Injecting Dramatic Lighting into your Paintings

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In a painting in any medium, treatment of light is a vital consideration. While the landscape photographer has to work with available light, artists can manipulate it to their advantage, changing it, intensifying it, rendering a much softer, atmospheric light or create a dramatic sense of light and dark, and so much more. It pays to study how the top artists have treated the light in their compositions when you visit an important exhibition or collection.

Brancaster Staithe

Brancaster Staithe

This scene on the Norfolk coast shows part of the composition bathed in late afternoon sunlight, as it throws the emphasis on the central building, the two figures and the boats. I achieved hard edges on the buildings set against a dark sky by using masking fluid, rubbing it off once the background washes had dried, and then painting in the details on the buildings and the rest of the scene, completing everything apart from the shadows in the foreground. At that point I often trundle off for a coffee, or if it’s late I’ll finish for the day. This allows the washes to dry completely – in fact I’ll often get on with another painting at that point.

With the whole painting completely dry I wash clean water right across the foreground, taking it up into the lower sky area. Make sure that you take the water some distance beyond where you intend to create the soft edge, as water has a habit of creeping further than you might think. I then apply a mixture of French ultramarine and cadmium red over the shadow area, including the darkened left-hand buildings and the far right-hand hedgerow. This wash blends nicely into the wet paper, creating soft-edged shadows, with the area I wished to highlight being left untouched. If you are a little wary of this technique try it out firstly on old paintings that have not worked well, so that if things really do go wrong it won’t matter.

Painting in Pastel & Sketching in Watercolour

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I love sketching, in fact I love sketching more than painting. There is nothing like the feeling of being outside, hopefully in pleasant weather, capturing an old buildings or lovely landscape in your sketchbook.

Stockland, Devon

Sketch of old cottage in Stockland, Devon, by Jenny Keal

Many of the sketches I make will never become paintings as most of them I do just for the pure pleasure of it, but every sketch I do teaches me something, sharpens my observation and improves my painting and drawing skills.

Sketching in watercolour is not as difficult as you might imagine, and there is a sense of liberation about painting a watercolour in a sketchbook that is absent when working on a sheet of expensive watercolour paper in the studio. You do not have to worry if it goes wrong as it is ‘just a sketch’ . You can slosh the paint around and so often I prefer the looseness of the sketch to the carefully considered finished painting, whether it is in watercolour or pastel.

exmoor

Typical Exmoor scenery, (photo)

lynmouth

Lynmouth Devon (photo)

If you would like to experience this sense of liberation you could join me in Lynmouth, Devon from 20th to 23rd May this year. We will be sketching in watercolour out of doors, and then turning these sketches into pastel paintings in the studio. You don’t have to use pastel of course, you can use whatever medium you prefer. The main emphasis will be on capturing the marvellous Devon scenery, pretty cottages, tumbling streams, woodland and even the coast.

One of the benefits of watercolour sketching is that it definitely improves your studio watercolours.

Exhibition in Tenby

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David and Jenny have an exhibition at Art Matters in Tenby starting on Easter Saturday, call in and say hello if you are in the area.

Farm Above Dinas Cross

Farm Above Dinas Cross

The western fringes of the British Isles, have always exerted a strong influence on my painting. The stories, myths and legends, the ancient stones and the marks left by prehistory are evident everywhere. The cottages and farms, hunkered down among the rocks in their struggle to survive the Atlantic fury, show clear evidence of the ingenuity of past generations. Even today, in many places, the same building methods are used to protect homes from the violence of the weather.

In Pembrokeshire especially, the buildings have a unique character, that makes them a gift for the artist. Like many other painters I am bewitched by this charm. The rugged coastline provides a never-ending bounty of subjects. At every twist and turn of the shoreline another inspiring view appears.

I am fortunate indeed that Pembrokeshire is David’s home county. Through his intimate knowledge of every nook and cranny we have explored fascinating and stimulating places and although we have travelled the world together, it is to Pembrokeshire that I always long to return.

Painting sparkling water and shafts of sunlight

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Our new exhibition starts at Art Matters in the White Lion Street Gallery in Tenby on Saturday 30th March, and continues until the 28th April. You can view the paintings on their website Jenny’s work is in pastel and mine in watercolour, and we will be there from 11 am to 4 pm on 30th March. The painting below is one of the watercolours I am exhibiting, although it does not show the whole picture.

Dinas Fach, Pembrokeshire

The scene shows sunbeams falling over Dinas Fach on the Pembrokeshire coast. To create the ragged edges to the clouds I stroked the blue-grey sky colour on with the side of a large round brush, rather than using the point. The shafts of sunlight were left until the very end of the painting, when everything was dry: I simply put two pieces of thin card together, slightly apart with the lower sections splayed out slightly more than the top parts, and then with a soft sponge soaked in clean water I stroked downwards over the lower sky and the craggy headland. I then did the same with the second shaft. It’s important to ensure that all the shafts of light come from the exact same spot, even if as in this case, the sun itself is hidden behind cloud.

Sparkling water can give a lovely inviting appeal to a scene, and this was achieved by spattering masking fluid over the area with a toothbrush, masking out those parts that I wanted to avoid spraying. I did add a few more little spots of masking fluid with a fine brush afterwards, where these were needed. When the masking fluid was dry I then painted over it with the sea colour, eventually removing the grey-coloured masking fluid to reveal the sparkling area. Shafts of sunlight work well with sparkling water, and you can add this to your sea, lake or river scenes when you wish to beef them up a bit.

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Painting wet pavements

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Welcome to the new site for my blog. The delay in writing a new post since the last on my old blogger site has been because of the changeover to our brand-new site, master-minded by the amazing Jenny Keal. She’s not only my dear partner-in-paint, and a great pastellist, but she has been working at great odds to get it all working. I hope you get a seamless transfer from old to new, without any hitches, though knowing the computer world, I somehow doubt it will be entirely dreamlike!

We had another lot of snow last night – beautiful large flakes that floated down gently, but by morning most of it had gone. So instead of snow I’ll cover rain today. Light rain falling on a hard surface, perhaps with a hint of background light can be a delight to paint, and trying to capture the effects of this can be very rewarding.

Wet Pavement    This watercolour, which is part of a composition, shows a wet day in Hackney, on a part-cobbled surface. Most of the painting, including the general colour on the ground, the figures, lampost and wall, were painted first, and when all this was dry I described with a weaker application of paint the reflections. While they were still wet I punctuated them by dragging a damp flat brush horizontally through the reflections. After allowing all this to dry I then lay a wash of pure water across the foreground to reduce the strength of the reflections and at the same time soften their edges. Note that in doing this I avoided the lamp post, wall and legs of the walkers. This method is an alternative to the wet-into-wet technique, which some may well find easier to handle. The full painting is in my book Skies, Light & Atmosphere, which can be obtained from our website, and has an accompanying DVD of the same title – the special offer on these two items is available solely from ourselves.