Painting: Both Sides and the Middle

Rice Farm Road in Autumn 

(Note:  My next posting will be in two weeks, June 27th.)


During the years when I was doing a lot of painting, I found myself applying a technique which I will describe briefly ... and offer to any of you who might want to try it.  It's really quite simple ... and, I found, especially good with landscape though certainly not limited to that.

Simply, use different colors (or different shading) on the right and left sides of your painting.  Unless you're really looking for it, you don't even notice it since it can blend in so well, your eye accepts the different colors as a gradation of light.  Then, in the middle, you can also add what I like to call "a jewel"--a warm color or something a bit mysterious to draw the eye in.  (Even a good warm alizarin crimson for shadowing works well.)  Of course, there's also the compositional technique of taking the eye into the center of the work with a road or path.

Peach Orchard 
 Here, the left side has cooler tones than the right ...
with a warm orange "jewel" in the very center.

Last Light
 Yes, the composition puts the green trees in the middle,
but off behind them, I've added another bright orange.

I've posted some of these paintings before, but I include them again to illustrate my point.  Try this out and see what you think.  I've always thought it added just a little more interest, a little more oomph!

(Except for the final painting, a watercolor, these are all oils.)

October Pond

January Hillside
The "jewel" here is the lemon yellow in the sky as well as the deeper rust in the middle foreground trees.  Again, left- and right-hand colors differ.

Blue Trees
 The left/right variable is very apparent here.

Winter Along Kipling Road

West Hill Road 
  The "jewel" here is a lightening of the road's purple foreground shadows into pink shadows in the distance
where the eye then sees an aqua tint behind the far trees.
The left side colors emphasize purple and orange; the right green and yellow.