Alumni Hall, University of Western Ontario, Canada

This painting was done a number of years ago just around the time the snow thawed and spring started, you can see the little bit of snow beside the tree. Also creating the feeling of spring is the lack of leaves on the trees, and the overall cold colours used in the painting. The shadow of the tree falls over several surfaces, the grass, the walkway, and he snow, creating a nice variety of blues in the shadow. This is what drew me to the scene, the interesting shadow. I was also interested to paint the brick work of alumni hall, the edge of the building is seen on the right of the picture.

This painting is a good example of how to create luminous shadows. The left side of the tree is in shadow, and so is the brick wall of alumni hall. To make the shadows seem bright, I overlaid some darker highlights to provide contrast. For the tree, I applied some dark brown streaks to look like bark, and for the brick wall I applied outlines of the limestone bricks. Notice that the underlying shadows contain a lot of blue and purple tones. Cereluean blue is very good for putting blue in your shadows, or cobablt blue although this colour is slightly toxic and should not be eaten.

5x7" cold press 2001