Cezanne's Apples and the Tree-Forms of The Forest

I like painting trees because they are such strong forms. I painted these trees while visiting my parents on their woodland estate.

About.com, under the heading of art history, defines form as "Form is an element of art. At its most basic, a form is a three-dimensional geometrical figure (i.e.: sphere, cube, cylinder, cone, etc.), as opposed to a shape, which is two-dimensional, or flat." http://arthistory.about.com/cs/glossaries/g/f_form.htm

The About.com definition is a basic and well accepted one, but creating form in art has been approached from a couple of different angles.

As an example of one method, I used to create form by painting each object, in a painting, a local color ( e.g., a red apple), then I  highlighted  and shaded the object by lightening and darkening that local color: making light red for the highlight and dark red for the shadow. Often I lightened the red by adding white and darkened the red by adding black.

However, there is another way to create form; rreferring to this way, Lois Griffel, in her enlightening book, Painting The Impressionistic Landscape: Lessons In Interpreting Light And Color quotes her teacher Charles Hawthorne. He says, "Let color make form, do not make form and color it in. Work with your color as if you were creating mass--like a sculptor with his clay." ( Charles Hawthorne was the founder of the Cape Cod School of Art which taught the Impressionist methods.)

To see--perhaps the best-- examples of this technique of creating form, I suggest looking at Paul Cezanne's still lifes that contain apples. You will see how Cezanne sculpts the apple by using warm colors such as red and yellow to advance the form toward the viewer and cool colors such as violet, green, and blue to cause the form to move away from the viewer. No wonder Cezanne once declared "With an apple I will astonish Paris!" http://thinkexist.com/quotation/with_an_apple_i_will_astonish_paris/259340.html

In the trees and shadows of my tree painting above I use a cool version of  red, blue, and a muddy purple to push them back a bit and distinguish their forms from the bright yellow light. I like the painting but realize that I still have a lot to learn.

I will go now and peer at Cezanne's apples, hoping to learn from the Master.