Wednesday, July 08, 2015

Morning Light and Shadow



My last post was about glare when I'm plein air painting. I got a number of emails afterwards about umbrellas and I just want to clarify that I have one that I love - a Best Brella. I use it every time I paint outside, unless it's too windy. It does a great job shading my painting and palette! But sometimes, if I don't have something solid behind me, there is still glare on my painting. Which makes it hard to see any kind of subtlety. Maybe I'm expecting too much? I don't know. At any rate, please pardon my bumbling. I'm still trying to figure out this whole plein air thing.

Meanwhile, backing up, this is a scene I painted a few weeks ago but didn't post because I hadn't gotten a good photo (still didn't get a great one!). It's from Clearwater Park in Springfield, 8am. I did this square one on site, and then the one above at home, from a photo and the study. The dark paint didn't photograph well. Alas.


6 comments:

Johan said...

Hi Carol,

great to see you painting en plein air!
About the glare, have you tried changing the angle your panel makes with the ground? Less than 90° if there isn't much light bouncing off the ground, or slightly more than 90° when using an umbrella and there is a lot of bounced light coming from the ground.

juliefordoliver.blogspot.com said...

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this one.

a power said...

I'm with you on the whole plein air thing!! :-) Love the edge of your foliage in your piece. I haven't noticed the glare so much, but maybe it's because I usually paint into the sun or I'm just missing the subtleties in general;) Feel like I do better if I take my glasses off too! I have found the same thing photographing dark areas, especially if the paint is still wet....I play around with putting the painting vertically in the shade or laying it down flat on the ground in shade and taking the picture from different angles to find one where the glare is in a different spot than the dark area in the painting. Always a work in progress.

Randi said...

these are lovely Carol
and to your comment about glare
there is no way around it - Glare sucks !!!

LS Nelson said...

Diane Mize just did a quick tip about glare. Bring your panel straight up to 90 degrees then tip it ever so slightly forward and it solves the problem.

Susan Liles said...

Great painting! I need to get out and do some plein air painting and
brave the heat.