Blog
Watching the Shadows - the Sunday Post
Over the past few days I have been under the weather.
It seems like a bug...the kind that leaves you feeling weak; where a brush or pastel just seems too heavy to lift.
So, I have been hunkered down under blankets , and sitting up in a chair and reading.
When that gets tiresome, I have been watching sunlight and shadow patterns.
This is something that I ordinarily do, but over the past few days, I have been doing so in earnest.
If one really watches, especially during the early morning, or late afternoon, it is interesting to see just how quickly things change. Plein air painters , of course know this, but this is different from rendering a whole vista and other elements within a painting...there are many other things to pay attention to.
I recall several years ago being in the Keene Valley in the Adirondacks, where my husband and his brothers were trout fishing. I had been out painting, and Tony and I met up in a spot to pick up Wayne and his other brother, Glen. Tony was looking across the road, and said he was just watching
the evening shadow creep up the mountainside. So I watched with him. We could see it slowly move, and areas that had been in light were overtaken by the evening dark.
An interesting aspect was that as time went on, the color of the areas in light changed ...getting much more orange . At one point, just before the sun slipped behind the mountain, the edge of the shadow took on color. Tony was an engineer, and so was timing the event, while we watched, but I’ll never forget the pleasure of just watching the changes.
Thank you, To.
Which is what I have been doing over the past few afternoons.
I’m really paying attention to the edges...of course some are hard; some soft. After my session with my brother- in - law, I learned to really look . If an object , say a tree branch, casts a shadow, it very often has different coloring from side to side, depending on the angle of the light. Sometimes shadows will have one cooler edge, and one warmer edge.
Another way that we can use color in shadow is to confine bright , saturated color to the transition area. That is the area between the light and dark on a form. A good example is when painting greens. We can all think of a landscape that seems overwhelmingly green, particularly in mid- summer. If we keep our lights warm, and or shadow areas grayed, and cool, we can use a brighter green where the two meet. This is particularly effective when painting grass , for example.
It is always fascinating to me how moving light picks out parts of the landscape . If you are watching, you just may notice features that you haven’t really seen before. One afternoon, I was sitting outside taking a break, and noticed that Tuzigoot, a local Native American site was illuminated , and just sitting in a notch between mesas, I never realized that it could be seen from our house!
This aspect can certainly be used to emphasize an area of interest.
And, when one is an artist, just watching something, with focus, is never wasted time.
It seems like a bug...the kind that leaves you feeling weak; where a brush or pastel just seems too heavy to lift.
So, I have been hunkered down under blankets , and sitting up in a chair and reading.
When that gets tiresome, I have been watching sunlight and shadow patterns.
This is something that I ordinarily do, but over the past few days, I have been doing so in earnest.
If one really watches, especially during the early morning, or late afternoon, it is interesting to see just how quickly things change. Plein air painters , of course know this, but this is different from rendering a whole vista and other elements within a painting...there are many other things to pay attention to.
I recall several years ago being in the Keene Valley in the Adirondacks, where my husband and his brothers were trout fishing. I had been out painting, and Tony and I met up in a spot to pick up Wayne and his other brother, Glen. Tony was looking across the road, and said he was just watching
the evening shadow creep up the mountainside. So I watched with him. We could see it slowly move, and areas that had been in light were overtaken by the evening dark.
An interesting aspect was that as time went on, the color of the areas in light changed ...getting much more orange . At one point, just before the sun slipped behind the mountain, the edge of the shadow took on color. Tony was an engineer, and so was timing the event, while we watched, but I’ll never forget the pleasure of just watching the changes.
Thank you, To.
Which is what I have been doing over the past few afternoons.
I’m really paying attention to the edges...of course some are hard; some soft. After my session with my brother- in - law, I learned to really look . If an object , say a tree branch, casts a shadow, it very often has different coloring from side to side, depending on the angle of the light. Sometimes shadows will have one cooler edge, and one warmer edge.
Another way that we can use color in shadow is to confine bright , saturated color to the transition area. That is the area between the light and dark on a form. A good example is when painting greens. We can all think of a landscape that seems overwhelmingly green, particularly in mid- summer. If we keep our lights warm, and or shadow areas grayed, and cool, we can use a brighter green where the two meet. This is particularly effective when painting grass , for example.
It is always fascinating to me how moving light picks out parts of the landscape . If you are watching, you just may notice features that you haven’t really seen before. One afternoon, I was sitting outside taking a break, and noticed that Tuzigoot, a local Native American site was illuminated , and just sitting in a notch between mesas, I never realized that it could be seen from our house!
This aspect can certainly be used to emphasize an area of interest.
And, when one is an artist, just watching something, with focus, is never wasted time.
