The Self-Isolation Residency 15th April 2020: Day 17

 Well I didn't get this piece finished today, but I have made great progress on the highlights and shadows. I have been concentrating mainly on creating shadows by lightening all the other areas. This is a great way to work in a painting like this where I want all the colours to be as bright and vibrant as possible.

Above I have uploaded both yesterday's and today's image of the the painting to demonstrate both how the painting has progressed, (please forgive the wildly different lighting),  but more so to demonstrate how brightening some areas can create shadows in others. Take the area of the 'rug' directly beneath the chair for instance; the 'shadow' yellow colour in today's painting is exactly the same as that area was yesterday, all the rest of the yellow on the rug has been painted to make that area repetitively brighter. The same has been done with the blue areas on the rug.

Talking about painting shadows brings to mind another area of contention that often arises for student artists: I don't know how many times I have been asked 'what colour are shadows?' And I have even heard other students say, 'shadows are grey'. No, shadows are not grey, unless the surface that the shadow happens to fall on is white or grey to begin with. Shadow, as demonstrated in the painting are a darker tone of whatever colour the surface is that they are falling onto. So if the shadow fall on a red surface the area in shadow will be a darker red and so on, its as simple as than.

Actually whist I'm on the subject there is perhaps an even bigger is here with the question 'what colour are shadows?' It's a question that should never have to be asked which is why if a student asks me that question I always have the same answer for them; 'look for yourself!' Seeing colour might to some extent be subjective, the red I see might not be quite the same as the red that you see, but the relationships between the colours and especially the tones of the colours we see do remain pretty much the same. This means that any artist should use the eyes to thoroughly examine what is in front of them and their brains to thoroughly interoperate what they see. Even if I did tell a student what colour a particular shadow is it probably wouldn't be exactly the same as the one they are seeing.