Study of a Shadow, London, Ontario

New tricks can be discovered by experimenting and just trying new things. This is a landscape I did back in London Ontario, probably in the early 2000's. It was cold as I remember probably during or just after fall? The building was one of the new residence buildings they put up to house the 'double cohort' students of 2003... that was when they decided to get rid of grade 13 and put all students directly from grade 12 into University. Anyways, I snuck onto the construction lot and made this painting. Of all the paintings I have done there are perhaps half a dozen that were pivotal... absolutely important... and this was one of them for one simple reason... the shadow.

Painting shadows is half the battle when doing a landscape. The other half of the battle is painting light! Of course you can't have one without the other. In reality shadows are filled with light and colour, look at this example and you see a rich purple with reflected blue tones from the sky and reflected warm light coming off the pile of dirt and ground. The trick I learned in this painting was to use value contrast to make the shadow appear to be luminous. I started by putting down the base colour of the building, a warm, pale orange. On top I put the shadow, a mixture of blue with touches of red and yellow. At this stage the shadow looked dark and muddy and in fact awful... I felt that the painting would be a failure. Then I put the windows on top of the shadow... they are simple lines made of a really dark purple (near black)... and then... like magic... the shadow came to life. It was a transformation before my eyes, a few simple brushstrokes had turned a boring dull shadow into a vibrant alive shadow. It worked because the dark window provided a contrast that made the shadow look a lot lighter. Since then I have used this trick in nearly every landscape.

To put it simple... paint your shadows in a medium value with lot's of colour. Then overlay a high value (dark) object or line to provide contrast. The original shadow will now look brighter!

5x7" cold press  2003?