Cornwell’s Process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs7VY16nTA0
I can well remember one
evening when he did a complete 30x40 oil painting in one three-hour session,
starting with a blank canvas.
For the first stage he laid in
the whole picture with a thin application of umbers and siennas diluted with
turpentine to get his overall tonality quickly established. He then took a
ten-minute break from the painting to let the turpentine half-dry while he
prepared for the next stage, the application of full color.
As he laid out his color on the
palette, Cornwell stressed restraint – reserving the strongest color and
contrasts for the area that was to become the center of interest. The color in
the rest of the picture would be subordinated to it. Cornwell mixed many
varieties of browns and grays, which he likened to a master chef’s repertoire
of sauces and gravies.
His color was first pre-mixed on
his palette in a series of piles of paint to match the range of values on the
canvas. Then, with his design already blocked in, he rapidly laid on the paint
with a wide brush, stroke by stroke, without a pause. Each brushful was applied
exactly in its place, matching the tonal value of the sienna beneath. He kept
the whole painting going at the same time – stage by stage – until all at once,
it came together as a spontaneous tour-de-force, and we all stood up and
applauded.
What most of the audience did not
know then – and I did not learn until years later – was that the spontaneity
was a performance preceded by a very careful rehearsal. In fact, every Cornwell
painting or illustration was preceded by extensive studies, as evinced by the
many such examples in this book. Nothing was left to chance. Variations of
poses of the figures, the background elements, their positions and color
relationships to each other were all explored and re-arranged until he was
satisfied that every square inch of the picture made the fullest contribution
to the totality.
However, none of the hard
preliminary work shows in his final paintings and that is one of the qualities
that make Cornwell’s pictures so enjoyable. He made it look so easy and so
inevitably ‘just right’.”
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