One of the reasons it’s so much fun to paint outdoors is
that you get to watch the Creator at work. What a grand design there is the
flow and brilliance of light on our world! It’s an unrealistic challenge to try
to paint it that way. Light is so many times more bright than the lightest of
pigments in an artist’s palette. The shadows are so much more full of life than
the dark shadows our cameras hint at. The scale from light to shadow in the
real world is so much more infinite than white to shadow in paint.
The idea is to create a painting that on its own is a
representation of what you see, but that has a life of its own. Some of the
most memorable paintings I have ever seen are those of light bouncing up about
and around field inhabitants….a bush, shrub, water, tree or cactus that seems
to emanate a glow of its own in the dispersal of light on and around its being.
The very air takes on a lighted quality thrown off from the item being lit. I
guess you could call it an aura, but then I picture crystal adherents and their
odd fortune telling or suspended winged creatures some call angels. So I’ll call
it a glow, a simple four letter word. Have you ever noticed that some of the
four letter words are the hardest to pin down? Love. Hard. Work. Glow. Again
with the paint…..it’s so limiting, as a visual vocabulary. But aren’t notes and
scales also limiting and think of the musical magic that has enriched lives.
Back to this glow thing. Sometimes it’s in your face. Sometimes
you have to hunt it down, get under a tree and look up, glance at a sun filled
sky of backlit clouds, lean over a cliff to see the magical effect of light.
Well I have this glow….at least I know what I want it to look like, and I have
this tree. It’s an old gnarled, cut up survivor oak. I am back with number 4 of this limited
palette challenge. So there is no way that that bark is going to have its
natural local color. There aren’t a whole lot of options. The important thing
to remember here is that I am not trying to replicate the natural color of
things…..I am after that darned glow.
I have only alizarin crimson, a bright yellow and a blue to do it with.
No warms and cools of the red, yellow and blue, just the three pigments and
black and white - and this Mimbres Oak.
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| Mimbres Glow - Oil on prepared wood board 11x14 - Available |
So on a decidedly not cool morning,
(nice way to say it was hot as H*&&), I tried to catch that glow. I
know this would be easier with a full palette, but that is not the challenge.
Here is Mimbres Glow. Does it succeed? Does it glow?
Next week I am off to Prescott AZ, to do a workshop with
Chris Saper on portraiture. Chris does not adhere to the limited palette
doctrine, in fact, I think she enjoys using every pigment in the whole array of
artist’s available colors. So there will likely be no blog entry next week. I
still have my final limited palette work to do, so look back after the 13th.
I should be back at it by then. Again this work will be from life. Ain’t life
grand?
A lovely painting with a most definite glow - I think I would like to stay in the cool shadows but the heat and bright shimmering sunshine in the distance is calling me. I like that tension.
ReplyDeleteHi Lisa! Thanks for the kind words. I really wondered on this one. I wanted so badly to break into other colors, so I am happy to hear that it works for you. Hope you return after the 13th.
DeleteIt is lovely and there is a definite glow, which carries to the left of the canvas through the background field. I'd bet it's more effective in person--technology's limits and such...
ReplyDeleteActually this one almost succeeds on some levels. But then, I am never satisfied with what I paint. I just framed this one and it looks much better framed. But I have already thought of at least three different ways to paint it if I were to revisit. Never happy.....
ReplyDelete