Rembrandt’s The Night Watch

I could have chosen from a large number of paintings for this week, so why not Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” – the greatest painting by one of the greatest greats. Its colossal size (11.91 ft × 14.34 ft) would be enough to secure it’s place, however what sets it apart is its innovative composition, essentially an action painting, with the perception of motion in what would have traditionally been a static military group portrait.

This painting was completed in 1642, at the peak of the Dutch Golden Age. It shows the local militia, more a neighbourhood watch and drinking club perhaps, setting out on patrol, led by one Captain Frans Banninck Cocq. The incongruent female figure with a chicken (“Cocq”) hanging from her waist acts as a kind of mascot. There are plenty of other messages embedded in the painting.  I’m pretty sure Rembrandt had a bit of fun at the slightly ridiculous-looking group’s expense. By-the-by, the female figure was almost certainly modelled around his partner at the time, Hendrickje Stoffels.

In order to create a vibrant picture space, Rembrandt used plenty of diagonals. Look at how the muskets, walking cane, staffs, the drum…you name it…parallel each other, left and right. This and many other ideas are built into the composition and I’m sure that they were designed into the painting at an early stage: a complex composition, well worth referring back to as we proceed through the course.

As large as it is, the painting we see today has been been cut down from it’s initial dimensions. Luckily, a copy from the original exists.

For me, cropping has significantly changed the composition. As Rembrandt conceived the painting, the figures were more comfortable in the picture space: There’s a feeling of more air surrounding them. The entire company is set lower in a more cavernous backdrop. The central players are somewhat off from the centre. Interestingly, both of these factors add a little more emphasis to the whole as a painting, rather than the (now larger, more central) portraits of the main players. I think Rembrandt’s original has been diminished by the cropping and I doubt he would have approved.

On a side note, I’m always looking at level of finish and how painters call a painting finished. The dog in the bottom right gloom: it’s barely roughed in and does the job famously. Love it.

 

Then there’s Rembrandt’s dramatic and incomparable light. Interestingly and particularly for our purposes, is that all of the light is sitting on what is essentially a low-tone base of dark paint. This painting is built upon a very limited palette of earth tones. The colour in flesh tones, clothes, armoury, flags, etc, was added onto this base when dry. This is a variation on the single-tone base painting that we tackled last week – Rembrandt gets his lights from the strong balance of values that was built into the painting early.

This week, we’ll explore this idea and go a little further… using blues with browns. Blues were expensive and less used in Rembrandt’s time, especially Ultramarine (“Overseas Blue”). What a revelation Ultramarine can be, pure and also when combined with other colours. Let’s take a look!

Limited palette studies

I’ll cover some great practices for acrylics, oils and watercolour. A foundation is often a fine start in any medium and for oil and acrylic, I develop an image with low tones and high values. Watercolour can often be intimidating, particularly at the start and I’ll be talking about how I like to get an image to work with some straightforward watercolour effects – beginning with a drawn image,then adding wash and darks.

Laying foundations

The initial foundation (in oil and acrylic – sometimes called an underpainting), can be the most important stage of a painting. It’s the place to refine the composition, work through the value equations and evolve ideas. Maybe there will be a Eureka! moment, when the painting starts talking and you learn where it has to go.

Foundation blocking can be completed in any (typically subdued) tone: blues, browns, greys and greens can all work. Each will assert a certain feel into the final work – sometimes dramatically so, whereby the foundation forms an integral part of the final image.

The principle is common to all images, regardless of medium – it’s the application that may be somewhat different. In watercolour for example, I would typically retain some white space and perhaps use low-tone greens, blues and browns that would feature in the final work.

In oil or acrylic, I might start with a mid-tone base in any colour. I generally favour using a brown and a blue as a limited palette variation of a pure monochromatic underpainting. The thing I like, is that it allows for a variation of warms (browns) and cools (blues) that can almost complete a painting…without adding much colour at all. Don’t be frightened of blues in the shadows and features, you need them!

My general rule in any medium is: the darker the value, the bluer it must be. Mid-tones and lights in brown, with darks all having a deep blueish tinge. Warm tones advance and cools recede, giving the viewer all the right messages.

