On the Combination of Oil Painting Techniques and Modern Illustration Art

: Oil painting represents the mainstream of modern Western painting art. The development history of Western painting art cannot be separated from the evolution of the style, subject matter and techniques of oil painting. Since its emergence, oil painting has experienced several style periods, including classicism, Romanticism, Impressionism, abstraction and so on. Among them, Impressionism, which was born in the middle of 19th century, played an important role in the history of western oil painting. It changed the style and way of oil painting popular in the past few centuries with new color theory and creative techniques. Impressionism emphasized the intuitive observation and real performance of the painting object. Since then, painting is no longer limited to the spiritual transmission of the author, and "what you paint is what you see" has gradually become one of the creation principles of Western oil painting. This paper analyzes the paintings of famous Impressionist painters with examples, sums up how Impressionist paintings skillfully use light, shadow and color to create, and discusses its referential significance for modern illustration.


Introduction
Impressionist painting emerged in the rapidly developing social environment and when the salon system was still strong enough to control artistic aesthetics [1].Impressionism opposed classical painting, which only provided creation for religious and historical events, and romantic painting, which was pure idealism and the painting style became more and more artificial.It inherited the realistic creative concept of "painting what I see", and its artistic creation style went further towards expressing reality.Impressionism made a major innovation in color expression and a change in painting content, aiming to reflect contemporary natural scenery and social life.

Light and Color in the Language of Impressionist Painting
Impressionist painters took a different way of creation from traditional oil painting in the past.They advocated going out of the room to sketch in nature and feel the ever-changing light and color in nature.For the techniques of light and color in the picture, different Impressionist painters have different painting languages, but their true reproduction of light is one of the biggest characteristics of Impressionist works.

Manet --The Pioneer of True Light Color
Known as one of the founders of Impressionism, Manet had a strong sense of innovation, and his paintings were influenced by traditional classical oil painting techniques and elements of Japanese ukiyo-e.He created a wide variety of subjects, most of which were inspired by daily life.For example, his representative work "The Bar of Goddess Amusement Park" see Figure 1.depicts a scene of a waitress standing in front of the bar in the lobby.In the picture, mirror composition is cleverly displayed.The painter takes the dazzling bottles on the bar as the foreground, the real waitress as the middle scene, and the hall scene reflected in the mirror as the rear scene.The combination of reality and mirror sets off the hollow expression and sad inner emotion of the heroine.The painting's true portrayal of the environment of the bar lobby also reflects the seemingly prosperous and happy nightlife of Paris at that time, but in fact, it is lonely and lonely reality.

Monet --Instant Light Pioneer
Monet is the epitome of impressionism, and he made outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of Impressionism.Monet devoted his whole life to the instant capture of light and color.He was keen on sketching the same object in the natural environment at different times, in different light and in different seasons.He changed the classical painting method that paid attention to the shadows and contours of objects before.In his works, things are distinguished by different shades of color, even the dark parts of things are not unchanged brown, instead of rich colors that can be seen in the environment.In painting, he concentrated all his attention on the light, shadow and color of objects, and detected the subtle changes of light and color with keen observation, and recorded the law on the painting paper with the brush.His "Rouen Cathedral" series see Figure 2. depicts churches at different times and in different light.With his skillful oil painting technique, keen observation and bold and general use of color, Monet showed us the color changes of Rouen Cathedral under different ambient light in the picture, achieving an extraordinary artistic effect.

Pierre Bonard -First Impressions
Bonard's painting style is influenced by elements of Impressionism and Japanese Ukiyo-e, and he is good at depicting the unique perspective of the human body under backlight.[2] Bonard is good at observing indoor corners that are easily ignored by people.He often uses delicate and rich brushstrokes and colors to express the light penetration of female skin.Curtains, screens and mirrors in the indoor environment all become Bonard's means of depicting light.Such contrast contrasts the clear outline of the subject and the changes of light and shadow.His masterpiece Naked Woman in Backlight is the most convincing.The picture shows a corner of a room full of sunshine.A beautiful woman stands in the backlight against the dazzling light and shadow around her, giving the viewer the illusion that the light source is not from the window but from herself.

