An Epiphany

While painting in Laguna recently, most likely after spending some time at the Irvine Museum looking at Payne and Wendt, I had an epiphany of sorts. Something I have been doing for a while but never really put my finger on it, knowingly that is.

I may have even heard it somewhere before and had it locked away deep in my head, but in any case, it came to me.

A simple statement yet a big idea.

Isolate your light and shadow patterns but do not isolate your colors.

Easy, no?

I have attached an image without Bryan's Mark Taylor's consent, hopefully he is cool with this.
I believe it is a good example of what exactly I am referring to.

On a closer look we can see that within this shadow, we still have all of our values correctly stated, staying where they should and yet an array of colors are being used, no loss of what is in light versus what is in the shadow area here what so ever.

Jill Carver, forgive me as well, I did not ask permission to use this, but again, great painter, great example of keeping a clear definition of our lights and shadow patterns. No confusion here.

Not sure why it took me so long to be aware of what I was already doing but grateful to have a little clarity in my life. : )