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| 10x10 pastel on watercolor |
Ah! It's the warm and wonderful time of plein air! That joy and wonder sometimes leads to leisurely thinking and sometimes a little to picky-picky, detail-ism. To prevent this one thing I try to do when outdoors is to make not only a dark/light map (notan), but also a temperature map. When I say a temperature map I mean in terms of warmth. Excitement is made when warm and cool do a dance, but, the question is.... is it sunlight or shade? Don't let those little spots of warmth in a cool area or cool in a predominately warm area confuse you. Remember you are in charge. You want it to read all the warmth of sunlight.
When I talk with students about the warm/cool mapping they say it's hard. What I have found helps is to always do a value map (notan) first. The skeleton that provides is incredibly valuable. That means all your effort can go into the temperature analysis.
That's it for now!
3 comments:
As always, your advice is excellent but not so easy to do. I know it takes practice. Is a temperature map similar to a color study?
Wow! Beautifully done!
Hi Deborah,
I guess that depends. To me it's more like a notan. Instead of 4 big blocks of value it's the major shapes of temperature. In landscape painting- shade and sun. Does that make sense?
Thanks Vinayak!
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