Looking for Light and Shadow



October Patterns, watercolor

How did I end up with Light and Shadow?  One of the challenges of creating art is finding a subject.  Sometimes you paint just what strikes your fancy.  While enjoyable, the result often was a collection of unrelated paintings.  They seemed to have no theme, or rhyme or reason.  It is difficult to tell what the artist's real passion is.  Over time I have been trying to focus on subjects that reflect my real interest:  light and shadow.  More specifically, interesting light and light sources and dramatic, colorful shadows.  I am intrigued by the different color of light, and how each different light creates a unique shadow.  In the painting above, the late October light filtered through autumn leaves creating near burn out in the thin places directly in front of the sun, and multicolored patterns where leaves overlapped and cast shadows on each other.  Each leaf was painted indivudally.  To keep the painting from being just shades of red and orange, and to more accurately reflect the variations of individual leaves, shades of green and blue and purple and charged into the wash of single leaves.  I'll talk about the positive and negative shapes that also appealed to me in another blog.  Let me know what you think!