Like many artists, I am grateful to the early Impressionists for creating an awareness to how the quality of light changes color. We know that in nature the quality of light depends upon
the time of day, the location, and the weather. In his entire body of work, Monet left evidence of all those changes.
One example is a comparison of these two paintings of haystacks, aka grainstacks. (You can find the majority of his work HERE )
Monet famously said,To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.
It's that simple: To really see the color we're looking at, we must forget what we're looking at. We will always see what we're looking for, so when looking at the thing, if we're looking for the local color we know it to be, we will miss the color we
are actually seeing.
Below, I have cloned the same image section from each painting, indicating the section I've cloned with a line. When we look at the two cloned samples side by
side, we see entirely different colors of the same image. The weather is different, the time of day is different, the quality of light is different, therefore the color we see is different in each, even though the local color is the same. If we plucked a hand-full of straw from that same section of each haystack, both would appear the same color in our hands.
Select a simple colorful object, such as a lemon or orange or head of cabbage. Place it outdoors in an area that can receive full sunlight.
Capture photos of it in midday in full sunlight, early in the morning just as the sun is rising, late in the afternoon just as the sun is setting, during an overcast sky, or in any other kind of weather and/or light variation.
Better still, study it like Monet, in plein air. But either way, make an effort to forget what it is and study the color of each moment captured.
You will be enlightened and have gained another step towards creative freedom.
Enjoy an enlightened weekend!
You can access the archive of all my newsletters at anytime by going HERE. |
|
|
|
