Morning Light

 Outside the Walls of Lucca 

I have to admit a preference, partly biorhythmic and partly aesthetic, for late afternoon light. Having to gear up mentally for the focus that painting requires, I’m not a spontaneous morning painter; but if I plan for it, there is something appealing about starting your day off en plein air. I did it in Rome several years ago, catching (within an hour for each) the changing light on the Villa Doria Pamphilj on the Janiculum Hill (paintings which inspired a later capriccio, the process documented in American Artist magazine’s January 2009 issue).

from the archives, June 2006

from the archives, June 2006

In the late afternoon (like this earlier post) the light gets progressively more interesting, and changes more quickly, toward dusk; in the morning, instead, the light changes rapidly at first, then settles into the slow climb toward midday. While the light mirroring solar noon—say, 9am and 3pm—would theoretically be the same, by the afternoon everything looks bleached out, while in the morning colors are still saturated, the reflections off the dew give the ground some sparkle, and haze pushes distant objects even farther away.

The mural circuit of Lucca offers appealing prospects across the arc of the day. While the walls themselves are fairly consistent, what tops them, and what surrounds them, changes from one side of the city to the other. Outside the walls to the north is the greenest swath of land, blocking out the urban sprawl which is kept thankfully farther away from the historic center than elsewhere. I’ve painted here in the afternoon looking east, but these images show a painting looking west from outside the northern city gate.

With a wide scene like this getting the perspective and proportions right is half the battle. After a loose drawing I started blocking in the grassy field and the central bastion, which anchors the image. The rest of the walls and their trees are mostly frame to these two primary elements. The light (and shadows) stayed fairly constant across the two hours of painting.

Water, Color

Some Thoughts on Process....

Plein air being a rather intense experience, I am not in the habit of methodically documenting my work as it evolves over the roughly two hours it takes to walk away with something credible. But a few months back I was working on a watercolor of a familiar subject as a model for my students, and having begun a version that I soon noted had some problems with the proportions of the parts in drawing, I abandoned it and began a new one; so here you’ll find the abandoned version, which might be useful to see what I start with—sky and the most saturated areas in this case—and how it all winds up. For me one of the critical things in this view of the Palatine Hill from across the Circus Maximus is the variegation of the brickwork, from the differentiation in color of the voussoirs that make the arches to the places where the brick has been rubbed/chipped away. Since the last thing I do is introduce the shadows—in the end perhaps the most critical thing—I want to get the proper color and texture of the material “right” before the shadows go one. So I often start with the strongest or most saturated areas of local color first, and from there work toward the more subtle and neutral ones.

Also, note the sky as the negative space of the form....

Happy New Year to everyone, and to those who labor in the open air, particularly in Italy,

Buon lavoro.