Renoir -Brings Light and Color to Life
Renoir was different from other Impressionist painters in his choice of subject matter.He liked to record people and scenes in his life.In his paintings, he often used bright and bright colors to depict the faces of the figures, and used lowkey low-saturation colors to depict the clothes and background of the figures, so as to highlight the main body of the picture.Renoir also showed his originality in the treatment of light.For example, he created the Ball at the Moulin Rouge in 1876 see Figure 3. which is a figure scene work with typical impressionist style characteristics.He added dots to the dark part to express the mottled light, which made the picture more real and intimate, and the vague and implicit outline processing made us feel the relaxed and joyful atmosphere of the picture and the intoxicating sense of dream.

Characteristics of Light and Color in Impressionist Paintings
The birth of Impressionism was accompanied by the development of scientific theories in the early 19th century, especially the discovery of optical theory directly affected the Impressionist painters' expression methods of light and color in the picture.The 19th century landscape painters in order to pursue the natural atmosphere in the picture, they actively walked out of the studio, came to Barbizon village to sketch the rural landscape, later called "Barbizon school", their capture of light and color changes, the depiction of the real world influenced the later impressionism.Impressionist painters abandoned the immutable dark tone in classical oil painting, instead of rich in cold and warm, brightness changes of color to express the volume of objects and light and shadow, created a new stage of Western oil painting, light and color have become the most important painting language and pronoun of Impressionist painters.

The Combination of Oil Painting and Optical Theory
The theory of optics and the invention of chromatography made it possible to understand the subtle changes in color that occur when sunlight refracts.In daily life, due to the influence of weather, environment and other factors, natural light changes all the time, and the color of objects will also change, thus breaking the misunderstanding of the inherent color impression in traditional painting [3].Inspired by the principle of optics, painters began a large number of painting practices, among which Impressionism is the most typical.Impressionist painters are good at recording the subjective impression of the human eye on objective objects.Nature presents different colors and light and shadow effects under the sun at different times, and Impressionist painters record these color changes with their pictures.In the minds of Impressionist painters, there is no light, there is no color, the light is different to create the color changes in the picture, so they have been following the footsteps of light and color, showing the "objective and subjective" artistic effect.

Emphasize the Overall Instant Impression
Different from the traditional classical oil painting, Impressionism limited the picture to the indoor environment.They advocated going out of the room and creating in nature.Because the light in nature is different from the fixed light source in the room, Impressionist painters need to master the skill of painting quickly to capture the real light state.Therefore, the impressionist painters painted the same as the name of their school, depicting the overall impression of the subject, which required the painter to put aside insignificant details in the creation, and use bright color blocks to express the overall effect, which was also the original of Impressionism in oil painting techniques.In appreciating the excellent Impressionist master works, we can find that the Impressionist painters like to record the seasonal changes in nature, even if the painting is the same composition of the same picture, Impressionist painters can also use the color collocation to express the four seasons, such as winter is snow-white and represents the cold air light blue; In the spring and summer period, the picture is the green onion shade of trees, and the warm colors such as red and yellow flowers blooming; The autumn harvest highlights the golden color of grain.In addition to the change of the year round, the change of light in the day is also the focus of the Impressionist painters to create objects, of which Monet's series of paintings the most representative, such as "water lilies", "Rouen Cathedral", "Haystack", in the Impressionist painter's pen, the picture of nature is no longer static, light floating with time so that the picture has vitality.

The Change of Sketch Concept
Before Impressionism, the Western oil painting style originated from the classical oil painting of the Renaissance, and their rule-following creative methods were called "academic".A large number of oil paintings in the classical period can be found that the emphasis in these works is the relationship between light and shade of the sketch, and color is limited to the expression of the inherent color, which becomes an accessory of the relationship between black and white and gray in the picture.The oil paintings painted under this creation principle all reveal a dull and depressed temperament.Such a painting style was influenced by politics, society, culture and other aspects.At that time, the oil painting themes were mainly portraits of the aristocratic class, and the invariable indoor light source, dim background color and brown shadow depiction became the main characteristics of the works at that time.This traditional, lack of innovation of the art style has seriously hindered the development of painting, and then was replaced by the Impressionist style.Classical oil painting emphasized the sketching relationship of objects to reflect their precise modeling, while Impressionism paid attention to light, shadow and color expression, emphasizing the unique role of color in the picture.Impressionist painter Pissarro once expounded such a point of view to the young painter Lebel: "When observing the subject, pay more attention to the shape and color of things, don't pay too much attention to the depiction of the sketch relationship... Drawing too accurately will destroy the overall impression, pay attention to the most important characteristics of things when depicting, don't stick to the inherent painting techniques, try any expression techniques can... Do not draw according to the theory of painting, but according to your own first impression and feeling, rest assured and bold to create."Pissarro's exposition accurately summarized the characteristics of the Impressionist period of painting modeling, but also became the painters to break the traditional rules of painting, began to express their own aesthetic and impression of the beginning.

