SHOWING THE UNSEEN

Caption Some long end-of-day blue shadows on sails and sand.

Showing the unseen (A Blog by Mike Barr)

“Many artists have a way of presenting more in a scene than what is apparent at first glance.

It’s not that certain things aren’t there to see, but an artist can make them visible and they do so by focus and exaggeration. Some things are so subtle in real life that we don’t see them until things are made plain in art.

Shadows and reflected colour can easily be glossed over by everyone, including painters. A shadow is just a shadow until we look at its colour. Mostly, we regard a shadow as a darker version of the colour in which it is cast and even when we study it we may not see any apparent ‘other’ colour.

The impressionists were good at coloured shadows – particularly the blues. These blue shadows are prevalent on sunny days with a blue sky and are more likely to be seen on light surfaces. It’s hard to pick most of the time, but they can be seen clearly in photographs taken in such conditions.

On those blue-sky days, the bluish shadows on white shirts is very apparent. With the white-yellow of the sun blotted out by shadow, the pre-eminent colour of the blue sky, colours the shadow. It is also seen on the beach, especially later in the afternoon when the sun is not as strong and the shadows on the sand are clearly blue-purple.

As the saying goes, that’s not all. Other things can effect the colour in shadows too such as reflected light off other things. A white flower may have a blue shadow on a sunny day, but may also have some green from the reflected light off nearby leaves. The shadows on sand-hills can also be coloured by the bright reflective sand. This reflective sand light can also be seen on people’s legs that are in shadow. It is like a golden glaze. If we can capture this in paint and exaggerate it slightly, it will become very believable.

Heavily enhanced colours in shadows, mostly seems to work. This is because although these effects are subtle and hardly perceived in real life, our brain knows that these subtleties are there and agree with them once they are painted more colourfully on the canvas.

There are so many ‘hidden’ things that can be enhanced on the canvas and so many ways to do it. It really is one of the wonders of being an artist”.

Happy Painting