Tangent

oil on panel

6" x 8"

We're well into the New Year and I've got several paintings in various stages in the works. I'm still focused on learning traditional techniques that I missed in college and in my own struggles with painting. As I get older, the more traditional my painting has become and within that discipline many, many, challenges arise. Currently I'm in the middle of reading James Gurney's Color and Light, a fantastic treatise on effectively using- well, color and light, -in one's work. I've taken on some of James' challenges on my own as exampled in the study above. In this painting I'm trying out two interesting lighting techniques: edge lighting and subsurface scattering. Edge lighting is self-explanatory, an aura of light illuminates the edge of an object for dramatic effect. Subsurface scattering is light that passes through a translucent object, illuminating it from within as in Tangent's ears above.

There is just so much to learn still and a thousand hours of practice ahead, but every now and again there is progress.

Happy New Year, everyone,

D