My group, the Tehchapi Plein Air Painters spent a day in our quaint little town to see what fascinating subjects we could find to paint.

The Gallinger House

Walking down the street, a bright yellow home caught my eye. How could I resist? That yellow seemed to call out “paint me!” Turns out the house is a historic home built in 1880 by a gentleman named Joe Gallinger. The plaque near the front of the house gave us a few more details about what our town was like in the 1800’s.

My wife, always the social butterfly, went to knock on the door of the current owner and mentioned how much I would like to do a painting of her historic home. She was happy to oblige, and thus the “Gallinger House” painting came into being.

The Artistic Eye

It was just the right time of day, and the shadows danced across the wooden fence. But it was the warm glow surrounding the yellow house that really captured my imagination. The challenge would be to approach this painting in a way that captures the light and emphasizes the shadows.

Artists often see things through different eyes… we notice how light and dark, nuances of color, what something could be, etc.

What Makes for Great Art?

Have you ever stopped to enjoy a beautiful sight in nature and just taken in the details of the moment? What did it look like, how did it feel? What were all the elements that came together to make it beautiful? You may have snapped a picture in that moment to capture the beauty…but often that photo falls short of capturing what your eye was taking in and your senses were experiencing. Even professional photographers often edit their pictures in order to best depict what their eye captured that the lens could not.

An artist does much of the same thing. Our paintings attempt to capture the beauty and nuance of something the common eye (or the lens) may not quite be adequate to convey. We see things with an artistic eye. An imagination and senses that take in details that make a subject or a moment beautiful.

So the next time you are out looking for inspiration for art, spend a moment absorbing the beauty found in unique details. The way the light hits the subject, the warmth or vibrance of something, the intricate patterns or fun details. Then push the envelope when depicting those things…and don’t be afraid to push the limits past what the naked eye can take in. Go ahead and emphasize the beauty you see.

Plein Air Painting In Public

Painting in town is always an interesting experience. People would walk by and stop and look, and one young women on her way from school stopped to ask questions and chat about art.

As I was painting the kind owner came out several times to take a look and view my progress. Her grandchildren came out once and gathered around asking “is it done yet, is it done yet?” Then they would excitedly go back and report to the grandmother.

They all seemed to love the process of the painting. However, ultimately it took two trips back to the Gallinger house and some time in the studio to finalize it.

I still haven’t shared the final results with the home’s owner. The one downside of plein air painting? The people who take such an interest don’t always see the end results. It is my hope that what they do see inspires their creativity!

Roundness An Important Principle

There are times when we’re painting nature scenes and the details may get in our way and we forget a very important principle: to paint roundness, or volume. Perhaps the lighting is of such that there is no strong sense of direction of light coming from any given side with an obvious shadow being cast. That happens on days that it may be cloudy or, for example, when the sun goes down behind a hill and it makes the area fully in shadow, but there’s still a lot of light that makes the subject matter evenly lit. Some forget to paint roundness in these situations.

On these trees, it may be difficult to tell which direction the light is coming from. You can get a sense of shadowing in some spots. But in others, it feels flat. When this happens, there’s a tendency to paint details without volume, fullness, or roundness.

The Simple Solution

So how do you resolve issues like this when you’re painting? Even though an area may be in the shadow and you want the appearance of even lighting, you can still give it roundness by having a lighter side and a darker side.

• Accentuate The Shadow
  You accentuate the shadow slightly, not a lot, just a little to aid the roundness. I’ll give an example of that here so you can get a visual to what I’m talking about.
  I’m using the computer to demonstrate, therefore I’ll darken this tree with the layer mask. Then I’ll take the right side of the shadow out. Now it has a darker side and the lighter side is its original value, which you can see here. This helps it feels a bit rounder.

• Add A Reflective Light
  To give it more interest, I’ll add warmth to the left, which is now the shadow side, as a reflective light. See what it looked like before? Now it has more dimension.
  Think this way when you’re painting. Think to paint roundness, not just textured detail. The sense of light has not gotten stronger as I made the change, but there’s more core shadow and reflective light.

Painting Demo to Make The Point

Now I want to demonstrate this from a painting standpoint using the computer. So I will cover the left side of this picture with white to paint in my example.

• Texture, Detail Needs Roundness
  All too often I see paintings with lots of texture and no sense of roundness or volume to the subject that they are painting. So here’s my illustration of a textured or detailed tree trunk. 
This is missing the volume, the roundness, the fullness, that it should have – the shadow and light side to help it feel round. We don’t want just texture to describe the tree for us. We want to paint roundness as well. So how do we do that?

Remembering The Principle: Paint Roundness

The solution is the same concept as you saw with the photograph. As you’re painting, remember to paint roundness. So I paint a dark side that helps it feel rounder. See the before above and the after below. If you want to accentuate some of the texture, you can do that. Just paint in more detail.

Then I’ll give a warm reflective touch for color interest. This tree has come from a just-texture-look with no volume, to having more roundness.
 Now it has a core shadow and a reflective back end. It’s not as flat as it was before.

So don’t just think about texture; see the texture but think about roundness, about volume. Then remember to paint roundness while painting texture also.

Hope this was helpful. Do check out my blog/video Creating Dimensions with Core Shadow and Improve Your Artwork With Direction of Light as they share additional concepts connected with this topic.

Let’s keep those paintings coming!