The Shadow Struggle

If you've been reading here for very long, you already know that learning to paint is really all about learning to see. In learning to see, one of the trickiest things (at least for me) is learning to see the color of shadows. This is true for cast shadows (such as those in the top photo), as well as for the shadowed side of an object (called a "form shadow"). When light is striking a subject, its color is more readily apparent. But what lurks in the shadows??

One reason that shadows can be difficult to decipher is that their color is very subtle. In painting parlance, I would say that they are of "low intensity". Their color is a bit wishy-washy. It can be pushed in different directions, depending on the light, the immediate surroundings, and anything else in the field of vision.

"Miller Services Building"
8 x 10, Oil on Board
(c) Lesley Powell 2016
SOLD

There are guidelines that can be helpful. For example, the painter Richard Schmid has written that warm light produces cool shadows, and cool light produces warm shadows. An

Direct Painting

"Apache Trail"
18 x 24, Oil
Richard Schmid

Another vocabulary lesson: What is "direct painting"? Direct painting is my preferred approach to painting, and yet it is hardly an everyday word. Direct painting means painting from life, usually in a single session. It is sometimes called painting "alla prima" (Italian for "at first time") or "au premier coup" (French for "all at once"). Don't you love those fancy foreign words?  In Direct painting, you stand directly in the presence of your subject, and attempt to capture your experience of it, all in one fell swoop.

"Greenwich  Village"
Richard Schmid

I have been reading Richard Schmid's book Alla Pima: Everything I Know About Painting. It's an invaluable resource. Schmid says that direct painting is "the ultimate in representational art because

Unfinished

"The Athenaeum"
Gilbert Stuart, 1796

I am often drawn to paintings that are not too finished, ones that are toeing the line of being "unfinished". Shown above is a very famous unfinished portrait, Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington. It is quite obviously unfinished---as in, somebody died or quit in the middle of the work. Screech!---you can practically feel the brakes slamming on. Rather than this sort of abrupt quitting in mid-canvas, what I really love are