Saturation and Transparency
What often stops me and makes me choose a scene to
paint out of doors is usually a saturated, brilliantly lit scene combining
architecture and landscape. In Lucca the circuit of walls offers a wealth of
options, cyclical as the sun winds its way around the city over the course of
the day. From below or above, the walls, their balluardi (bastions), and
gates present simple, powerful architectonic forms juxtaposed to rigorously
planted rings and crowns of trees.
I painted the Porta San Donato from above over the
weekend, with one of the city’s bishop-saints surveying the landscape beyond.
Painting between about 5:45 and 7:45pm, the late afternoon summer light was
saturated, the shadows growing longer on the ground, but the upper register of
the gate illuminated fairly constantly by the westerly sun.
As I’ve moved from watercolor to oils in my outdoor
painting over the last decade or so, I’ve found the experience of oil has
pushed my watercolors to greater density and saturation in the darks, while
giving me a new appreciation of the brilliance of un-watercolored white paper.
As a painter-architect, I value the constant back and forth between disciplines,
and the same fertile exchange I believe exists in alternating media. These are
not lessons that can be taught, but they can be learned by experimentation and
repetition.
For a view from below of the same area, see last year's post here.
