The Color of Light: An Artist's Blog

I haven't painted many evening scenes, but I got excited when I  saw this gorgeous photo my friend Abbey took. She kindly gave me permission to paint it and it was a fun little piece that came together quickly.

I started on dark Uart. Starting with a dark paper is a great example of letting the paper do a lot of the work for you. Since the scene is low key it will be all about adding the lights. That said, the paper is not completely black, it's more of a charcoal, so I will actually still use my dark to light method and will add some values that are darker that the paper itself. 

As you can see, I decided to eliminate the large tree in the photo. I wanted the painting to focus on the sky and the beautiful lighting in the neighborhood. After laying in the sky I created some straight edges to indicate buildings, interspersed with natural shapes to indicate trees. Then I used charcoal to create a road. I softened the edges of it with pastel to give it a natural look. 

I enjoyed challenging myself with this subject matter and will be trying another nocturne soon!

Sometimes I just want to take all the brightest and most colorful sticks out of my pastel stash and play unabashedly. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love working with a limited palette and creating tonal work. In fact I usually find that the most impactful paintings are the ones with a dominantly neutral palette. But, when those reds and yellows call I must answer. 

There's something so joyful about playing with color. It's like being a kid again and experiencing pure happiness at the little things in life. That's how I feel when I pick up a bright red pastel stick. I've worked in other mediums over the years including watercolor and acrylic, and I often incorporate both of these into my pastel paintings these days. But there is nothing quite as enchanting as picking up a pure stick of pigment and applying it directly to your substrate. It's like your fingers are the brush itself. That direct tactile experience, coupled with watching the brilliant colors come to life on the paper, is joy itself.

There are seven main elements in art:  line, shape, color, form, value, space, and texture. These elements can overlap each other and some elements are more important than others depending on the particular piece of art. 

I want to talk a little bit about shape today. It is such an important element to get right if you want to create a successful painting. When I look at a landscape and am drawn to it, oftentimes it is because of the shapes within it. It may seem that it's the color or values we love, which are also important and usually get all the attention and applause. But shapes are the pieces of the puzzle that either make the piece fit together or seem disjointed. 

One of the most important stages of a painting for me is the beginning stage when I get my initial drawing in. I'm not going for a detailed depiction here, but a chunky and simple block in of the shapes. These will be continually adjusted throughout the painting, but the initial drawing gives me a place to start. 

As I continue on my painting journey, I find that more and more my mind thinks of objects within the scene as shapes (for example, instead of thinking that I'm painting a tree, I think I'm painting a triangle or a c-curve, etc). Check out the two photos of this painting in progress. Can you see how I focus on shapes?