These quotes are compiled from students notes. They were passed down to me from some of my teachers who studied with Dunn Students like Harold Von Schmidt and Kenneth Riley. Some of these quotes appear in a slightly different form in ‘An Evening in the classroom’ I have two more pages of these to publish, about 1300 words in all. I have published two other posts of Dunn Quotes here
These have been a great source of inspiration to me over the years and I hope you find them helpful.
Try planning a picture in ivory black and raw sienna.
When we start a picture we begin with a shape. Our first problem is to introduce into the shape a form. It may be only a line that will tie the sides together.
If the distance is dark the values will grow lighter towards the foreground.
One authentic detail will make the whole picture.
You cannot paint a picture from the model.
Keep repeating your main values it will give your picture unity.
An arm is all one; paint it so with one stroke of the brush
Play up to one color note
Light and dark, warm and cool colors, in equal proportions produce static neutrality, balancing each other right out of the picture.
To simplify your scene, paint as many things as possible in the same value. Then vary the texture and edges. Let modeled form come against flat surfaces, detail against simplicity, hard against soft etc.
When the center of interest is established in its tonal relations, that becomes the key to the picture and you have to stick to it whether you like it or not.
Eliminate everything that is not relevant to the main purpose.
When two values nearly alike come together, paint them as one value.
Dark in light must be at least as the shadow tone of white. If the light is soft paint it soft.
Form is expressed in the light tones by dark accents, in the dark tones by light accents.
Pictorial art is relating tones to create beauty- like chords of music- not the faithful copying of the model.
In the model there is a confusion of tones that have no meaning in art.
Do not have an important dark and important light in the same picture they will destroy each other.
If you see a thing dark make it darker; large paint it larger; small paint it smaller, then your work will be positive.
One dark accent will give accent to a high key picture.
Really Enjoyed this!
There are some great ideas here. I am having trouble getting to the other Dunn posts. Is it just me? Leslie
Leslie,
When you click on the link it lists the latest Harvey Dunn post at top the others should be below it. At least it is when I do it.
Thanks a million!
I knew there had to be more Brandywine notes hanging around somewhere!
Best wishes,
kev
Kev,
You actually triggered this with that Von Schmidt image you put up on David Apatoff's blog. Which led me to read and post an article about him and see some of his Dunn quotes while reading up on him again. That made me dig out the rest of them and here we are.
Oh, I'm glad to hear that!
Von Schmidt has been knocking me out more and more since I purchased "draws and paints the old west" (which is the book I'm assuming you are referring to) a few years back. (I had just found out he was a Dunn student and was very gratified to find a few Dunn tips in there.)
The Von Schmidt image I had linked to was from this anonymous resource online… here is the von schmidt folder which contains many images not in the book.
Here’s the entire listing of folders of illustrators on the resource.
Greatly looking forward to more Dunn pearls.
Thanks again,
kev
Kev,
Thanks for the links, what a great resource.
The second link is mistakenly the same as the first. You can just click on "parent directory" at the top of the Von archive to see all the folders. (I assume you already figured that out but thought I would explain it for others' benefit)