Don’t Fence Me In | An Out-of-the-Box Signature Style

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Follow Andrée Hudson’s demo to learn how she breaks with tradition to create her signature style that embodies the allure of the Wild West.

By Susan Byrnes

There’s a romance to the American West that just does something to people. The quality of light, the sweeping vistas, and the iconic images of horses, cattle, and cowboys have always been irresistible, especially to artists. When Andrée Hudson left California for the Rocky Mountains, she’d been painting female figures in oil for several years. But the imagery she encountered at her new Colorado home seduced her. At a horse drive, she saw hundreds of horses crest over a mountain in the sun. “I remember thinking, this is the most incredible vision I’ve ever had,” she recalls, “and that kind of experience is empowering.” She began creating pieces that defied traditional rules of painting in response to the energy and space of the West.

Hudson’s signature style, which involves glowing forms, vibrant drips, and broad, gestural strokes on large canvases, began with a slight mishap. Inspired by her new surroundings, she was painting her first steer, when a long drip began to travel down the surface. Seeing that it added a new dimension to her work, she decided to go with it. “A lot of painters are stuck in their regimen,” she explains, “doing what their instructors told them to do, and not being open to working outside the box. That’s unfortunate, because once you work outside the box, that’s when you come into your own. You can’t follow everybody else’s style; you have to discover your own.”

It Began With a Drip

This accident — the dripping paint — marked a turning point for Hudson. In order to incorporate the drip patterns into her glazing technique, she needed to paint fast; oil simply couldn’t accommodate her new process. “I learned that if I painted with acrylic the same way I painted with oil all those years, the results were fantastic,” she reveals. “And the finished work looked like an oil painting.” The physical immediacy of using water and acrylic, combined with the control she gets manipulating the drips with a hair dryer, enable her to create dynamic compositions of color and texture.

“I rarely sit down,” Hudson says. “I’m moving all the time, and painting large pieces. The painting process is fun and energetic, and that’s what I’m trying to portray in my work.” In The Longhorn Family (top of article), the drip pattern flows across the bottom of the canvas. Whether layered under semi-opaque strokes or sitting directly on the painting’s surface, the drips create a sense of texture and forward momentum in the herd.

Seeing Light

A significant aspect of the energy in Hudson’s paintings comes from the strong sense of light that highlights her forms, and seems to radiate from them. In order to achieve this quality, she starts with a colored canvas ground. Her large canvases are custom made using a primed cotton canvas with a specific tooth she feels is just right for her work.

On that canvas, she begins with an underpainting of a bright, warm color such as yellow or orange that may migrate to a different shade by the time she works across the surface. This technique is adapted from her study of imprimatura, an underpainting method of the Old Masters, which begins with thin layers of raw umber or burnt sienna mixed with turpentine to stain a primed canvas.

Heavy Texture

Hudson then builds up the surface in one of three ways. She may use layers of paint mixed with water. Or she may opt to create an optical mixing effect using transparent colors over solid colors. Her third option is to mix her colors on her palette before incorporating them into the painting. When creating her signature drip technique, she loads a heavy amount of pigment onto her brush, ensuring the drips have a distinct textural quality.

In Boss II, a green glaze drips over an orange underpainting, while opaque, light strokes define the volume of the bull’s midsection. Hudson uses only Golden acrylic paints and water. The colors she uses most often include phthalo blue and green, titanium white and alizarin crimson. She is adamant that she never uses black in her work, opting to mix her own darks. “Black can kill a painting very fast,” she emphasizes. Hudson brings out her highlight areas using bright colors, light grays and sometimes even pure titanium white, and then contrasts darks next to the lights.

Tools of Her Trade

Hudson uses very large, flat brushes (Nos. 10 and larger) to paint her pieces, unless she is painting facial details. She foregoes drawing her composition on the canvas prior to painting opting to paint in a gestural manner with a large brush that helps her to convey the energy and immediacy she likes to see.

When she started painting, many years ago, she worked with live models, but now she prefers to work with photographs. Her compositions, however, aren’t based on photographs, but evolve organically as she paints. The other tools she uses to achieve broad, thick strokes are somewhat unorthodox and include plaster knives and credit cards. In The Horse, hard-edge strokes of gray made with a credit card in the upper left define the posterior end of the form.

Inspirational Forms

The human figure is Hudson’s passion and earliest inspiration. While still in high school, she was a commissioned portrait painter. Later, as a student at Maryland Institute College of Art, she immersed herself in figure studies as she earned a BFA in illustration and design. Her training in painting centered on the use of traditional oil techniques. A course in anatomy and physiology deepened her knowledge of the human body.

