States and atmosphere: tasks of the month
Sky, clouds, fog, sunset and night. Sessions on how to pull the state out of a landscape instead of copying a photo. All digital.
Tasks
2–8 November
One place in three kinds of weather
Pick a landscape or an interior and paint it three times: clear, fog, rain. What changes is not the subject but the contrast and the sharpness of the edges: in fog the distant planes lose both value and boundaries. Keep the composition the same — then the difference will be honest. Three small studies.
9–15 November
Night without black
A night subject that uses no black at all. Night is not darkness, it is a shift of range and color. Keep the darkest places blue, purple, brown. Digital or paint.
16–22 November
The light source in the frame
A subject where the light source is visible right in the frame: a window, a lamp, a campfire. Everything in the scene has to be explained by that source: the direction of the shadows, the temperature, the way brightness falls off with distance. One study, an hour to an hour and a half.
23–29 November
A state through color
Take one mood — anxiety, calm, anticipation — and get it across in a landscape with no people in it. Three things do the work: the range of values, the temperature and the rhythm of the shapes. The subject is secondary. Any format.