I dedicate this post to Mrs. Edward, the artist who introduced me to oil painting decades back. This painting is my first oil painting, “Nativity scene” and in size my biggest too, about six feet by six feet.
A little about Mrs. Edward, or Edward aunty, as we, the neighborhood kids, called her fondly. She was the wife of a colleague of my father, a brilliant artist by training, and she taught art to few kids she hand-picked, during our summer vacation. I was always interested in art even as a child as I’ve mentioned in my other posts, and when Mr. and Mrs. Edward came to live in our neighborhood, it was a blessing for us kids who were art inspired.
One summer I got to train with Edward aunty. There was a methodical approach to her process. She introduced the importance of sketching, proportions, and different mediums, colors and hue. She had about 5-6 students that summer and it was total dedication required from us. We were a bunch of kids ranging from middle school to high school students, and each of us had an exclusive individual training. Edward aunty was a very warm person, she treated like her own kids and all of this made it very inviting for us to be motivated to spend 5-6 hours everyday painting under her guidance. Each student had a different subject and medium that they were painting/sketching and aunty chose the subject was for each of us.
The routine – every weekday of the summer vacation (about 6-8 weeks) we would go to her home, and paint for from Noon-ish to about 5 pm until Edward came back home from office. Even though I had been drawing and sketching before I went her class, she started me with sketching for few days and then on water color painting (which we were also doing in our school art class).
After 2-3 weeks, she showed me this post-card sized pic of the nativity scene and said, I am going to start teaching you oil painting and this is the painting we start with. I was not familiar with western art at that time – this was pre-internet and access to western art at that was minimal. But one look at the picture she showed me, I was in awe, it was so beautiful and my teacher decided that was the painting I start with, so I went with she knows what’s good for us. If I probably had known that this was a master-piece from the Renaissance era, I may have perhaps been intimidated.
The process – She gave me instructions on the size of the panel I should get, and from which vendor, how to prime it and have a base layer in before we started with blocking down the sketch on the panel. This was a huge panel, and she had me draw the main figures and structures free hand, no grid or measurement, but mostly eye-bawling to get the proportions right. It was a great experience when I first squeezed blobs of oil paint from the tubes, carefully mixing it with thinning mediums where required, I was hooked on oil-paint as a medium and to this day love painting with oil paints. So this was painting for 5-6 hours daily and in hindsight she also taught focus, being able to be one with your art-work for that duration.
Renaissance Art and Techniques: As I progressed in my painting, laying down the colors and hues, I remember her mentioning the emphasis of bold colors and fabric folds in renaissance art, how the colors and folds were chosen to depict texture and draw attention to the main subject in a painting. I remember few of her thoughts she mentioned about Renaissance art, but didn’t grasp the immensity of the technique at that time, until recently when started to learn more about the Renaissance masters and their techniques.
Renaissance art broadly consisted of three main techniques – fresco, tempera and oils. Color and texture, especially in fabric and textiles of the main characters were used to create awe and draw attention of the viewer’s eye, creating a theatrical experience to the scene in the painting.
“While many artists were skilled in all three techniques, as the Renaissance wore on, fresco was reserved for ceilings, tempera for small religious panels, and oils for wood panels or canvases, sometimes very large ones. Oils permitted much greater subtlety in execution and became the favoured medium of most late Renaissance masters, a preference that would continue in the following centuries.”
Nativity depictions through the Renaissance Era: One of the earliest, profound depiction of Nativity exploring color and drapery was by early Renaissance master, Giotto di Bondone, in the period 1304-1306, in fresco style, inside Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy. Use of vivid colors like Mary in blue and red robes, holding new born baby Jesus in her arms, and Joseph in blazing yellow draw attention to the central theme of the scene, while the stable and animals create the subtle backdrop of the scene.
In this painting Mrs. Edward used as a reference for me to study and paint, Mary in blue and white and Joseph’s robes and the folds in the fabric are used to draw attention to the central theme of the painting. Effects of light are used to emphasize the ambience of the scene – for instance, brightness on the baby Jesus face and reflections of this light on the faces of Mary and the angels, who look at him in awe and with joy. The posture of Joseph and the three wise men in the backdrop of the wee hours of morning convey the story, like a theatrical experience to the viewer.
Renaissance masters and their techniques have been an inspiration to art forms in Asia and in particular in India as seen in art of one of greatest artists in India Raja Ravi Varma. The vivid bold colors and use of textile drapery and folds in the central characters was a technique Raja Ravi Varma, incorporated and wove it seamlessly into Indian cultural and mythological subjects in his paintings. “It is famously said in India that in his paintings you can almost hear the rustle of silk sarees.”
As an artist, techniques, mediums and styles developed by masters in the Renaissance era is a subject one can spend a lifetime learning, absorbing and implementing in our own art. I hope to delve more in depth on specific techniques in future posts.
Back to Mrs. Edwards, I was lucky to overlap with her for a brief period in the same neighborhood, couple of years later, Mr. Edward was transferred to another city in his job, and I went on to college and graduate school, moved to a different city, but tried to paint smaller pieces with the discipline and dedication to the art she instilled in me at that young age.
My heartfelt gratitude to Mrs. Edward who introduced me to oil paintings, and to all the masters who pioneered these art forms and methods.
Thankful to my parents for the unconditional support – my mom would make sure I got more of the vitamin A through food to make sure my eyes were being nourished during the extra strain and my dad, made sure I got all the right supplies and anything else I needed to pursue my art, for which Iam ever so grateful. This painting still hangs in my parents’ home.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays !!