Artists & Illustrators - April 2016_

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Artists & Illustrators 49

In his previous

painting, La Cocina

Ventana, Matt

was attracted to

the early sunlight

which illuminated

his subject

beautifully.

WORKING CONTRE-JOUR

My still life set up for this project was

arranged on the same windowsill that

featured in one of my previous

paintings, La Cocina Ventana. What

interested me about this composition

was the light coursing through the

window, shining through the glass

objects and lighting up the lemon and

the knife, which both cast beautiful

long shadows on the surface.

This back-lit effect is known as

contre-jour – from the French for

‘against daylight’. If you have a very

bright window with great sunlight,

placing fl owers or glass objects in the

window can give you some beautiful

refl ections, long shadows and strong

contrasts. Many of the highlights in a

contre-jour painting are simply the

white of the page, so focus instead on

the darker tones to build that contrast

and make the picture sing.

HOW TO... LAYER FOLIAGE

1

Pick out a few highlights with

masking fl uid and then paint

your lightest colour (in this instance,

a pale yellow-green) in loose leaf

shapes. If some of the plant is in

shadow, you can vary the tones to

give variety later.

2

When this is thoroughly dry,

mask the next lightest areas

and paint a second layer. Working

from light to dark gives the

suggestion of backlit leaves and

helps create negative shapes as

you add darker layers.

3

Once dry, mask again and add

a darker green mix, working

into the shadows of your foliage.

This enables you to create strong

shadows without damaging the

lighter leaves and areas you have

already painted.

4

Re-mask again and apply a fi nal

layer. When the rest of the

painting is complete, remove the

masking fl uid to reveal the

highlights (see page 51). Building

layers and tones in this way is a

similar process to Batik painting.

LOOKING FOR COLOUR

Training your eye to identify

colour is one of the most diffi cult

elements of painting. There are

subtle variations of colour in

everything we see, and one of

the reasons for this is refl ected

colour. When an object is hit by

sunlight, its colour is refl ected

onto adjacent objects and the

surface on which it is stood.

Resulting shadows can in fact

include a rich array of colours.

You may think an object is

‘green’, but try to identify the

various colours within it – blues,

yellows, reds, browns, purples

and more. Don’t feel you have to

get the colour spot on fi rst time

either. If you can keep these

larger washes moist, you can

add touches of other colours and

move them around with a small

brush. Be careful not to add too

much water though, otherwise

you will create puddles and the

paint will dry with water stains.>

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