, one over the other: friction he used only now and then, to represent the grit of stone or the fretted pile of moss; the finer lights he often left from the first, even the minutest light, working round and up to them, not taking them out as weaker men would have done".

Quote by John Ruskin, c. 1850's; as cited in The Life of J. M. W. Turner R.A. , Walter Thornbury - A new Edition, Revised
More about Turner's watercolor technique on Handprint website

Paint Technique: Bravura vs. Patience

Painting Atelier in the École des Beaux Arts

American mural painter Edwin Blashfield (1848-1936) recalled that when he was an art student in Paris, all the students on Léon Bonnat's atelier wanted to use a lot of paint and to make sure their paintings looked vigorous and not labored.

Leon Bonnat, Roman Girl at a Fountain

One day Monsieur Bonnat arrived to survey the student work, he said: "Gentlemen, why do you use so much paint? You are only tripping yourselves up. I do not use a great quantity of paint for its own sake, but because my temperament is such that I can get my effect better in that way."

The comments quenched the students' enthusiasm for obsessing with thick paint and technique in general. According to Bonnat, the technique didn't matter so much as effort and patience.

Bonnat said: "It has often been told us that Michelangelo said, 'Genius is eternal patience,' and there is no doubt that Michelangelo was an expert in the definition of genius if ever a man was. Thomas Carlyle, too, defined genius as a 'transcending capacity for taking trouble.'"

"Students may remember then, when they wish to work vigorously and powerfully, and when they disdain what they call labored painting — may remember, I say, that two of the most rugged and original personalities that ever existed, the one in literature, the other in art, have averred that patience — careful, painstaking patience — is the crowning virtue which shall furnish the basis to the brilliant and captivating vigor which is so desirable an achievement."

"And do not mistake my intention. I am with the student. I sympathize in his wish. The skillful manipulation of pigment is a capacity to be struggled for and to be proud of when obtained; it makes the surface of the canvas attract at once. But if the canvas is to be made vital-looking and lastingly solid as well as attractive, behind and under the lively manipulation of pigment there must be construction and knowledge, the fruit of hard work."

Edwin Blashfield, Trumpets of Missouri

"Idolatry of mere dexterity is peculiarly dangerous in America because it assails us along the lines of the least resistance. Dexterousness comes naturally to the American, and in its favor he is sometimes only too ready to suppress hard thinking, which is the one invaluable kind of hard work and discipline in any profession. Technical excellence is at its very best only a means to an end, and art stands for something much finer, greater, and deeper than even the very skilfullest and most brilliant handling of one’s tools." 

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Read more:

Wikipedia on Edwin Blashfield (1848-1936) and Léon Bonnat (1833-1922) 

Books:
• Edwin Howland Blashfield: Master American Muralist 
• Mural Painting in America: The Scammon Lectures by Edwin Howland Blashfield
• Léon Bonnat : Le portraitiste de la IIIe République
Archive.org: Mural Painting in America 

Oil Painting with Textural Effects

Pre-texturing is a way to achieve textural impastos without having to use a lot of slow-drying oil paint. If you add texture first in a faster drying material, you can then use oil thinly over it and the whole passage will be dry within 24 hours. The above video (Link to YouTube) shows how it works.

I use two different kinds of pre-textured impasto. The first one is using acrylic modeling paste at the stage of the preliminary drawing. The second way is to use white or light oil paint with a couple drops of cobalt drier added in to accelerate drying. After letting that thoroughly dry, I can place
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YouTube video: Oil Painting with Textural Effects
Check out the full tutorial video "Unconventional Oil Techniques", which is full of practical art instruction for all levels.
Download at Gumroad:
Download at Sellfy:
DVD from manufacturer:

First-Hand Gleanings from Sargent

In his memoir, painter and sculptor Emil Fuchs said he asked John Singer Sargent for permission to paint in the master's presence in order to learn from him.

John Singer Sargent, portrait of Edwin Booth, detail, 1890

Sargent wasn't particularly verbal about his painting philosophy or his technique, but Fuchs was able to glean some helpful insights anyway.

"He never said much, but what he did say, one might do well to engrave upon the tablets of one's mind. One of the great man's teachings was the dominant importance of values over color. 'Color,' he said, 'is an inborn gift, but appreciation of value is merely a training of the eye which everyone ought to be able to acquire.' "

"Value in art, as everyone knows, simply means the relation of light to shade. Sargent referred to this idea over and over, and it occurred to me that perhaps he meant value not in pictures alone, but fundamentally in all the realms of life. His work demonstrates his ingrained belief in this. I can think of nobody who can see and render values with such delicate distinction as does Sargent."  

"His palette was to me a marvel. His enormous wealth of color he produces with a few simple hues, mostly earth colors — white, yellow ocher, light red or vermilion, burnt sienna, cobalt blue, emerald green and black. His is a rare skill in using and combining them." 

"Some mornings he would come in and, without saying much, would help me in painting a difficult passage from the model. While the direct way of painting appealed to him, he fully appreciated the more subtle methods, especially that of grisailles and glazing, by which many masters obtain their effects of brilliancy. This method, perhaps I should add, consists in painting first in black and white, and then laying on a thin film of transparent color."   

"Sargent's veneration for the work of the old masters was profound. But Velasquez and Franz Hals were the gods of his Pantheon. He copied both freely. Of Velasquez he had in his studio a facsimile of the dwarf Don Antonio el Ingles, and of Franz Hals several groups from his large pictures at Haarlem copied by himself. If my recollections of our discussions about artists are correct, Van Dyck seemed to appeal to him the least."

"About technique it was always difficult to make him express himself in words. Rather than explain a serious problem, he would take a brush and paint that piece and the difficulties would vanish under his touch. When I worked at his studio he offered me the free use of his colors and even his palette and brushes which lay about in profusion. Few artists can bring themselves to lend these objects without feeling it to be sacrilege."

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With Pencil, Brush, and Chisel by Emil Fuchs
Emil Fuchs on Wikipedia
John Singer Sargent on Wikipedia