First Impressions Of Impressionism: It's Fast
Yes, the paintings are kind of incomplete,
but not the kind where portraits are distorted.
The incompleteness of impressionism,
is found in areas like the corner of the eye.
It usually takes three minutes to sort things out in there,
but with Impressionism it is a simple swipe of the correct color.
Now the crazy thing is,
that...
Considering the viewers state of mind,
where they normally look at the painting...
They are not interested in a correctly painted,
corner of the eye.
I see Impressionism as a magical compression algorithm,
for oil paintings.
The magic, is that photo-realism is not necessary,
to paint a person without distortions.
Crazy, incomplete, rough, hurried brushwork,
does not actually distort the person in the painting.
I suspect color issues may be overlooked,
I was just working on a painting where colors conspired to create a neat illusion.
This is called the Checker Shadow Illusion,
and illusions can make a painting difficult.
A big part of why impressionism is so neat, is speed of painting,
there is definitely no room for fighting illusion here.
To give you a more popular example of how terribly misleading illusions can be,
the moon never changes size.
When we see a huge moon at the horizon,
that is an illusion.
I remember an astrophysicist saying,
grab your ankles and look at the moon upside-down it will look small again.
Out of respect for Impressionism,
we can't stop for the Checker Shadow Illusion.
This is where digital painting,
makes Impressionism even more powerful.
We just use the color picker,
and a reference image stretched over the entire canvas.
Like the the reference over canvas technique, and Hyperrealism,
Impressionism is an incredible teacher.
In the time span of one hyperrealistic work,
you can make five or more impressionist ones, and thus explore all the steps beyond.
Impressionism brings everything closer to you,
from composition and multi-person paintings to a powerful Impressionist portfolio and your first art show.