Planting Geraniums
Hello. Since this is my very first post, I should say something about what I intend these posts to be. I envision that here I will be sharing mostly artistic experiments: daily sketches, practices that I have found helpful, or new insights I have discovered. When my family temporarily lived in Denver last year, I studied classical realism at Ali Ghassan's atelier. Now that we are back home in Omaha, I will be continuing with classical training remotely. I also love the movement of sketchers (e.g., Danny Gregory at the Sketchbook Skool and Urban Sketchers) who are committed to quickly drawing and painting the places in which they find themselves, ideally from life. I will be learning from both traditions moving forward and look forward to offering what I learn in this space. Constructive feedback is most welcome.
Today I begin with a simple watercolor sketch of my daughter's geranium in its black plastic container before she potted it. I've been reading Ted Seth Jacob's Light for the Artist lately, and it is helping me to understand the way that light reflects off of surfaces (more on this in future posts). Jacobs says that we can think of light as emanating in straight beams from the light source and bouncing off surfaces similar to the way a ball bounces off a wall. If the light (or ball) is thrown at a wide angle, it will bounce at that same angle in the opposite direction. If the light (or ball) is thrown directly in front of us, it will bounce off the surface (or wall) right back to us. This helps me to understand why we see a bright, white light area reflected from smooth surfaces and no strong white highlight on rough surfaces like terracotta. On a smooth surface, the particles of light bounce off that even surface at the same angles towards your eyes. On a rough surface, however, the light hits the uneven surface (uneven at the molecular level) and, hence, bounces off in multiple angles, somewhat obscuring the highlight. In any case, I'm fascinated by the way that dark local colors can look positively white at the point in which the light hits their surfaces. In this sketch, I was interested in the white rim of the geranium's black container.
