The Effect of Light
from Colley Whisson
Let’s discuss light, its portrayal in our work, and how to achieve it. Light thrives on contrast. We often think light is all-pervading and everywhere, but it truly is the contrast. The transition from dark to light is what gives us the light effect. Colley Whisson believes, to learn this, we need drawing practice. This is not so much to teach us where a particular line may need to go. That is, of course, important, but it's not really the point he is aiming to stress.
“If you get those values working, we can start to get the whole painting working. ”
Whenever Colley starts to draw, he is thinking in terms of darks to lights. In a lot of cases, we are not quite getting the contrast correct. That's when our paintings tend to stop working and not reach their full potential.
Creating light is the contrast of one value to sunlit value. This is why Colley puts a great deal of time into making sure his values are as accurate as possible. Once he gets those values right, he can start to do quite abstract things with the brush, like add texture. Texture can be just using the flat side of the brush, but it's all derived from that contrast from light to dark. It's a matter of getting those values, those light to dark contrasts, working first.
Colley has tried to condition himself to look at his painting as a drawing. Like a pencil drawing from light and darks. If we get those values working in that way, we can start to get the whole painting working.
If you haven't done much drawing practice, Colley highly recommends it. If you were to do 12 or 18 months of a focus on drawing, it'll fast track your work six or seven years. You'll move leaps and bounds because you'll start to understand not only structure and line and directional line, but one of the more difficult things: the effect of light.
Through TAAO’s online resources, you'll discover a trove of techniques and insights to elevate your artistic journey learning under Colley Whisson: