SUN CURTAIN

This painting is relatively high key, whether it looks like that on a monitor or not. I have the most difficulty with my photos when I look at them on my laptop. This is when they look least like themselves.

LIGHT EXERCISE, PEAR IN EARLY MORNING

Hard to see in this photo, easier to see in the painting, the light here was very violet, with cooler shadows. There are scattered clouds, and the early sun is pinking them up. Unfortunately, the pear again chooses to pose on its side, this time looking something like a lime. I'm going to have to hire a new pear.

LIGHT EXERCISE, PEAR IN WINTER SUNLIGHT

We had a lot of fun with these. A lot of the pears in class looked vaguely like avocados. I made sure to put the bud end on to avoid just this problem. But maybe, in reality, it is more a problem of inexact observation of shape, or the unfortunate pose that this particular pear insisted on--and it did insist!

LIGHT EXERCISE, Pear 1

These light studies are a series that I set up outdoors in various light conditions, then imitated in class using cellophane to filter light color. It's amazing how well we can duplicate the lighting conditions with one color on the lamp and another over the box top to indicate sky color.
This pear is painted in lighting two hours after sunrise, with broken clouds on a winter day. In the class, we used magenta sky filter and yellow light filter, with the light placed distant from the box.

The colors of the photo aren't particularly true to the painting, but give something of the feel of it.

AN INTERESTING VIDEO ON HOW OUR VISUAL SENSE WORKS

Some of these illusions have been around for a while. What's interesting about this talk is the way he explains what's happening visually. Our brains interpret images based on what has been useful in the past. This has great implications for how we as artists express the world of light in paint.

Beau Lotto: Optical Illusions Show How We See