Oil Painting Techniques and Materials
Book review
I had heard the name Harold Speed as I started my art learning journey via online reading and trawls of YouTube, so I was interested to read what he had to say.
Who was Harold Speed?
Harold Speed (11 February 1872 – 20 March 1957) was an English painter in oil and watercolour of portraits, figures and historical subjects. He also wrote instructional books for artists that remain in print.
Born in London, the son of Edward Speed, an architect, he studied architecture at the Royal College of Art, but soon took up painting, and continued his studies at the Royal Academy Schools between 1891 and 1896, winning a gold medal and a travelling scholarship in 1893. In 1896, he was elected as a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. Speed was a member of the Art Workers' Guild and was elected as it's Master in 1916.
He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1893, and held his first one-man exhibition in 1907 at the Leicester Galleries. His work was part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1928 Summer Olympics. In 1930 he provided paintings for the new chapel of Wesley House, Cambridge.
Speed lived in Watlington, Oxfordshire and London, where he died on 20 March 1957.
This biography is from Wikipedia - read full Wikipedia entry
So the author is a very accomplished painter and he provides excellent insights into the technical aspects of oil painting as well as how to improve one's observational skills and expressiveness. Before doing so, he discusses the subject of modern abstract art and its influences upon the art world, and his opinion of it leaves the reader in no doubt where he stands on the subject.
I can call to mind no time in the past history of painting, when any considerable body of artists have deliberately set aside the traditions of fine craftsmanship in order to express themselves more freely; or when there has been such a fashion for the crude methods of savages and primitive peoples.
And on his review of Modern Art and Art Criticism, he says:
But it creates a very unhealthy atmosphere for art to thrive in...
Summing up his attitude towards Modern Art:
And so it seems to me in much of this so-called modern art, the aesthetic content is the sole idea concentrated upon, to the exclusion, nay, to the open flouting of every other consideration. Jerry-made pictures are the result. Pictures so shoddily put together that they prevent all but the few from perceiving that they have any aesthetic content at all, underlying their obvious slovenliness of execution.
if you do not see anything, stop and take up another canvas, or rest. After a change of work your eye will see clearly what is wrong and what is wanted. Always turn your unfinished work to the wall so that you see it with a fresh eye when you come to work on it again.
...nothing is so good as a clean cast placed in a strong light and shade, such as you would get from a small window… Set it against a background of brown paper.
He then describes how to go about painting such a cast - in what order to paint the background, ground and subject, how to hold the brush and how to treat edges.
The practical advise is interspersed with information and opinions on the old masters techniques and how the various art movements, throughout the age, have added to our collective understanding of how we see and interpret our visual and imagined world.
He presents a practical exercise in colour which is not easy to follow, as the instructions are all descriptive and there are no diagrams but I think it would be a worthwhile exercise - one I intend to do after I translate some of the old colour and medium terms into modern-day equivalents. I'll post the outcome of this as a blog article at some point.
The text is interspersed with little nuggets of artistic wisdom such as how to paint a man's white shirt collar in a portrait, without it becoming the focus of the painting and many other little gems. I've probably read the book three times because I found myself reading it passively and then thinking 'Wait, what was that?' and then retracing my steps to absorb the full meaning of the point he was making.
There are notes on how he believes many of the old masters painted through his examination of a number of their works as well as sections on line, tone and colour design.
Some of the recommendations regarding the use of mediums and resins are outdated and our collective scientific knowledge now informs us that there are more archival techniques in this regard.
The book provides a platform for the reader to go and explore a number of painting techniques, colour harmony and how other artists achieved great works of art.
Well worth a read (or three).
