Ever changing light If you're hanging out at our house the most common words you'll hear are " Just look at the light right now!" Whatever I'm doing, reading, eating breakfast, walking between rooms, feeding the cat ...chances are I'll glance out the…
If you're hanging out at our house the most common words you'll hear are " Just look at the light right now!" Whatever I'm doing, reading, eating breakfast, walking between rooms, feeding the cat ...chances are I'll glance out the large front windows overlooking the river and catch a glimpse of some magical light effect that stops me in my tracks... and I have to make sure my husband has seen it too! If I miss some special moment he's bound to see it and then I'll hear " Look at the river!"
The sun rises over the hills on the other side so we get a ringside seat to some glorious colour shows that start with soft pinks and rapidly spread into more vibrant pinks, oranges and dusky reds. When it's still on the river early morning often brings lovely slivers of silver over the water broken by the reflected hills and the wake of a sailboat heading out for the day. If it's a stormy day the water can be steely gray, brooding and choppy. In the evening the hills catch the reflected light from the sunset behind our house and they glow with beautiful pinky mauves.
I chose a square version for this little postcard because Ilike the way it captures the various layers of light.
There's the reflected evening light on the far hills with some shadows starting to tone down the lower hills. The river still has a silvery sheen where it catches the blue of the sky and the dark reflections of the hills add a strong contrast.
I love the river but I also love all the flora along it's banks and this painting is really about the light and shadows in the foreground creating a frame for the softer colours in the distance.
I've been using Turner acrylic gouache for these little mini paintings...they dry way faster than my usual acrylics and together with their opaque quality allows me to quickly capture the essence of the subject without too much fiddling. When I move on to larger painitngs I'll be using acrylics and sometimes pastels, depending on what I feel will best help me say what I want to say.
So much of my art making is about how I feel about the subject!
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