The following is an excerpt from a book that I am writing about my approach to contemporary Impressionist painting

THE BLOCK STUDY

       The block study is a unique and insidious form of torture invented by the late, great Henry Hensche. Legendary, block studies cause trembling at the memory by all who have been forced to endure them, and the average student of painting has good reason for anxiety when faced with the prospect of doing one or two.  The thought of doing thousands of them (as I have) has caused some promising young painters to forswear art for more sensible and enjoyable pursuits such as bridge toll collecting and rag picking.

       Now that I have gotten that off of my chest...I think that block studies have enormous value as a tool for learning to study color relationships. I still do block studies as a way to tune up my color vision after a period of not painting, rather like a musician might do scales or exercises to warm up.  Properly used, the block study can accomplish so much that I would encourage every painter of every level to do them on occasion.

       When we begin to paint we are faced with so many choices that the tasks of knowing where to begin, what colors to choose, and how to organize everything coherently can be so overwhelming that even experienced painters can end up with a mess instead of a painting. The less experienced student learning to see and paint color and light can be overwhelmed by it all and end up learning nothing. The block study reduces the problem to its most basic elements: big masses of color.

       Henry Hensche embraced the block study as a teaching tool because he realized that by eliminating distractions – the play of light across flowers, the sparkle in the reflection of water, the slight glow in the shadow on a model’s face – a student would be able to concentrate on the fundamental problem of putting one spot of color next to another.  Hawthorne’s mudheads were an earlier version of this. Hensche also realized that if a painter learned to see big masses through the study of simple shapes, that painter would be able to apply that knowledge too much more complex subjects.  Instead of seeing a landscape as an assemblage of trees and houses and sky and flowers and fences and what-have-you, the painter who has trained by studying blocks is apt to see the landscape as big masses of light and shadow, thus both simplifying the problem of how to approach the painting, and also providing a powerful basis for organization.

The Right Way To Do a Block Study

       One of the biggest problems that I encounter when working with students on block studies is the tendency to take them too seriously. I have seen both rank beginners and experienced painters approach block studies as if the studies were going to end up in a major museum. The students carefully compose, draw in exacting detail with perfect perspective, carefully lay in the paints so that they fill in all of the white spaces, and agonize over every puddle of color as it is mixed before transferring the color from palette to board.  All of this for an exercise.  By the way, I am speaking from personal experience; I treated my first block studies as if they were going to be masterpieces. Once I got over that, I began to learn something of value.

A Typical Block Study Setup

       Everybody has 10,000 bad paintings in them (actually I have at least 15,000). The sooner you get those 10,000 bad paintings done, the sooner you will start doing good paintings.  Block studies add to the tally of bad paintings. Better yet, don’t think of a block study as a painting.  A block study is an educational tool that will help you learn to see and paint the color of light. 

It is completely unnecessary to try to set up a “beautiful” still life when doing a block study. In fact, that may be antithetical to the spirit of the exercise.  Instead, try to make a set up, like the one on the right, in which big areas of light and shadow can be seen next to each other.  When I
 pick blocks to paint in a block study I try to avoid colors that are too
similar because I know that I will gain most, especially early on, from
 having easy to see differences in color to work with. Leave the subtleties
 for later on..

On the right is my drawing of the block study in the photo above.  As is evident, I made no effort to draw with any accuracy (in fact, I was intentionally crude).  My sole intent was to make indications for myself of the areas in which I wanted to place paints. I purposely tried to arrange the setup so that I would have large areas of contrasting colors next to each other, and I exaggerated some shapes so that I would have more area to mix paint in.

       The  photograph on the right shows the first spots of color that I put on the board.  The first spot was the color note on the top of the white block, followed by the two color notes on the sides. I chose the first note because it was the color that I could see and mix most easily to start with. I didn’t waste a whole lot of time trying to mix it too perfectly, because it is impossible to know whether your color is right until you have other spots of color on the rest of the board, though I was aware that the light
 condition was sunny, and so I avoided colors that might look like those on an overcast day. Notice that I am simply putting down shapeless blobs, and not trying to fill out the drawn shapes.

