University of Western, Snowy Stadium Scoreboard, London, Ontario

This painting was done years ago on the campus of the University of Western Ontario in London Ontario, Canada. It was the middle of winter and yes, I went out and painted on location, the snow was two feet deep (half a meter), I remember scraping the snow off the bleachers to get a place to sit. The thing that attracted me to this scene was the clear white snow in the foreground, the geometric patterns of the scoreboard and roof-lines, and the flowing trees in the background. You can also see the top of Middlesex College, a motif found in many of the London paintings. Painting on location you will see more colour than a camera (even digital) will pick up, especially in the shadows. In this painting, the shadow being cast by the scoreboard is filled with blue light from the sky. Since the material underneath the shadow is white, you are seeing the 'pure' effect from the blue sky. When such a shadow is cast on a coloured surface (green grass for ex.), there is still the same amount of blue, it is just masked by the underlying colours. Your eye will become trained to pick up these subtle hues in the shadows, and also, having an understanding of the concept of reflected light will allow you to make more realistic shadows in abstract work as well, where there is no nature to guide you. 

 Snowy Stadium Scoreboard, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, winter 1997 (No. 0460)