As I have been plein-air painting the last couple of days it dawned on me that I haven't mentioned that most landscape scenes that I paint are done from light to dark, and from back to front. Most backgrounds in a landscape, seascape, and cityscape tend to be light, which makes it easy to paint that first in watercolor because as you paint over the background the values get darker as you paint forward. This way it makes it possible to paint through objects in
the foreground instead of painting around them.
If you are doing a night scene or a still life and the background is dark then of course this light to dark way of painting doesn't include working background to foreground.
The artist of the week
Thomas Schaller uses this technique in almost every one of his painting designs and his work is a great example of painting light to dark and back to front.
This week's paint-a-long will also be a scene that will be painted light to dark and back to front... watch my
YouTube paint-a-long this Thursday to learn all about painting light to dark and back to front.
