Winter Light with Tulips

Winter Light with Tulips - oil on canvas - 30x30"

This painting has been waiting around in the studio for resolution for a couple of weeks. This morning we had a talk. It was quite therapeutic! I said some things... it said some things.  We had it out! Originally I had thought I would harmonize the area of the leaves by glazing into it, then adding more lights, but no.  That no longer seemed the way to go about it.  I opted for a more tentative approach.

I mixed up lots of different tints.  I applied them with palette knife and brush adjusting warm and cool tones according to where I thought the light pattern was falling.  Since these tulips have long since done duty, and were no longer around to refer to; I had to imagine where that light was falling, so it was a bit of a give and take.  I also changed slightly the shapes and tones of the flowers and adjusted the tones within the shadows.

It's funny, just last week in my workshops we observed a little experiment I had set up showing how  shadows change according to what kind of light (warm or cool) is on the subject.  I am just realizing this painting is a good example of the idea:  cool light casts warm shadows.