Stephen Quiller Workshop – Sunday October 25

I have just one more demo to review from Sunday at the workshop. This one involved snow again – I think we caught Steve in his windup to the ski season!

In this demo Steve was using Crescent watercolor board which had been toned with a thin layer of neutral violet and blue acrylic, cooler at the top and warmer towards the bottom of the board. As Steve sketched up his demo he briefly reviewed the way that, given a single light source, cast shadows radiate out from an object. He also described these shadows as darker and cooler closer to the object casting the shadow, and lighter, warmer and more diffuse further away.  Obviously this was not news but described in a way I finally “got”. 

After this introduction, Steve laid in some tree shapes in the top right of the paper to give us a feel for where the light and shadow should fall. Then he took a titanium white tinted with yellow and painted negatively around the shadow shapes. He added a warmer yellow mix along the edges of the light and made sure to add some of the dappled light that would filter through higher branches. Some of the warm yellow-orange was painted negatively around in the tree shapes as well as on the sky area beside it. Finally, white dots were added inside the light areas to create halation effect. The result is a very convincing scene of woods backlit by a sunrise or sunset. [first 3 photos were in overhead mirror, thanks Janis and Joanne for the pics]. Beautiful.

It was such a privilege to learn from such a gentle, humble master painter. I hope I have the joy of sitting under his teaching another time – who knows... maybe even next year in Scotland!

The Calgary contingent with Steve on Sunday 

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the folks at Spokane Art Supply for their awesome hospitality, especially Shirley for keeping things organized and running smoothly and Claudia for her amazing baked goodies!

And now to paint... ciao!