I’m known as a bit of a colourist, but typically evolve my images in a very limited palette, applying colour after previously established values. It’s difficult to deal with colour and value at the same time and adding colour is never a substitute for a lack in the value department – you can’t solve a value problem with more colour!

In the following video I review my general approach:

Laying out a painting

In acrylic

In the following video I develop a foundation, in this instance painting in acrylic.

My process with oil would be very similar, being careful to keep my paint thin to facilitate the subsequent stages – painting thicker into the still- wet base.

in oil

In this video, I apply these ideas to a portrait in oil:

with Watercolour

In the following video I start a watercolour portrait, again using only two colours:

This approach is valuable with many subjects, however at limes I use a more typical watercolour approach with washes that contain some colour. I still keep to a very limited palette, as explained in the demonstration that appears at the end of this lesson.

Examples

Portrait study in watercolour

Here’s the study from the video above:

Portrait study in oil

The study from the video above:

Plein-air oil sketch

Here’s an example of a plein-air study tackled this way:

Van Gogh’s room in acrylic

This modest demonstration study established layout and prescience of forms.

Exercise

• From the reference of your choice or the Reference Gallery, develop a low-tone painting using a brown and a blue. Start from a mid-tone and proceed in a similar manner to the the above studies. That is, make the primary focus the  lights, mid-tones and darks (3 zones). The additional opportunity in this study is to make the darks cooler (that is bluer) than the lights, plus you can use white to reinforce lights (although I like to wipe out the lights whilst the paint is still wet).

More on limited warm-cool palettes

Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine blue are indeed a fine pairing, although of course not the only ones. A range of combinations works famously and experimenting and investigating their potential takes effort.

Begin by simply substituting another “red” for Burnt Sienna  – try it and see…. I’ve done this regularly using Alizarin Crimson with Ultramarine blue when I want a brighter, purpler effect. The idea of painting with 2 colours, typically a warm and a cool, can lead to some interesting effects: Raw Sienna and Purple, Alizarin Crimson and Veridian, Alizarin Crimson with Ultramarine Blue and with another blue, such as Pthalo blue…..Yellow Ochre and Ultramarine Blue perhaps. With each combination, you will see that the work takes on a dramatically different “feel”.

Exercise

1. Experiment with mixing 3 different versions of a warm colour (red through orange) with 3 different cool colours (blues through greens). Start with the warms at one side of your palette and the cools at the other and gradually mix one into the other to achieve the tonal spectra.
2. A couple of quiz questions: where are the pigments brightest? What happens to the value as you mix the warm with the cool?

Laying out a painting in Watercolour

In the following video, I apply the similar principles in watercolour, this time retaining some white of the paper for future flexibility.

I often start by getting the overall spatial arrangements in dry media: pencil, charcoal, sometimes ink and then model mid-tone washes and darks with a limited palette (in this case Cerulean blue, Ultramarine blue and Hansa yellow). Depending on the subject, I might use a single blue, yellow and a brown (however, rarely a full red). For landscapes, yellow and blue make my greens and sometimes I use only a brown and a blue and then paint green onto already established blue-darks.

Notice that I leave quite a bit of white space. That’s because I’m defining my shadow areas with the initial washes and I want to leave myself plenty of bare paper for some chromatic washes later on.

 

Notes on staining and non-staining pigments:

At this stage, I use non-staining colours exclusively to enable some local removal (lifting) of pigment: you can test for this by applying brush and water to some dry swaths of pigment.

Here’s the list of non-staining pigments on my palette: Cadmium Red, Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine Blue, Cerulean Blue, Cadmium Yellow, Yellow Ochre and Hansa Yellow (lightly staining).

The staining pigments I avoid at this stage are: Alizarin Crimson, all purples, Pthalo blue (like the plague), and Lemon Yellow. I don’t use green, however many are staining: pthalo being an often-used constituent.

Exercise

• From the reference of your choice, plein-air or the Reference Gallery develop a limited palette painting. Proceed in a similar manner to the above, using your own style.  Make the primary focus the  lights, mid-tones and darks (3 zones), reserving white space for the future! The additional opportunity in this study is to make the darks cooler (that is, bluer) than the mid tones.