1. Use cool, grayish colors.
2. Reduce chroma.
3. Unify Shadows.
4. Make them nearly opaque.
5. But don't go too dark overall.
6. Use warm accent lights for contrast.
7. Trust your memory more than photos.
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More in Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter, 224 pages, softcover, 9 x 10.5 inches. Purchase on Amazon or signed, directly from me.
7 comments:
I remember seeing an NC Wyeth once where he rendered moonlight with a dry, patchy scumbling of color. It seemed to me he was trying to simulate the "grain" of low-light vision. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Interesting points, makes me want to experiment with doing a moonlight painting. Is the image one of your paintings?
Hey, Adam, love your work. I wasn't aware of that quality of NC Wyeth's moonlight scenes, but it makes sense that the color receptors might fire randomly, creating that effect of grainy low light vision.
I'm pretty sure the one I was remembering was this:
http://collections.brandywine.org/objects/7770/and-putting-their-mouths-to-the-level-of-a-starry-pool-they;jsessionid=D3B224EDF7C07D0DF23255338F35989D?ctx=77d2dd94-41c1-4677-8487-d2e94e2cad65&idx=1
It's not actually as grainy as I remember.
Frederic Remington’s nocturnes are a source of inspiration in their quantity and quality.
Excellent subject, and really beautiful work. Someday I want to paint the salt formations around Mono Lake, CA. That would keep me busy for years.
These tips don't only apply to moonlight - I'd say they are also useful for scenes set in a moonless night.
As for night scenes, I think an artist who is worth studying is Ken Marschall, who is famous for his depictions of Titanic (the sinking happened on a moonless night). It is also interesting to compare his paintings with stills from James Cameron's movie - that is a good lesson in the differences between what a camera can and what can be done in paint.
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