       Next I put a spot of color to the right, depicting the dark note on the reddish block, then a note for the cast shadow on the cloth, then one for the cast shadow on top of the blue block and then one for the sunlight and so forth.  I am not jumping randomly around the board; I am putting one spot of color next to another so that I can more easily judge the correctness of the color relationships. 

       Ultimately I have put a spot of color in each of the major masses. I have done my best to get colors that are correct in relationship to each other in this first statement. The study, at this point has taken me about five or six minutes.  

       My next step is to quickly look at the study and decide which color or colors are the most “right” and which are the most “wrong.” I use the “rightest” colors as a sort of an anchor, a reference point that will help me adjust the “wrong” colors. The fourth photograph shows the results after I have adjusted some of the masses that I thought were most wrong. For example, the shadow notes on the blue block at the bottom of the board has been changed significantly and I have made more subtle adjustments to some of the other colors.  I have also begun to develop variations within the masses of color.

       The beginning student (and I am including here both absolute beginners in painting as well as accomplished painters who are unfamiliar with this method) would best stop after getting the big masses correct.  This is no mean feat; being able to quickly and accurately state the major color notes that express the light key in a painting is a fundamental skill that must be mastered.  At this stage though, the study has a distinctly sunny look.  The development of variations within the masses is the next step.

       Within any big mass of color in a painting there are likely to be smaller variations.  In an actual painting these variations might be anything from the slight variation indicating a change in form, to reflected light, along with changes in local color within a mass. Sometimes there is a slight variation in color that comes as a result of one color placed next to another color. Looking at the next photograph in the series, I am no longer trying to adjust the big masses since I have gotten the “big note” to my satisfaction; the study looks like a sunny day.  Now I am trying to paint the smaller variations that I see. It is important to point out that the variations must all stay within the mass. The shadow side of the white block, for example, has reflections from the blue block, from the drop cloth, from the sky, and from trees and other surroundings.  I am trying to paint some of these subtle color changes, but they all must still remain within the big mass of the shadow side because if they don’t, they will jump out and look unnatural. One of the biggest problems that I see with neophytes is that they get so fascinated by all of the beautiful variations within a mass that they try to paint them all without consideration for the big mass, and end up with a riot of brilliant colors.

       The final notes on the study are just refinements of those that came before, subtle variations within the masses that continue to express the light effect.

       The block study on an overcast day follows the same set of steps and also shows the first major division in light keys that the student must learn to see: the difference between a grey and a sunny day. Why would I emphasize a difference that most people can recognize by simply looking out the window?  The problem is not meteorological.  Rather, the beginner will often choose colors in a general way without consideration for the overall light key, resulting in a painting that could be a sunny day or could be an overcast day, the only difference being the relative values of the lights and shadows.  I would like to note that many fine paintings have been produced with little or no regard for light key, but to the extent that our goal is to learn to paint light, we must concern ourselves with seeing and learning to paint the different light keys in nature.  The difference between sunny and grey is the most obvious (except for the difference between night and day).

       Before ending the discussion of block studies I want to make a couple of points clear. Notice that I do not do any underpainting; the first note
 that I put down on the board is the best color that I can get, based on
 what I see and what I can mix.  I may “push” the color  in a certain
 direction based on my knowledge of the light key, but I am not putting
 down a color simply to achieve some sort of vibrancy, nor am I trying to
 follow any formula. The sunny block study is a good example. Take the light plane on the top of the white block. When I looked at the setup as a whole and when I looked at the overall light key of the day I decided that the best that I could do at first was to use a yellow like I did.  I knew that it probably wasn’t “right” at least in the sense of thinking that I would end up with exactly the same color when the study was finished, but I also knew that I would have to get other colors down in all of the other masses before I could really make a judgment. I chose the pinkish note on the sunny side of the blue block because, compared to the other colors, the blue block in sunlight looked warm, but cooler than the yellow on the white block, and the pink was the best that I could do.

       Finally, notice that I have made no attempt to finish these studies.  Both of them were carried to their final stages in less than an hour and in that time I was able to extract from them valuable lessons and experience for myself.  I could have tried to “finish” them, but what would be the point?