One of the challenges of plein air painting is dealing with a completely overcast day. Or series of days, as I have experienced in Paris recently. I have adopted the approach shared by a professional fine art photographer: always assume that the conditions of the moment are the best ones you are going to have. Well, if you look at it that way--at least it was not actually raining! So off I went.
The problem with the overcast day is that it tends to flatten everything. The buildings do not have a light side and a dark side to help define their dimensionality. And there are no cast shadows to anchor and reinforce the shapes. Not to mention that the colors all tend to be a version of gray.
On the bright side (pun intended), the great benefit of the overcast day is that the light conditions are NOT constantly changing. There is a fairly constant, albeit scant, source of illumination. That means you don't have to hurry as much, because the light and shadows are not changing moment to moment.
One approach that can be successful in overcast conditions is to paint a distant cityscape in a sort of silhouette fashion. Sometimes the subtle shifts in grays can make for a lovely monochromatic painting. In this particular session, I tried a variation on that approach. I chose a distant skyline (of the Ile de la Cite), and pushed the grays around a bit to get the right color relationships. Here's how things stood when I called it a day. Fellow painters who may have suggestions for dealing with low, overcast conditions, please send your thoughts!
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