Description
By (author) Aitken Jenny
Short /annotation:
Work artistic magic with contre-jour: learn how to create the illusion of light in your oil painting.
:
Reknowned for her techniques for painting light on water, Jenny Aitken delivers perfect guidance to the intermediate artist on how to paint light in plein air and much more.
Learn how to successfully paint scenes that that capture magical effects of light from behind the subject. Good contre-jour – painting into the light – artworks cause the viewer to squint, with light seeming to glow from the canvas. They can look like a kind of magic, with their hazy light and colour singing out. This book demystifies lighting in oils, and provides a practical guide to the process, showing exactly how to create the illusion.
Inside, you”ll find a wealth of information on simplification, tonal control, capturing accurate colour, working both indoors and outdoors, painting landscapes and still life, creating atmospheric depth, and even mastering the illusion of space. Through detailed step-by-step demonstrations and beautifully illustrated techniques, Jenny Aitken reveals how to infuse every painting with vibrant, lifelike light. A section on troubleshooting tricky paintings will show the reader every painting is salvageable, but with an understanding of light and colour, it’s much more likely that they’ll find success the first time round.
Table of contents:
Foreword 6
Introduction 8
How best to capture light 12
Exercise: Tonal seascape28
Where to start 32
The Sparkling Ocean – stage-by-stage54
Simplification 72
Portrait – stage-by-stage78
Woodland – stage-by-stage92
Painting en plein air 100
Sparkle on Water – stage-by-stage106
Still Life – stage-by-stage114
Atmosphere 122
Exercise: Cold distance126
Mountains – stage-by-stage130
Impact 136
Mevagissey Harbour – stage-by-stage138
Brush Language 146
Oystercatcher – stage-by-stage152
Afterword 158
Index 160
Review quote:
If you’ve ever looked at the dazzling light effects that Jenny Aitken suffuses into her paintings, you may have wondered how she achieves it. Now, in her first book about painting into the light, “contre jour” she generously reveals her secrets.
The book reads like a friend is at your shoulder sharing their experiences, borne from years of not only painting, but teaching. This understanding of what students of light may want to know ensures that the language and topics are accessible through straightforward language and examples, clearly laid out in a way that you can dip in and out of what interests you most.
While the book focuses on painting specific subjects contre jour, (with illustrated step by step projects on her personal approach to a wide array of motifs including seascapes, skies, snow portraits, woodlands, mountains and oystercatchers) it also offers more universal painting advice around central tenets of representational art. Tips on composition and contrast, simplification, brush language, and colour perception, will serve the reader well beyond the realms of contre jour.
With practical advice on topics such as indoor studio and outdoor painting set up, how to get the most from reference photographs, and how to evaluate work, you can feel how Jenny wants you to succeed in your own painting journey. It’s like popping a knowledgeable friend on your shelf!
Review quote:
There are a lot of art instruction books out there, but this new one by Jenny Aitken is a gem. Having painted en plein air alongside Jenny on numerous occasions, I have always been amazed how she conjures up light, amplifying a light effect that sometimes doesn’t exist! This book explains how she does this in easy-to-un
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