Bay Bulls 1 Original photo reference
"Bay Bulls 1" 30 x 30 Oil on canvas There has been almost no sun since Christmas and it has set me to thinking about the course collisions between weather and painting. I would go so far as to argue that, unless you have banks of full-spectrum lights in your studio, what is happening outside your studio window drives your painting more than we imagine.
This reference photo makes me think of the mood of November in The Rockies : more about values than colour. (Driving through the mountains registered as a complete absence of colour - or of warmth — or possibly of life. I could almost feel the weight of solid rock above me. It must be genetic: my grandmother, a Prairie kid if there ever was one, experienced the same deprivation of colour in Summerland’s lack of lingering sunsets when they retired there. They almost moved back to Saskatchewan.) I took the original photo because I absolutely loved the broken field of rock and evidence of continental drift in its tipped angularity. But it was too dark for me.
So I cheated. I poured cadmium reds and Burnt Sienna into the cliffs and covered the lower rocks with mosses; phew. Only the sea honestly remained true to the overcast sky.
So when there was a splendid snowstorm here yesterday, and everything was a black-and-white photo, I began to think again about the absence of colour and concocted a small experiment to perform on my long walk. The only equipment needed was a pair of sunglasses and the only preparation was to put them on. Sure enough, my surroundings warmed slightly due to the addition of transparent brown overlays ( you will remember that brown is made from red+yellow+blue). I presume that full-spectrum lights achieve the same thing by containing the wave lengths of all three primaries so that even the act of viewing a reference photo or that of mixing pigments remains true to the original inspiration. Otherwise, nothing feels quite alive. In tacit recognition of that observation, I often tweak a good photo by raising its colour saturation in order to restore its “sunglasses” feel. Sometimes I have to do push the envelope more than that. I admit it.
I do this in the service of my gratitude for our exquisite blue planet, she who sings in a universe of black and white.
This reference photo makes me think of the mood of November in The Rockies : more about values than colour. (Driving through the mountains registered as a complete absence of colour - or of warmth — or possibly of life. I could almost feel the weight of solid rock above me. It must be genetic: my grandmother, a Prairie kid if there ever was one, experienced the same deprivation of colour in Summerland’s lack of lingering sunsets when they retired there. They almost moved back to Saskatchewan.) I took the original photo because I absolutely loved the broken field of rock and evidence of continental drift in its tipped angularity. But it was too dark for me.
So I cheated. I poured cadmium reds and Burnt Sienna into the cliffs and covered the lower rocks with mosses; phew. Only the sea honestly remained true to the overcast sky.
So when there was a splendid snowstorm here yesterday, and everything was a black-and-white photo, I began to think again about the absence of colour and concocted a small experiment to perform on my long walk. The only equipment needed was a pair of sunglasses and the only preparation was to put them on. Sure enough, my surroundings warmed slightly due to the addition of transparent brown overlays ( you will remember that brown is made from red+yellow+blue). I presume that full-spectrum lights achieve the same thing by containing the wave lengths of all three primaries so that even the act of viewing a reference photo or that of mixing pigments remains true to the original inspiration. Otherwise, nothing feels quite alive. In tacit recognition of that observation, I often tweak a good photo by raising its colour saturation in order to restore its “sunglasses” feel. Sometimes I have to do push the envelope more than that. I admit it.
I do this in the service of my gratitude for our exquisite blue planet, she who sings in a universe of black and white.
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