Introduction to the Impressionist Painting Process

The Academy rules of painting were changed by the new ideas that inspired the Impressionist painters. These open ideas about composition and color theory produced an organic movement of individuals who captured the culture of their age and nature on its own terms.

The Impressionist painting process is the lived interplay between material, method, and temperament through both science and poetry. Science applied is the classical rational and practical habit that builds clear observations of our world. Poetry is one’s individuality given to the expression in a distinctive rhythm and style.

Both the science and the poetry of painting become one as in a marriage. You cannot separate the dancer from the dance, or the poet from the poetry as you cannot remove the science or the poetry from the process and create an Impressionist painting.

Impressionist Painting Technique

Impressionist’s painters recreated their world in shorthand for their technique was quick and concise for they were trying to capture the light and what was fleeting. Instead of using classical under painting and layered glaze techniques of the Old Masters, the Impressionists used broken-spaced strokes with new and more vibrant colors to produce the sensation of light.

The choreography of brushstrokes comprised the Impressionist ideas about what was important about their moment in the light. Optical mixing using broken spaced strokes, simultaneous contrast, and flat asymmetrical design are the corner stones upon which color into light are fashioned in an Impressionist work.

Impressionist painters used at time a limited palette of colors as well as robust brushstrokes in creating their works.

As a general technique for building an Impressionist work, or any painting, work the largest areas first and the smallest areas last. Big brushstrokes are followed by medium and then smaller brushstrokes layered on top.  The spaces left between the strokes allow for under painting (toned ground), and or foundation colors to peek through.

Elements in an Impressionist Painting

✓     Record the visual experience and optical perception of light through the use of color

✓     Painted science of modern life

✓     Personalize subject matter

✓     Application of paint

✓     Use of color as light

✓     Color less intense for that was the post impressionists.

Components of Image Poetry

Image poetry is the science and poetry expressed within an impressionist painting.

How to analyze the ‘Image–Poetry’ components of the Impressionist masters in order to understand their own artistic goals in becoming Impressionist painters.

·      Light through Color

·      Color

·      Simultaneous Contrast

·      Optical Mixing

·      Brushstrokes - Illustrative and Expressionistic

·      Surface Integrity

·      Asymmetrical Composition

When viewing an impressionist’s work, notice the surface integrity of how the texture of the painting communicates the ideas of light and expressed movement and feelings.

Notice how their brushstrokes are mobile and mutable lending to the idea of a fleeting moment. Impressionist compositions are informal while the patterns of color seem to transcend matter.