Practical Lights Part 1

Practical lights are light sources that originate from within a scene.

The top photo shows a pub in Malta as it appears in daylight. The middle photo was taken at night, with the neon, fluorescent, and incandescent lights all interacting. Each has a distinctive color corona around it, and each influences the area nearby. Note the mixing of light on the awning at right.


The bottom image is a 5x7 inch watercolor painted at night from observation from across the street. Even though the neon was intensely chromatic and very high in value, I knew I would have to bleach it, flare it, and use the color corona to get across the brightness. I couldn’t go any brighter than the white of the paper.

The brightness and color of a practical light is more evident from its effect than from the appearance of the light source itself.

To do a plein-air nightscape, I had to have just the right illumination on my work, and fortunately, the park bench where I was sitting had some spilled light from a hotel behind me so I could more or less see what colors I was using.

Lovell Article

The new issue of Illustration magazine has an extensive feature on the American illustrator Tom Lovell (1909-1996). The article has 67 illustrations, mostly in color.



Lovell’s career spanned six decades, beginning with covers and black and white drybrush drawings for the pulp magazines. He went on to the mainstream “slick” magazines, specializing in historical, adventurous, and romantic subjects.


His dedication to research and accuracy culminated in landmark articles for National Geographic throughout the 1960s, including multi-painting features on the Vikings and the life of Abraham.

I had a chance to meet him and correspond with him, and he was probably the biggest single influence on my early work. A lot of what I learned from him appears in the following links, and in Imaginative Realism.

Illustration Magazine (you can see the whole issue digitally)
Previously on GurneyJourney:
Lovell on Pyle and Dunn
Lovell on Flesh Tones and Design
Lovell's Painting Advice
Lovell's Soldier
Three Value Study

Painting Analysis

Scott McDaniel has done a very thorough analysis of the color and composition of one of my paintings, “Flights of Fancy,” including a gamut map of the color scheme.



It’s interesting for me to read such a post-mortem. I don’t recall thinking consciously about all these things at the time.

I recall playing lots of music and just thinking of the feeling of flying. But his analysis makes sense. I think a lot of things that we think about consciously when we're looking at paintings become unconscious (hopefully) when we're actually in the act of painting. The mind works in strange ways. 

"Ideas Made of Light" by Scott McDaniel
Thanks, Scott!

Souls on the Banks of the Acheron

In a 1900 edition of the Art Journal, Helen Zimmern described the scene in “Souls on the Banks of the Acheron” by Adolf Hiremy-Hirschl.


“In this picture we see the newly dead hovering on the banks of that river of the lower world which they must cross in Charon’s boat ere they reach their ultimate destination.

“Hermes Necropompos is here fulfilling his important function of conducting the shades of the dead from the upper to the lower world. In Mr. Hirschl’s rendering but few of these souls are glad to leave the sunlit earth behind them. Its joys and attractions still hold them spellbound, only quite a few, mostly young children and old men, are resigned to their mortal fate.


“The dissatisfied shades crowd around Hermes as he strides among them and implore him to relax his step, to stay the march of doom. But Hermes walks on regardless, with the calm inexorableness of a god, walks on and past the craving throng.

“But implacable though he must be to their entreaties, he is not here depicted as deaf and insensible to their sufferings. It is this that gives to his figures a sympathetic grandeur.


“In the middle distance Charon is seen approaching in the boat that shall row these souls to their final abode. It is the sight of his barque on the black waters of the Acheron that has struck the multitude with such terror. The dread passage once made, all hope is ended.”

Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl, Hungarian, 1860–1933. Souls on the Banks of the Acheron, 1898. Oil on canvas, 85 x 134 in.
Vienna, Österreishische Galerie Belvedere.
This painting is reproduced as a double page spread in Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter
Previously: Adolf Hiremy Hirschl

Mini Metropolis

Have a look at “Miniature City Shanghai,” a film of real urban life shot in time lapse and tilt-shift photography. (For feed readers here's a direct link to the video.)


For those who aren’t familiar with it, tilt-shift photography creates the impression of the shallow depth of field in actual large scale scenes. Since we’re accustomed to experience shallow depth of field and fast movement only with small scale scenes, it’s very hard to overcome the impression that we’re looking at frenetic miniatures.

Now try watching Chris Burden’s “Metropolis II,” (direct link to video) an ambitious kinetic model representing the rhythms of urban life. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llacDdn5yIE&feature=player_embedded



The macro and micro worlds seem to meet in the middle.


Wikipedia on Tilt Shift photography
Book: The Elements of Photography: Understanding and Creating Sophisticated Images

Color Terms and Perception

A BBC program called “Do You See What I See?” presents some interesting facts about color perception and how it is influenced by language, mood, and gender. Addendum: The video has unfortunately been removed.


A segment filmed with members of a tribe in northern Namibia shows how growing up with a different set of color terms affects the ability to recognize slight differences of certain colors.

These findings are presented as if they’re new, but they’re based on the pioneering work of Paul Kay and Brent Berlin in 1969.

One of the challenges for me in getting used to the Yurmby color wheel is learning to recognize cyan and magenta as basic color terms, distinct from blue, green, and red.

Because I didn’t grow up with the terms “cyan” and “magenta,” it has taken me a few years to remap my brain, but now I routinely recognize cyan and magenta colors around me according to their own terms.

It would have been much easier if I had learned those color terms in kindergarten, but that would be like changing America to the metric system.

LINKS
Direct link to video for feedreaders: 
Part 1 of the same series
Part 2 of the same series
Part 3 of the same series.
Related article on BBC website: "Do You See What I See?"
Thanks, James Ryman and Campbell Harmon
Book: Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing
The “Yurmby” wheel is presented in Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter
Brent Berlin’s study about basic color terms on Wikipedia

Previously on GJ: The Color Wheel (A 7-part series)

Moonbows in Waterfalls

Not all rainbows occur on rainy days. Rainbows can also form in the mist at the base of waterfalls, such as those  at Yosemite Park in California. They occur not only in the daytime, but also at night, with a full moon at your back.


Nocturnal rainbows form in the same way as daytime rainbows: by means of light reflecting and refracting in droplets of water. At night they’re sometimes called “lunar rainbows” or “moonbows.” In this time lapse video, look for the reversed secondary rainbows at 2:40 and 3:00.

Direct link to “Yosemite Nature Notes’ video.
The Nature of Light and Colour in the Open Air (Dover Books on Earth Sciences)
Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter
Thanks, David