Hudson’s ability to render the female form realistically is evident in On My Mind, with its attention to bent knees and a subtly curved arm. Her study of human anatomy also served her well when she began to paint animals. She translates her knowledge of the mechanics of bones and muscles into images of horses and cattle. In Longhorn Blue, although the brushwork is loose and abstract, purple and white highlights articulate the joints in the animals’ legs and backbones, providing believability and integrity to the forms.

Hudson’s paintings are frequently quite large, with some pieces, such as The Horse, measuring over seven feet tall and five feet wide. Paintings of this size create their own space with larger-than- life figures, or by taking up the viewer’s peripheral vision, as in the case of On the Fly, which is 48-inches wide.

A Nebulous Field

Hudson often places her subjects in a nebulous, indeterminate visual field, but her figures, especially her animals, are solidly anchored in a world of wide-open spaces. She manages this illusion by combining atmospheric perspective techniques, such as hard-edge, high-contrast foregrounds and softer, more muted or darker backgrounds, with linear perspective — depicting animals, people and trees receding in space.

In Rocking the Ranch, she employs forms in multiples to define a deep space, grouping horses into a stampede, moving the viewer’s gaze from the muscular frontal figures to the smaller horses in the distance, all driving in unison toward the lower, right corner of the painting. Her cowgirls, while exuding more restful poses, recede convincingly into the space of the canvas with few props other than a well-rendered pair of boots or the arm of a chair. These poses recall another master of the figure in repose, Michelangelo, an early and strong influence on Hudson. In Cowgirl in Repose, the hazy white of the dress flattens the space, but the lines and proportions of the thigh and upper arm maintain the structure of the reclining figure.

Continually Learning

Even though she’s made hundreds of paintings and spent years developing her distinctive look, Hudson is quick to say she doesn’t consider herself an expert. She’s much more interested in continually learning about painting. Of her determination to define her own style, she says, “I learned all the rules, I painted traditionally, I know how to glaze and I know what colors to use for the foreground and background. But at the end of the day, it’s what appeals to you that has the greatest influence on your work.”

Hudson’s works demonstrate confidence with time-honored techniques combined with a fearlessness of taking risks with color and form. “I kind of throw everything up in the air and see what sticks. What makes me happy when I walk into the studio? What colors do I like to use? If they’re all bright colors, then I’m going to use all bright colors that day. I’m not going to follow the rules of painting in order to achieve the look I want to achieve.”

Demo: Creating a Cowgirl

Toolkit

• Brushes: I’m not attached to a particular brand. I like square, usually No. 10 or larger, medium stiff and not bristle.
• Canvas: custom-made, pre-gessoed canvas, with an even texture and minimal grit
• Colors: golds, phthalo blues and greens
• Paint: Golden Heavy Body
• Palette: disposable pallets or plastic boards

Step 1

With a medium size brush I lay down a warm undertone and start drawing with paint, positioning my figure. If I feel that the figure isn’t positioned correctly I’ll go back and re-block. All of my steps are painted in a fast, gestural way — this is my style — I don’t like to overthink things. I’m painting with emotion and feeling at this point. My inspiration comes from my love of anatomy of the female figure. For this painting I referenced a photograph of one of my own models. This subject, like most of my models, is looking away rather than confronting the viewer. I want the collector to think about what she might be thinking.

Step 2

I’m still blocking in the figure with neutral tones so it’s easy to manipulate and change. If the painting isn’t progressing, I never start over, I just paint over. It’s a bonus that I like the multiple lines that I create when this happens. Now I can start to think about the colors of the painting. I always set the background at the same time, as the painting should work as a whole. Drips are allowed to stay if they aren’t distracting otherwise, I wipe some off with a rag.

Step 3

I continue fine-tuning the proportions of the subject by laying in some darker tones and making a definite decision on the form. For example, hand placement and facial structure. I’m mixing top quality acrylic colors as I go, never adding mediums and I never prepare colors ahead of time. And while I do have my favorite colors, I’m sure every artist does, that’s not what’s important, what matters is how you use those colors.

Step 4 & 5

I’m going deep with tones and also finding highlights (although I did decide my light source from the very beginning). The painting is coming into itself, and I’m still using the same brushes. I often can complete a painting with only two brushes — one large and one medium for the finer details in the face and hands. For this painting, I did talk to clients while I was painting. I may take breaks when I’m working on a new piece, but I always finish before I start a new one.

Step 6

As the painting nears completion, I ensure the original intensity of the colors has survived. At times, the painting can lose its pop due to glazing the piece throughout the process. So I go back over, in different areas, to finish putting down the highlights that I feel need to be reemphasized. If I’m happy with my painting at this point I give it a title. I’ve learned not to over think it, my first inclination is usually right.

Learn more about Andrée Hudson and see more of her work at andreehudsonart.com.

Susan Byrnes is a visual artist residing in Cincinnati, Ohio. She has written for Acrylic Artist, where this article originally appeared.