In his first works Amorsolo reportedly worked four years to complete one such life-sized anecdotal painting. Very often his own family would be conscripted as models for a particular study. His son Adrian posed as the dead soldier in his Bataan painting (plate 133). and his various daughters posed for many genre works. Incidentally this accounts too for the dalagang Filipina look of his many paintings, they were not just due to models he chose for their facial types, they were often his own children, some of his daughters who bear his own features. There were times when he would devote the day exclusively to making these pencil studies. Each charcoal study would take only about five minutes. (plate 136, 173 & 234)
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here was, on the other hand, also the Amorsolo method of working outdoors, on the spot. Here was a different atm0sphere. He pain ted feverishly. "You have to work fast outdoors" he said in one interview (Insurance Line, 1960, Neal Cruz). "Light changes very rapidly and you have to be fast in order to catch the mood with which you started out. This is particularly true with sunsets. (plate 125) A sunset sky will turn from red to orange to yellow in a matter of minutes", adding further that he limited himself to "fifteen minutes... when pain ting a sunset scene". The change from studio to open air, from painting after meticulous study to working ala-prima without retouching, was a form of recharging his creative batteries. That he associated these sketching trips with a happy past among his friends, with hunting and other physical activity in contrast to the solitary existence in his studio, explains why such works are charged with life. On this method he told Nick Joaquin (Homage to the Maestro, Free Press, Quijano de Manila 1969): "When I came back from Spain I did nothing but paint and paint out in the open, studying the light, Maski sa Espana, kung nagpipinta ako, diyan ako nagpipinta sa liwanag na liwanag. Wala akong ginawa kundi mag-observe." Painting and observing simultaneously, working quickly without the thought of retouching, chal134
lenged the skill and the vlSlon of Amorsolo whereas perfecting already tried and true concepts in the studio brought out only facility. The on-the-spot brush strokes were strong, thickly applied. (plate 87, 99 & 119) In the excitement of getting the splash of light, the bravura application of a few dabs to indicate a woman's bandana (plate 1M) and the heavy impasto of sky or background became marks of his earlier peices. As he slowly relinquished his on-the-spot working techique, his works lost that first-hand contact between artist and experience, the " vision-of-themoment" effect that Velazquez sought. The freedom he enjoyed with this on-thespot method exhilarated him, and this exhilaration was imprinted in these landscapes. Ralph W. Hawkins writing for The Independent, on November 9, 1929, noted Arnorsolo's feelings about landscape painting: "He confided that when he first began his career as a painter he had a decided p~eference for portrait painting. He mastered this phase of painting. But as he had more and more portraits to paint, his preference changed to the painting of nature scenes and typical Filipino life. The reason for the change is his desire to paint as he feels. When painting a portrait, he explairied, he is bound by the taste of the subject of the portrait. He feels stifled, fettered. In painting nature studies, his fetters are cut loose, and he paints in absolute freedom of spirit. And that is how he wants to paint."
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he Amorsolo studio was a quiet area, although his grandchildren often broke the stillness of his sanctuary. One grandchild applied his own touches with black paint on an Amorsolo work; the artist smiled tolerantly, wiped off the vandalism and began again. Visitors were entertained inside the studio, and he would graciously take time out from painting to converse. He was always a gracious host. In the studio, there was a forest of easels crowding the working space where paintings stood, mostly portraits in various stages of fmish . He would work on one for about three hours, and then take up another to escape the tedium. Always the radio played softly. He sat on a comfortable armchair