Bonnard - The Dining Room in the Country - step 3

Step 3: Starting to block in the main colour areas
I started with the table cloth and door and left hand red wall. I am beginning to see already how he used small brush strokes to build up colour. (Picasso apparently said to one of his wives “Don’t talk to me about Bonnard with his mincing little brush strokes one after the other”). Maybe it’s a hang-over from the Impressionists, although Bonnard was outspoken about having moved on from them and to be sure he had. This brush work again is totally different from the way I work where I slosh on large areas of almost uniform colour first to cover the surface. Even in my final layer I rarely use these small brush strokes. I know my colours here are not quite accurate to the reproduction but this is partly because the acrylic keeps drying to a different shade than when I mix it. Sometimes it dries too dark and sometimes too light. Normally I wouldn’t notice this because normally I am not trying to copy someone else’s work, so this is an eye opener for me. I mean I knew about it in theory but I ignored it because I thought it didn’t matter – as long as my painting “worked” that was all I was bothered about. (Not that I don’t have many failures mind you).