Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Foggy Weather

Most folks like sunny, cloudless days, but artists often prefer fog, rain, and clouds. This sketch in Maine wouldn’t have been half as interesting on a day with a clear blue sky.



The water was glassy, just one semi-tone darker than the sky. Everything was gray except those red details at the waterline. All the color of the far boats dropped out. The distant sailboat is just a ghost.

As with overcast light, there is little modeling of the form, because white light is coming from overhead in all directions.
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Related posts on overcast light, part 1 and part 2

6 comments:

Antti Ruuhijärvi said...

beautiful.

Patrick Dizon said...

Funny, I just finished watching a marathon of the Pirates of the Caribbean films!

Daroo said...

Very Nice painting! Is that ship ironically named the Sunbeam?

I think one of the reasons that painters like overcast/fog is that that the cool light source works the same way that paints (opaque) do.

With a cool light source, as the local color of an object is lightened it also becomes cooler which is also what naturally happens when you add white paint to lighten a color: it becomes both lighter and cooler.

Thanks Jim for a great year of your excellent blog!
Happy New Year!

Jason Peck said...

Hey James,

This is a masterpiece of values and use of color. I could study all the subtle values for hours. Great work.

Sincerely, Jason

Anonymous said...

James, Your blog is full of inspiration but your work ethic is just as inspirational as your paintings. I really dig these plein air pieces.

Mary Bullock said...

Love the painting! I moved to Maine about 2 years ago and love it here. I would love to see more of your paintings of this area. Thanks, Mary

The Figurative Realm of Mary Bullock