A teapot and a visit to the Louvre

The Teapot - oil on panel (6" x 8") by Benoit Philippe

The Louvre from the Tuileries Garden in Paris

Educational resource on modern art from the Centre Pompidou

As I was carrying out some research on a piece of modern art, I stumbled upon a site from the Centre Pompidou in Paris (home of the National Museum of Modern Art) with some interesting material on modern artists and modern art movements.




These educational art files have been put together to help art amateurs prepare for their visit. They contain reproductions of works by artists in the collection as well as some biographical and historical information. These files are worth reading and provide a good introduction to key modern artists.

Here is the list of 13 files available in English (they are also available in French):

• Henri Matisse



• Pablo Picasso



• Marcel Duchamp



• Christian Boltanski



• Surrealist art



• New realism



• Cubism



• Richard Rogers + Architects



• The Object in the 20th-Century Art



• Los angeles - 1955 - 1985, The birth of an art capital



• Robert Rauschenberg, Combines (1953-1964)



• Yves Klein. Body, colour, immaterial



• Vassily Kandinsky

Art history Modern Art Centre Pompidou Henri Matisse Pablo Picasso Marcel Duchamp Christian Boltanski Surrealist art New realism Cubism Richard Rogers Robert Rauschenberg Yves Klein Vassily Kandinsky

A Parisian breakfast and a visit to Versailles

Paris would not be Paris without fresh croissants... Hard to paint while resisting the temptation to eat it.

Parisian breakfast - oil on panel (6" x 8") by Benoit Philippe

We went to Versailles on Monday, but the castle was closed to visitors. I had the time to sketch one of the statues at the entrance, as we were waiting for everyone to arrive.

We had a good walk in the park of the castle. No flower at this time of the year, but still an impressive estate with its water canals, lakes and buildings.

Happy Christmas to everyone!

Texture in oil with painting knives

When painting the oil on canvas Chrysanthemums and apples, I used painting knives for both the background and the flower petals. In this post, I will give you more details on the techniques and material used.

Painting the background

I changed the colour and aspect of the background many times for this painting, finally choosing a cool neutral background to make the warm colours of the composition resonate.

To build the foundation, I used a square shaped painting knife. Both the end and the side of the knife create interesting effects. By varying the pressure and the angle the edge of the knife makes with the canvas, you leave more of less paint on the canvas. I also scraped some painting to reveal the original background. I like the contrast you get between heavy sleek applications and the rough texture of the canvas.

If overused, painting knives can give your painting a cheap look. I think this is because you may end end-up with a mosaic of bright pure colours. On the other hand, there is nothing like a painting knife to build texture and give your painting a sculptural feel.

One way to get both texture and subtle colour variation is to glaze over the texture created with painting knives. This way, you re-introduce nuances in tones and colours while keeping the benefit of a strong texture.

Glazing over pure colours also achieves another goal: beautiful transparent and luminous colours.

The process takes time because you need to let your work with the painting knife dry before you can glaze over it. You can speed-up drying time if you mix your paint with Alkyd impasto medium or gel.

I used a technique that decorators are familiar with: On a light textured background, I laid some dark transparent colours mixed with painting medium. Then, I rubbed off the paint with a rag, leaving the glaze in the pits of the textured under painting. By doing this repeatedly with different shades of dark colours, I obtain an interesting background. If you leave the glaze to dry a little bit, then more of the colour stays on the background. The same technique can be employed to weather old wood of building walls in landscape paintings.

Painting the flower petals

For the impasto on the flowers, I mixed the paint with Lefranc & Bourgeois Flemish Medium paste (clear) in tube. It is composed of mastic resin, linseed oil, Aspic spirit and cobalt-zirconium siccative. It takes quickly (2 hours) and becomes hard when dry. It is glossy and transparent and allows precise and profound brush strokes.

A thin rounded knife is ideal to paint flower petals. Note how the shape of the knife blade actually mimics the shape of the petals.

For maximum effect, the thick application of pure light colour is laid on top of the thin darker under painting (see Thick lights over thin darks ). The contrast is also increased by opposing the cool shade of the further petals with the hot colour of the thick petals in the foreground.

I have reposted the photograph of the Chrysanthemums and apples painting in a larger format, so you can see the details of the brushwork and texture created with the painting knives. To see the larger photograph, just click on the photograph in the post and the larger version will open in a new window.


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Thick lights over thin darks

Paint fat over lean – oil technique

Impasto Painting knives Lefranc & Bourgeois Flemish Medium

Even Matisse struggled at times

This article was first published in my newsletter "Notes From My French Easel" – October 2008.


In a poignant, yet interesting letter to his friend the painter Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse expressed his frustration on the path to finding a new way of painting. This letter is dated 13 January 1940, during the war. Matisse describes how he feels paralyzed and cannot find a good way to express himself in his painting, as he has with his drawing (« My drawing and my painting are parting »).

Portrait of Henri Matisse 1933 May 20 - Photographer: Carl Van Vechten - Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Van Vechten Collection, reproduction number LC-USZ62-103699 DLC.

At this time in his career, Matisse was exploring painting with flat planes of colours and found it hindered the spontaneity he had found in his fluid drawing technique: « But my painting is constraint by new conventions of flat planes by which I have to express myself entirely, of local tones exclusively without shadows, without relief, that have to react one with another in order to suggest light, a spiritual space. »
Paintings from this period now seem evident to us because we are accustomed to see them in museums and art books, but Matisse was exploring new avenues and paving the way to abstract painters. He was trying to transpose what he had found in drawing into his painting, but he was conscious at the same time that this new venture was not easy : « I found a way to draw which, after some preliminary work, has a spontaneity that release me entirely from what I am feeling, but this mean is exclusively for me, artist and spectator. But a colourist’s drawing is not a painting. One should find some equivalence with colours. This is what I fail to do. »
Matisse’s quest would come to an end when he produced his gouache-painted cut-outs, a medium where he could reconcile drawing with colour in a perfect balance.


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Pierre Bonnard Henri Matisse Art history Art technique Drawing Painting