Rich Ambient Colors
According to the scientific theory of light, Impressionism found that the sun is composed of seven colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, blue and purple, objects in the sun can be reflected and refracted, the color of the surrounding environment will also appear in the object itself, so the object's color tendency in different environments will have corresponding changes.Impressionist painters are no longer like the classical oil paintings in the past, focusing on the relationship between the inherent color and sketch of the object, but following the scientific optical theory to objectively express the color and light and shadow of things.Adding environmental colors and reflective colors made Impressionist works show rich color changes.Impressionist painters followed the changes of light and perfectly expressed the real color environment in their paintings.
In many modern film shots and commercial illustrations, authors also use ambient light sources to create a sense of atmosphere.For example, Indian illustrator Ranganath Krishnamani is good at adding high-saturation colored light sources to the picture.And skillfully add contrasting colors to the backlight surface to create illustrations with strong visual impact see Figure 4.

Colorful Shadows
In classical paintings, shadows are often seen as blind areas, but the shadows of objects also absorb and reflect light, so they also appear in different colors.Shadows cannot be simply summarized in black or brown.The discovery of shadow color made the Impressionist painting style have a profound influence on the later art.The shadow of the object can not only express the brightness relationship, but also shape the light and shadow environment of the scene.Through careful observation and a keen sense of color, Impressionist painters could quickly capture the color changes under these lights.Impressionism believed that adding complementary colors of light source to shadows could help the picture achieve extraordinary effects.When observing Monet's group paintings, it can be found that he was very good at using complementary colors to create.For example, in the series of works "Haystacks", there is a painting depicting a snow scene.The ground has changed from monotonous white to light blue, which makes the picture more real, but also harmonizes the overall environment of the picture.
Like Impressionist painters, modern commercial illustrators will also show their careful observation of the shadow of the object through the picture.For example, domestic painter GiKi will add a variety of colors such as natural color, diffuse reflection of light, environmental color and rendering color to the dark part when processing the picture.In the technique of using the pen is to absorb the environmental color, reduce the transparency of the brush to integrate the color into the shadow, for example, in the figure see Figure 5, the dark environment is blue-green, the main light source is orange-yellow, the author absorbs blue-green in the dark part of the picture gently swept, making the picture achieve a strong color contrast but the overall atmosphere is very harmonious effect.

Clever Brushstrokes
Traditional academic oil painters tend to give objects a clear outline of the external lines to show its modeling sense.However, Impressionist painters broke this tradition, it was difficult to see the outline of things in their pictures, they used flexible and free strokes to express things, sometimes even some points of different colors, which was also the practice result of the application of optical theory of Impressionist painters, they rarely adjust colors in the color palette like classical painters.Impressionism pioneered the "color juxtaposition method", which juxtaposed unharmonized colors on the picture.People can produce the effect of color fusion through a certain observation distance, which is also the reason why it is necessary to look far when appreciating Impressionist paintings [4].The flexible and varied brushstrokes make Impressionist paintings stand out among many classical oil paintings.Its unique rhythmic feeling is like a cheerful jazz music, which brings the viewer mental relaxation and enjoyment.
In modern commercial illustrations, stroke changes can not only set off the light and color of the picture, but also express the story of the picture.For example, the Chinese illustrator Paulin Benchi uses a variety of strokes in his series of illustrations "Cloud Legend" see Figure 6, based on ancient myths and legends.More strokes and color changes are used on the illuminated surface of the object and the boundary between light and shade to reflect the styling characteristics of the object, while on the backlit surface, the author deliberately uses large strokes to highlight the story of the picture.

Conclusion
The creation of modern illustration is inseparable from the learning of traditional painting techniques.Light and color are very important elements in the creation of painting.Centuries ago, Impressionist painting adopted the method of intuitive observation and expression of things in the outdoor environment, which opened a new era of light and color in the history of oil painting.In addition, Impressionism in the creation of the subject matter, brush techniques, painting principles are different from the previous oil painting style unique.Among them, many modern illustrations are worth learning and integrating.There are various forms of expression in modern illustration art.The application of oil painting techniques can make the works more distinctive and add artistic charm to the illustration.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.The Bar of the Goddess Amusement Park

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Ball at The Moulin Rouge

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.Series of illustrations in "The Legend of Cloud Sky"