I am in the pursuit of color. That means that I am doing what is considered a basic study in art school: block studies. Because I want to learn impressionism (a la “Charles Hawthorne” method) I am following the suggestions in Lois Griffel’s book, “Painting the Impressionist Landscape”. So, I decided to do the sunny day block study (after all, the sun was out and shining yesterday). First I will share a photo of the setup, and then the painting (in acrylics).
As you can see, the camera records this as pretty dark, since there was a lot of light contrast.
Here is the study I did, where you can see that the human eye can see a LOT more light than a camera:
This was a quick half hour study. I was interested to see that the blue block in the light looked violet instead of blue on the light side; that the red block had a lot of orange in the light; and the green block had a bit of orange in it in the sun. But when I painted the shadow sides (using cool colors), they read true. The cream cloth they are on had a bit of reflected orange, so I went with that.
I am learning a lot from this, and will use it in a real still life in the next day or so, and share what it looks like. I want to learn everything I can about color and how it works. I hope that what I am sharing is helpful to you as an artist.
Excellent and very useful! Thank you so much for sharing!