Blog

A few years back on a several-day outing with good painting buddies, we spent part of an evening watching a DVD by David Curtis, an awesome plein air painter from England.  David's work is amazing, truly inspirational to us all.  He was describing a piece he was working on while looking into the sun, calling it "contre-jour," meaning "against the daylight."  We're all different, but of all the lighting conditions we face painting outdoors, I find this "backlighting" to be what most often attracts me to a scene.

Ironically, contra-jour creates headaches, sometimes literally.  Among the many problems afforded by staring directly into a blinding light is that I have a hard time with is what I call "light creep."  Strong sunlight will actually "wrap around" the edges of my painting, making it nearly impossible to see what I'm doing as I apply the paint on the outer sides of  the canvas.  The fact that I use a Soltek easel might contribute to that issue, since the panel sits perched alone atop the mast.  Sometimes I have to put my hand or arm in back of the surface to shield the incoming sun.  I've recently been trying out the Art Cocoon cardboard panel holders to help alleviate that specific concern.  Another issue is "fried retinas," where your eyes get overstimulated from squinting into overabundant light rays from the sky bound fireball resulting in misreading the colors you see.  Throw some water into the composition in front of you and you have a double whammy, with reflected light from the water's surface doubling the glare!  Sunburn, blinding reflections off the ferules of your brushes, the fun goes on an on.

I very much like the low, warm light in both the morning and evening. I won't shy away from a hazy or overcast day and it's bounty of grays. Even fog or rainy days have their charm.  Call me crazy, but just point me at the sun with a powerful subject in front of it, and I'm ready to move paint in a effort to capture the moment!  Apparently Phineas Taylor Barnum claimed one like me was born every minute.

P.S.  Our "gang" still paints occasionally together, and werefer to ourselves as "The Contre-jour Painters" as our small tribute to David Curtis!