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Reknowned for her techniques for painting light on water, Jenny Aitken delivers perfect guidance to the intermediate artist on how to paint light in plein air and much more.
Learn how to successfully paint scenes that that capture magical effects of light from behind the subject. Good contre-jour painting into the light artworks cause the viewer to squint, with light seeming to glow from the canvas. They can look like a kind of magic, with their hazy light and colour singing out. This book demystifies lighting in oils, and provides a practical guide to the process, showing exactly how to create the illusion.
Inside, you'll find a wealth of information on simplification, tonal control, capturing accurate colour, working both indoors and outdoors, painting landscapes and still life, creating atmospheric depth, and even mastering the illusion of space. Through detailed step-by-step demonstrations and beautifully illustrated techniques, Jenny Aitken reveals how to infuse every painting with vibrant, lifelike light. A section on troubleshooting tricky paintings will show the reader every painting is salvageable, but with an understanding of light and colour, it’s much more likely that they’ll find success the first time round.
Foreword 6 Introduction 8 How best to capture light 12 Exercise: Tonal seascape28 Where to start 32 The Sparkling Ocean stage-by-stage54 Simplification 72 Portrait stage-by-stage78 Woodland stage-by-stage92 Painting en plein air 100 Sparkle on Water stage-by-stage106 Still Life stage-by-stage114 Atmosphere 122 Exercise: Cold distance126 Mountains stage-by-stage130 Impact 136 Mevagissey Harbour stage-by-stage138 Brush Language 146 Oystercatcher stage-by-stage152 Afterword 158 Index 160
For Jenny Aitken, teaching painting is an absolute passion her main aim is for students to be encouraged, informed and creatively enthused. She began tutoring and demonstrating ten years ago, and now runs online courses and art holidays around the UK and in Italy and France.
Since graduation in Art & Art History from seaside university Aberystwyth, she has exhibited all over the UK and won many awards. She was elected an associate member of the RSMA in 2021, and won the Topbond Marine Award in 2022.
She is currently represented by several galleries, including The Harbour Gallery in Cornwall and Peter Barker Gallery in Rutland. You can also view and purchase daily studies, paintings, prints, calendars and cards from her own online gallery on www.jennyaitken.co.uk
Jenny is a regular contributor to The Artist Magazine, and an online tutor, with a series of 25+ modules on painting in oils and acrylics. She also produces shorter painting videos on YouTube.
Jenny lives in Derbyshire, not far from the beautiful Peak District.
At 11 inches x 8 and a half inches, this is a decent, coffee table, book size which is good as it is one to treasure, keep revisiting and enjoy.
We've all been on a train in the Autumn and seen the sun, low on the horizon behind the trees and how the trunks and branches seem to become thinner in front of that disk of bright light. Well, this is a book about how to capture the effects of light sources in front of the artist as opposed to the side or behind.
The authoress is a master (mistress?) of her craft. The images she creates are very beautiful and the layout of the book is designed to impart as much of her knowledge as possible to the reader.
The examples given are varied but all fall under the banner of painting into the light. Some are lyrical and could almost be backdrops from Disney's Bambi.
Like every artistic genius, Jenny Aitken makes everything look oh, so simple. What particularly appeals is the fact that with very few brushstrokes she evokes detail which one perceives even though it is not there. This is particularly the case where figures are concerned with more than one example reminded me of Monet's Parisian street scenes.
Other artists have painted similar and had Jenny Aitken produced work like this a century and a quarter ago, she would be remembered as a great impressionist. Well, they got there first and she uses techniques which have been around for a long time but wow, she uses them with such apparently effortless skill that I am on my hands and knees in admiration.
The book is beautifully laid out and pictures are given room to breathe. A lovely, easy read and a book to leave out and visit often. As a manual for producing art like this, I think it is unsurpassed.
Highly recommended.
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