Utrecht Brand Manager Joe Gyurscak in American Artist Magazine

Joe Gyurcsak, a veteran painter and art teacher, recently gave a demonstration at a regional arts guild in which he showed how using a limited palette can help unify the look of a still life painting. Gyurcsak, the resident artist at Utrecht Art Supplies, took an event at the Burlington County Art Guild as an opportunity to explore ideas behind a piece he admired—N.C. Wyeth’s The Dusty Bottle, a 1924 oil painting that’s in the collection of the Brandywine River Museum, in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Wyeth’s somewhat mysterious piece lets a huge green glass bottle largely disappear into the darkness of the background. Gyurcsak sought to recreate the low values of Wyeth’s painting—and also Wyeth’s masterful way of wringing the most out of a simple composition. “Any old object can be interesting depending on how it is lit,” Gyurcsak says. “Wyeth really shows how few objects you need to make a painting interesting. He didn’t do too many still lifes, but the ones he did were gems. I’ve wanted to do a painting similar to Wyeth’s for a long time, and after 10 years of looking, I finally found a bottle like the one he painted—in an old antique shop in Easton, Maryland.”

Gyurcsak decided to set up the still life arrangement on the floor about eight feet from his easel and to shine a warm light on the objects—the aforementioned glass bottle, a brownware jug, and a white plate with an orange on it—on the left side at floor level. The objects sat on a piece of black velvet that continued up behind them, creating a background that effectively absorbed almost all light. A second lamp, a balanced light fitted with a warm bulb and a cool bulb, shone on the artist’s easel and trickled a weak secondary light on the objects’ right side. Gyurcsak had previously tested many options to determine the placement that most effectively showed off the objects and the light effects. (The rest of the lights in the room were turned out.) He affixed a homemade cropping tool—a viewfinder—to the articulated arm of a modified lamp so that the artist’s view of the still life setup would remain consistent from his place at the easel. “I find that fixing the viewfinder to a stationary object is very valuable,” explains Gyurcsak. “It keeps you from changing the cropping distance. Students sometimes don’t realize that they are holding the viewfinder at a slightly different distance each time they hold it with their hands, and reducing the visual area of the composition can give you a simplified look, which is especially important when painting a quick two hour demo such as this one,” he pointed out.

The artist had previously toned a 30"-x-30" Utrecht cotton duck canvas by rubbing burnt sienna oil paint and
alkyd medium on the surface with a rag and letting it dry thoroughly over a few weeks. As other artists have also pointed out, a tone on the canvas eliminates the bright light value of a gessoed surface (which “closes” the pupil of eye), lessens the absorbency of the surface and allows smoother paint application, and enables an artist to work from the middle of the value range. At the start of the demonstration, Gyurcsak sketched the outlines of the objects with burnt sienna mixed with alkyd glazing medium and a little turpentine using a size 8 filbert bristle brush. “Delicate sketching was not needed because the scene has a dark background—the drawing could be cruder,” Gyurcsak comments. “This step is all about determining how the subject is going to fill up or be contained on the canvas. You have to look at the composition carefully and see how the shapes will fill the space first.”

He then turned his attention to his palette. Gyurcsak made a point of explaining the advantages of using a limited palette similar to the one suggested by many of Anders Zorn’s paintings, including yellow ochre, cadmium red light or vermillion, cobalt blue, ivory black, and white. This color selection is sometimes slightly broadened on Gyurcsak’s palette by the inclusion of cadmium yellow medium, burnt sienna, and ultramarine blue (replacing cobalt blue). The objective is to reduce color options and create color mixtures within those options that automatically create a harmonious light in which to envelope the still life. Alkyd glazing medium mixed with the paints allowed Gyurcsak to work a little more quickly, as it partially set up almost immediately. The teacher always pays careful attention to the organization of his mixing palette and strongly advises students to do likewise, citing past masters who avowed that the appearance of an artist’s palette speaks eloquently of the person’s process. “An out-of-control palette equals an out-of-control painting,” Gyurcsak asserts. “Pay attention to how you manage your palette.” Another key point he made was the importance of holding a color mixture on the palette knife up to the area of the subject one wishes to paint, in the same light conditions as the subject. “Keep your easel close to your subject so you can compare them,” he says. “Don’t worry so much about making the perfect brushstroke. If the value, intensity, and temperature of the mixture are right, then it will work. Put it down fluidly, and don’t worry about the accuracy of the stroke. And don’t pet the paint on the canvas. Load the brush, lay it down, and don’t go over it too many times.”

Gyurcsak blocked in the big shapes with local color using size 8, 10, and 12 flat brushes, placing the strokes down as if building a mosaic, leaving some canvas showing. He concentrated on value, but nevertheless pointed out that the dark of the background was cool (made with ivory black and ultramarine blue), whereas the dark of the glass bottle was a dark green. The dark background was added next, roughly defining the shapes of the objects.(Later in the process, he would blend the edges of these areas with a fan brush so the edges were lost and the bottle appeared to fade into the darkness.) Gyurcsak then moved on to the other objects in the still life, blocking them in with middle-range local color. “I’m doing this so I can still go up and down in value range later on these objects,” he explains. The artist was careful to not paint over the toned canvas in the areas where highlights occur on the jug, orange, and plate, pointing out that the color of the toned canvas was brighter than the adjacent areas but not as light as the lightest lights he would later add.

Switching to smaller brushes, Gyurcsak began to break down the bigger shapes into littler ones, and he quickly progressed to putting down a couple of highlights to serve as landmarks. “These few highlights help get the value range established,” he says. “It will also help establish the form, turn the form. And it will do this quickly, which is important in a fast painting such as this alla prima demonstration.” Gyurcsak utilized several tools in the artist’s toolbox to break the big shapes into smaller pieces, including details, various values, diverse brushstrokes, and contrasting color temperatures. The subject of his palette came up again. “Ask yourself questions about each color you mix,” he says. “Is the area light or dark, rich or dull, warm or cool?” The atmosphere suggested by the still life scene played a large role in its appearance, and Gyurcsak pointed out that capturing this ambience would be easier due to his limited palette. The white plate,which was more dimly lit and thus much darker than the reference photo indicates, was reflecting many of the colors of its surrounding objects. The artist used the rather neutral green grays that were naturally produced on his palette to paint the local color of the plate. “Don’t be literal when you paint white objects,” Gyurcsak says. “Use some of the nice grays that show up on your mixing palette. It helps create a unified atmosphere.” He also had some advice on painting glass—often an intimidating subject for beginners. “Just find the light source, then determine the temperature and shape of the highlight,” says the artist. “Don’t get caught up in tight descriptions of objects—paint the highlight, and let the abstract nature of glass and reflective objects do the rest. I always remember what Giorgio Morandi said,that there is nothing more abstract than realism. That is so true. Pay attention to how one shape is interacting with other shapes. How do they fit together? Remove yourself from the everyday observation of things.”

Finally, Gyurcsak added the last highlights and blended the edges of the dark sides of objects with a fan brush, merging the color of the background with the colors of the objects in some places—even overlapping them at times. “The eye wants to fill in what is not there,” he explains. The artist discussed edges, advising students to be spare in using hard ones, utilizing soft edges much more often. “Hard edges attract your eye, so be careful where you place them.” Wyeth had scratched “three hrs” into the corner of the canvas of The Dusty Bottle. Gyurcsak did nothing similar, although he executed his still life in two. “Just trying to pull off something that looks like something,” he modestly said. His students seemed to think the artist had accomplished much more than merely “something.”

Bob Bahr is the managing editor of American Artist.

Download the article as it appears in the July/August Issue of American Artist Magazine.