Painting Lesson - Infused Light

Ever wondered just how some paintings just seem to glow with light. Sometimes the light looks like it’s pushing passed the edges of the trees and the hills. That’s a really beautiful light effect in landscape but it’s usually very subtle and equally difficult to paint. Let’s have a look at this painting of P Harrinlusion. See how the light from the sky seems to infuse the whole scene. And here’s what it really like. Although this little video can't really do justice to this awesome place, see how the light seems to be pushing over the top edge of that hill. Let’s have a look to the side of the sun where the infused light effect is even more subtle and harder to see. But just to show that it is really there, let’s increase the contrast to exaggerate what’s happening with the light, so we can see it better. Now see how the tops of the hills are the first to start disappearing into the light of the sky. Let’s zoom in so that we can see that again. Now see how the side of the big dark hill on the front is also getting infused toward the blue color of the sky as well. Let’s have a look at a different scene where the same thing is happening. Have you ever seen blue branches? Now have a look at this. Now I’ve increase the contrast again to show you what’s actually happening. The blue light from the sky behind is infusing the edges on the foreground objects. Here’s a painting where I’ve increase the contrast and the saturation of the colors to enhance this effect. This was done in the studio after I did this painting on location. Now I’m not saying one painting is better than the other, but this painting that I did in the studio, was an exercise in exaggerating effects that I was seeing in a more subtle way in nature. Taking a closer look at the foliage there, the outer edges, you can see that it’s actually painted with a pretty pure mixture of just ultramarine and white. In this painting, the use of the effect is more subtle, but it’s still there, let’s have a look at the foliage. Now I normally paint from dark to light. That is putting my darkest values down first and painting more lighter and lighter values on top of those. In this situation however, to create that infused edge look, I’ve laid my lights down first, which is the light purple leaves in the background and then a slightly darker group of foliage over top of that moving more central to the comp of foliage. And then a really dark, a very dark purple foliage on top of that, and then just finishing off with some touches of green. We can see that in this painting here too. And not only does it give the impression of the light infusing the outer edges of the foliage, it also makes you think that you’re looking at a three dimensional bush, some branches being farther away and some branches being closer. The ones that are farther away are closer to the sky color. Because I used the wet and wet technique for oil painting, I have to make sure that these first light layers of branches and foliage go down slightly thinner than the layers that are gonna come on top of those. If I didn’t paint that first layers thin, then the layers which went on top, the darker layers would mix in with the thick paint and I’ll just end up with a muddy mess. When I’m finish working my last one on top the other like that, I’ll go back in with the sky color, slightly darker though, and paint in some little holes in between some sky holes. The thing to remember when you’re painting sky holes is that not only are you painting the sky, but by default, you’re painting the edges of branches too. So you have to place those sky holes, not just in an any random place, but where they should be in between branches. Also, if you don’t paint them slightly darker than the sky in the same area, they will stick out, and you can see a couple here that I have painted slightly too lightly and they do stick out. Here’s a couple more paintings where I’ve used the infused light technique and in several places I’ve exaggerated the effect. And now you’ll be able to see where I’ve done that and you know how I’ve done it. Now that you understand the principle of infused light, I challenge you to look for it in nature and also to use it in your next painting. Because then you’ll really start to understand how it works and then you can start using it to create paintings that just glow with light. So I hope you enjoy that little snip of information. If you’re interested in learning more cool stuff about painting, just check out my other lessons on the website. Cheers. See you later.

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