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How to balance the light between your painting and your subject

June 5, 2017 By: Paul3 Comments

This is something I don’t see talked about much, if at all actually, but it can save you untold hours of frustration if you get it right.

A basic problem of painting realistically is that we can’t often replicate the full range of values we see in our subject in our paintings. Truth be told, we rarely can.

Why?

Because we’re reducing three dimensions to two dimensions, and a flat surface has a more narrow value range than multiple surfaces, some of which will be facing towards the light, and some away from it.

Confused?

Hopefully this video will explain it!





Best wishes and thanks for watching,

Paul

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About Paul

I'm a (mostly) self-taught artist. I paint realism in oils, mostly still life. I share my work, my evolving process and what knowledge I've gained on my own learning journey here, in the hope that it might help you along on
yours.

Comments

  1. 1

    philiscious says

    June 7, 2017 at 10:02 am

    This was a great lesson.

    Reply
  2. 2

    Jan Walker says

    June 7, 2017 at 2:31 pm

    Thank you for having this webinar. I look forward to seeing it. Hope you are doing well. j

    Reply
  3. 3

    Alan Bradley says

    June 7, 2017 at 7:53 pm

    I look forward to the Webinar.
    Right now I am totally thrown by this change of angle of the drawing board. Why is this necessary? You have one painting for the grey cube and another for the white cube. You have changed the relationship between the grey and white cubes!!! Why do you do that?

    Why not keep the drawing board in line with the objects. You have the white of the cube on the Munsell chip. You can match the chip onto the painting.

    I really am puzzled by this change of angle. This activity would be far worse if you had a complex object like say a plaster cast of a set of lips for example.

    So what if you change the drawing board towards the light the board gets lighter!!!! I am stuck on this point.

    Reply

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Hi, I’m Paul

I'm a (mostly) self-taught artist. I paint realism in oils, mostly still life. I share my work, my evolving process and what knowledge I've gained on my own learning journey here, in the hope that it might help you on yours.
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