When it comes to painting landscapes and other scenes of nature, there are two qualities that inspire me and direct my work - light and color.
I've always been more controlled in painting the figure, but I've always enjoyed painting the landscape because that is when I'm able to throw caution to the wind and let my brush dance around the canvas and do its thing, while the canvas itself does its thing. My brushwork is much looser and colors bolder. I don't know why that is. With figurative work, there is something more specific and narrowed down in terms of subject, texture, and color. But with landscape painting, anything goes. There are infinite textures, colors, and lighting situations that occur, and that makes the painting process so much more exciting.
Let's talk about light, first of all. Light is, after all, what makes the scene happen in the first place. We need the sunlight to see what makes the landscape or skyscape so special. Without a particular lighting situation, you also don't have the colors that make it special. That's why I my landscape painting has evolved over the past few years to emphasize those two components. And being the enthusiast for Renaissance and Baroque painting as I am, I love that flair for the dramatic. I love the exaggeration of beauty that even God puts in a scene. Sunrises and sunsets always have something dramatic to say. And what better way to create drama than to have a very intense light surrounded by darker values and intense colors?
One of my more contemporary influences in landscape painting has been the painter Mark Boedges. I've enjoyed his work for quite some time, and as I looked closely at his work, I started noticing something in his work that was lacking in my own landscape work. I started noticing these small notes of intense, almost over-exaggerated high chroma color in the painting that became such delightful focal points throughout the painting. They aren't overdone and they aren't distracting, but when you see them, it's like feeding Sour Patch Kids candy to your eyes (or whatever delicious candy treat you can imagine).
Let's look at a quick example of what I'm talking about:
So here's a painting by Boedges called "Our Start". A very impressive work of what I would refer to as impressionistic realism. And at first glance, there's nothing particularly eye-catching about the colors. It's a cold, wintery, overcast scene on a very typical suburban street. But then the longer we look, the more our eye starts noticing the little sour patch kids. Let's zoom in for a closer look:
You'll also notice that these little notes of high chroma color are spread out across the painting, and not in one single concentrated area. This is typical of a lot of Mark's paintings.
So it got me thinking, "Why is this effect so appealing?" As a realist painter, I have always tried to keep my color application fairly subdued. I know that colors aren't as intense in nature as they are straight out of the paint tube, so bringing the chroma down is necessary. And yet, here we see very intense notes of color in an otherwise subdued palette. It's not just the light... Color itself can also be a very effective way of creating dramatic focal points. And this is also especially true in sunset and sunrise painting. Light and color are equal co-stars in the work.
I have been fascinated with the way light effects color, and how color effects light in landscape painting, and I've been playing with that idea a lot lately in many of my small works. I love cloudscapes, and the way the sunlight seems even more intense when it's behind a cloud. And of course, this is because of the dramatic contrast of dark color next to a bright highlight. Each one intensifies the other.
"Scenes of Creation" has been my ongoing series of landscape paintings for the past 3 or 4 years, and like many of my painting subjects, they are evolving as my interest in the subject evolves. No matter the scene, my interest in the painting is color and light. I always use a warm red umber as my underpainting color because it complements the blues and greens so well, and it supplements the warm reds and yellows. I intentionally leave areas somewhat transparent, or even broken and uncovered so the warm underpainting shows through the overpainting. Those areas then become small notes of contrasting warmth next to the cool notes.
To purchase some of my recent small works in my "Scenes of Creation" series, you can find available 6x6" pieces on my Ebay page https://www.ebay.com/usr/ryandart , or email me at ryandelgadoart@gmail.com to inquire about other available works.
