Don’t Fall Off!
Posted on February 28, 2014
some watercolours from last autumn in the Célé valley. Vertigo?
Impossible blue sky but true… yes true deep blue with only free wheeling birds 🙂 The blue sky that envelops us all… that evokes a sense of freedom in me 🙂
Sunset 3 Jan – Plein-Air Paintings of the Sun by Monet, Turner & Levitan
Posted on January 8, 2009
Sunset 3 Jan 2009
Oil on MDF panel
30 x 40cm (approx 12 x 16 inches).
© The Artist.
Painting of the winter sun hanging a in clear sky
Plein-Air Paintings of the Sun by Monet, Turner & Levitan
Claude Monet
‘Impression Sunrise’
1873
48 x 63 cm – Musee Marmottan, Paris
(photo :Wiki Commons)
Claude Monet’s Impression Sunrise
“The sun is set against the dawn, the orange color against the gray and the vibrant force of the sun against its motionless surroundings. To many spectators, the sun undulates or pulsates slightly. Why is this so? The sun is nearly the same luminance as the grayish clouds. Notice how the sun nearly disappears if you remove the color. (Click painting to reset.) This lack of contrast explains the painting’s eerie quality. “
Adam says : OK that’s true but this sensation is heightened by the fact that red is the one colour that really ‘disappears’ when you strip the chroma out of it. Red is tonally ‘weak’, somewhere around a lowish mid-tone. Vagrant, the tonal value red is difficult to judge as the fire’ in it’s chroma is so vibrant. Try the above exercise with a yellow sun & it’s less startling. Anyone tried it with a green sun? 😉
JMW Turner – The Scarlet Sunset
circa 1830-40
Watercolour and gouache on paper
134 x 189 mm
The Turner Collection. Tate Britain
Issak Levitan – Haystacks. Twilight.
Oil on cardboard.
The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
Always learning…
Sunset 2 Jan
Posted on January 5, 2009
Sunset : 21 December, longest night – Black in paintings.
Posted on December 22, 2008
8 figure (46 x 38 cm; approx 18 x 14 inches)
© adam cope
oil painting of sunset on longest night
Something amazing happened yesterday. The grey skies that have weighed us under this last month parted & THERE WAS LIGHT. It felt like rebirth. Longest night has passed & thankfully now we turn back towards the light.
Winter silhouettes of black (trees) against a colour rich, bright lit sky of clear winter colours, reflections in the river Dordogne.
Black in Painting
You will not be able to see this but the black in the painting is actually dioxazine violet with lamp black laid over the top. Most photography doesn’t register this difference in the low end of the tonal range. My Cannon EOS 400 D certainly can’t; it’s a bad camera with too many digital distortions in how it writes its files. Systematically underexposes & gets the colour wrong. The violet is a fine colourist complement for the yellows in the sky & doesn’t muddy the colours as black does. Like most colorists, I have a somewhat schizophrenic relationship to black. I prefer to ‘ break’ colours with their colourist mixing complement rather than tone down with black, thus arriving at a high key brighter palette, more suited for the luminousity of plein-air. Some call it a ‘chromatic black’ because it’s colour friendly.
‘Notan’
Yet black exists in the visual world, as a colour in its own right. It exists in my mind’s eye, in my map of colour… “Black Bible Black”. The marriage of ‘The Dark Partner’ to ‘The Shining Bride’ (white) is essential to a good painting. That’s to say that the black & white relationship is the base of a good watercolour. And even in an oil, the black scaffold gives structure & immediate impact to an image, which is essential in the quick glimpse, short attention span of the web. Some mistakenly call it ‘Notan’
Vines near Boisse
Posted on November 15, 2008
51 x 41 cm (20 x 16 inches).
© adam cope
alla prima
This was done in one session, no corrections.. had to paint very quickly as it was my turn to pick the children up
good clouds in this medium size oil painting of vines…
I’ve painted this hill many times over the last ten years. Here’s an early medium size oil, when the corn is yellowed up & ready for harvest. When I painted the above this week, the farmer was harrowing in preparation to plant his winter barley & the last leaves hanging on the vines, the oaks turning bronze. Already !
WIP : Winter Sunset
Posted on January 14, 2008
BTW, WIP = Work in Progress
30 x 40 cm
oil on panel
© The Artist.
150 € -possibily of taking in sterling or US dollars via Paypal
Over the Hills
Posted on November 11, 2007
Tuque Lagarde – Vignes
Posted on November 11, 2007
oil on panel
20 x 50 cm
150 euros
Le Rayon, Monbazillac – 1999
Posted on October 26, 2007
Watercolour.
40 x 27cm
© The Artist.
Raincloud over Monbazillac
Posted on October 26, 2007
Watercolour.
33 x 24cm
© The Artist.