North Day light -- Oil painting techniques of human body

North Day light -- Oil painting techniques of human body In the preface I outlined the importance of light quality in painting. It is important from both a technical and an aesthetic point of view. So I designed the studio to be able to control light in many ways. My main source of light was the six-foot-high, 13-foot-wide window facing north. The window was in a wall eighteen feet high, its bottom eleven feet from the studio floor, its top one foot from the ceiling. From such a height, the light falls on the easel and is reflected off the canvas in all directions, which minimizes the glare directed at my eyes. I fitted curtains on the Windows that could be pulled from the bottom up to control the amount of light and the Angle of light hitting the canvas. When I draw the curtain higher, the light falls at a smaller Angle on the unshaded part. Diffused light comes from two translucent skylights that total 32 square feet (about as transparent as a white sheet of paper). They are mounted on the roof slope opposite the north window. The Windows are fitted with blinds that control the direction and intensity of light, or block it completely. I rarely use the north window and skylight at the same time. Shadows that conflict with each other when used together. Northern daylight When I speak in this book of "northern daylight" or "natural light," I refer specifically to the light from the bright, cloudy days of the north, and also to the characteristic light of the region in which my studio is situated (close to latitude 41° and longitude 73°). I have painted in many different places, such as the North Pacific coast of the United States, the West Indies, the Mediterranean coast, the Atlantic coast, northern New Mexico (8,000 feet above sea level), Manhattan (unseasonal smoggy August weather) and many other places. I found that different latitude, altitude, temperature, and terrain characteristics created very different light conditions than in my studio. Of all the light sources, I like the day light from the north most. This incomparable light is cold, but not predominately blue. It was as bright at noon as the daylight diffused through the skylight in a clear day. What's more, there are solid technical reasons to take advantage of the cold northern daylight, besides being cheaper than installing electric lights. When blending colors, cold light can create the desired warm and cold relationship, that is, under this condition, various colors can appear warm and cold in the color relationship around them. (Please refer to the chromatism section.) Under cold light such as daytime light in the north, objects appear cooler when they are brighter and warmer when they are darker. In blending colors, the most common way to brighten them is to add white, because white is the coldest of all pigments, and actually cools the color at the same time as it brightens. In a sense, light and paint work together to help blend colors. There are three disadvantages to working by daylight in the north. First, you cannot work at night. Secondly, the light is constantly changing, sometimes not obviously, but sometimes the sky changes from bright and cloudy to deep and clear blue in a few minutes, thus affecting certain color relationships in the studio. The third disadvantage is that the daylight hours between the sun and the winter solstice become very short, and from November to the end of January there is no light after three o 'clock in the afternoon. But the shortcomings mentioned above will not have a significant impact on my work. Natural light is really wonderful, and I can make some adjustments to remedy these shortcomings, even if it is worth the minor inconvenience.