Green in the bottle, Pastel on Colorfix, 23x30 cmI went to a day course yesterday on painting reflective surfaces, and we were asked to bring along whatever medium we'd like. I took the pastels - they seem to be my firm favourite now and with some rearranged storage solutions (more on that later), they are so easy to pack up and take with me.
The course covered the two different types of reflection: (a) reflections within an object - such as stainless steel flask in first image, and (b) reflections of objects within something else. The second one is the more common one, and in particular deals with water surfaces.
A couple of useful tips included
- that colour doesn't reflect as intensely, in particular the further it is away from the breaking point
- that the size of reflection depends on position of observer, i.e. in case of water surface, the lower down the view point, the more elongated does the form appear in its reflections (which has to do with different angles of inflection and reflection.
In the morning, I did quite a few sketches of a facetted whisky flask which reflected beautifully a rather garish green striped table cloth. Finally, I did the pastel sketch above.
Rocky shoreline, Pastel on Colorfix, 23x30 cm
The afternoon focussed on the second type of reflection - water surfaces reflecting landscapes, boats and other objects. I had enjoyed doing the whisky flask from life, but with the water reflections this was going to be more difficult. Hence, the afternoon sketches were done from photo references. I had picked one which I liked for the colours and also for it being similar to many of the other photos and sketches I’ve done in Ardnamurchan and Perthshire earlier on in the summer.
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