This is not a painting but a digital image of me in a straw hat. I zoomed in to cut out extraneous detail. I love the flat patches of colour. I was using the image viewer that came ready installed with Windows 10 but it was total crap. It just kept malfunctioning. So I got this free app, FastStone Image Viewer, online, to replace it. It has some interesting functions, most of which I haven’t explored, but this function, in which colour and tone are simplified into flat patches, is aesthetically / visually very pleasing. And that’s maybe because I was trying (not very successfully) to do a similar thing with paint.
Yes, flat colour has a much nicer quality to it than modelled colour. I’ve forgotten my art history now but in the back of my mind is the idea that Manet used flat colour in his painting and he got the idea from studying the paintings of Velezquez… I’d have to go to Paris Louvre and Madrid Prado to check this out personally (you can’t believe anything you’re told nowadays!) But in the meantime…
July 10 2019
peter robinson fine art 