In order to get inside Suzanne Valadon’s head and break down her painting, I did a quick dump on paper. This is a great way to learn techniques, and experiment. For this piece I worked using acrylic paints. There was alot of research involved, because she learned from the Impressionists, her techniques were very loose. My first question was: did the Impressionist use an underpainting? I’m so used to using underpaintings, that I was a bit out of my comfort zone. Also, what was their process?

After doing a deep dive I found out that they use certain characteristics in their paintings.

• They focused on capturing the environment around them

• Loose brushwork

• Broken color

• Used strong emphasis of light 

• Short, thick strokes of paint 

• Included pure intense colors in their palettes

• Worked wet into wet to avoid hard edges

• Used light colors in their underpaintings

When you look at Suzanne’s painting, you find that she broke up the colors to create movement and depth. The painting has this great energetic bold, and thick brushwork. It seems she used a loose scumbling technique over the background to fill in the landscape.

There is contrast between the trees in the foreground and background that separates them. Also, the dark colors anchor the whole scene down. When you turn the image black and white you can really get a feel for the values that were used.