A Painting Lesson

I visited the Araceli Dans Retrospective at Ayala Musuem around April. What I got from it was more than I expected. This is because I was offered a glimpse of a bygone era--mainly that of the age of Fernando Amorsolo, a towering figure in the history of Philippine art (not to mention a pioneering teacher at the Art school I attended).

This is from the coffee table book I read that was on display, Ma'am Cheloy talks fondly about Amorsolo who became her mentor when she attended the College of Fine Arts in UP:

Of those days, Cheloy says: "I was raised in the Amorsolo school of painting. He was my teacher but he never really taught. For one thing, the influence of his paintings was so strong, that he feared we would lose our identity by copying his style. Moreover, he was painfully shy. You would meet him in the corridor and he would detour somewhere so he wouldn't have to greet you. But he was the one who validated me so I could take my Fine Arts in three years. He said, 'You do not need to go through four years because you were advanced when you came in.' I was a freshman but they put me in some senior classes.

"Amorsolo was on our roster of professors for life drawing and painting but he did not teach, only peeking into the classroom, then disappearing again. But there was one thing he taught me. One day he peeped in when we were painting a live model, and I said, 'Maestro, maestro, please don't go away. I am desperate.' He could not run away. I said 'Sir, look at my painting, look at the complexion, it looked like toasted bread and I don't know what to do.'

"So he looked at my palette. He said--he always spoke to us in Tagalog-- 'Take out that color. Don't use burnt sienna. Take it out. It's sour-looking, it looks too red. Use raw sienna then apply Indian red, but only a very small amount, just a drop.' So I followed his advice, and my portraits improved."

I find these passages simply fascinating, seriously I want to hear more!
I like how Ma'am Cheloy relates Amorsolo's demeanor--how he was shy and never really taught a formal lesson.

And nice piece of advice on painting human complexion--to my horror I just stocked up on tubes of burnt sienna! because I think it's what Titian and Botticelli used--but I'd try Maestro's advice: raw sienna with a tinge of red-- after all whatever you hurl at Amorsolo's classicism you can't deny he did damn good portraits.