Why is colour different outside?

I wouldn’t say I’m a morning person.

I get up early. But I like slow mornings, punctuated by strong coffee, fiddle tunes, looking at paintings on Pinterest and gazing for long periods out of the kitchen window.

So it’s a bit of an effort for me to get myself out and about first thing.

But I’m so glad I did the day I painted this (November 2nd).

I went to a new place for me, Frampton Lakes.

The sun was making paintings everywhere. It was hard to get more than ten yards at a time without thinking, “Maybe I’ll paint this”.

It was cold to start with, long wet grass and I need new boots. My feet were wet and cold.

I don’t remember thinking about that while I was painting this, though.

I worked for about two hours.

The light would have probably let me keep going a bit longer, but honestly, I was losing focus by then.

I took plenty of photos of the subject, so I thought I could always work more on it later, in the studio.

I headed home.

Once I got the photos into Adobe Lightroom, the colour seemed different. The relatioships between them were different that what I painted with.

I like the ones I painted with more.

I think they have a better feeling of a cold November morning than the photos do.

Although I’d be hard pressed to tell you what I changed, I’m pretty sure it’s the value balance.

My darks are as dark as you get in paint, pretty much.

But everything else is lighter, except for the water at the bottom.

I don’t think we see colours differently outside, I don’t think there’s any special magic going on.

But on some level, I think I responded to them differently.

I think I was responding to the light, and I think our visual systems process colour differently than cameras do.

But perhaps I was also responding to the feeling of being there.

To the temperature, the stillness.

Maybe even to having cold feet.

So I worked on this painting a bit more today.

The photos I have of this subject are nice.

I could have brought the colours closer to the photos today. But I think if I did that I might have lost something.

So I just did what I had planned – worked on the reeds at the waters edge mostly, using a palette knife to build up thick paint and texture. Cleaned up the water and defined the edge where the land meets the water a bit better. And clarified some of the tree shapes.

And then left it.

I think that maybe partly what’s different about colour outside is just that the feeling of being there comes out in your choices.

I’m not even sure that on this day, it was conscious.

Best wishes,

Paul