In one of my recent painting classes the topic was light and shadow, with an emphasis on how light affects the value and color of shadows. We had an assignment to find a photo of something that was white and in daylight and then paint from that photo reference. I found a photo of a white house set in the Scottish highlands (very common there) . I changed the photo a bit to make the house clearly the focus and then painted from the revised photo. The result was a painting that is pretty stark, but that’s how the area actually looks. I’ve thought some about how to improve the composition and may tackle that challenge in a bit. In the meantime, what i tried to convey in this subject was the clear representation of the saying — “warm light, cool shadow”. “cool light, warm shadow” may appear in a future post.

Finishing up this little 6” x 6” piece tonight is pretty timely as we are expecting a massive snowstorm to hit here in most of Colorado tonight through tomorrow. The painting is done on canvas paper and will be cut to size and glued to a cradled board which measures 6 x 6 on its face and probably close to 2” on the sides. Twice a year several of the galleries in our area offer a show open to anyone in the community . You pay for the board and then do whatever you’d like — can be painting, drawing, fabric, multimedia, etc. Before this i’ve always just painted directly on the face of the board. This time i decided to try doing it a little differently. So what you see here (below) is the painting on the canvas — prior to cutting and fitting it on to the board. The reference photo is attached below the painting. In the reference, the bird house really stands out. I was after something more muted — thus all the snowflakes. also wanted to provide a little more visual context, which is why i added a bird and all those branches.

I’ll be adding a new painting in a couple of days, but in the meantime i wanted to let my blog followers know that one of my recent paintings — the Aspen Forest — see below — was awarded third place in the annual student art show at the gallery where i take oil painting lessons.