Painting the weather by Bob Brandt

Hang on Studio Wall

You can see more of Bob's work at The Gallery in Holt Norfolk. Visit the website for full details.

Colours

Cadmium orange

Alizarin crimson

Cobalt blue

Phthalo blue

Payne's grey

Bob advises on how to paint different weather conditions.

I have a strong preference for painting subjects bathed in sunlight. I want my work to be cheerful and celebratory, but in fact sunlit subjects are much easier to paint because tonal contrasts are more enhanced and colours are brighter – and therefore easier to see and replicate.

The key to painting sunlight successfully is balancing the colour of a lit surface against the colour of the same surface which is shaded. This comparison of colours was fully explored by the Impressionists with a vividness which had not been attempted by earlier artists. It was to explore the qualities of sunlight which prompted Gaugin to move to Tahiti and Hiva Oa, and many artists to choose to live in the South of France.

But describing other weather conditions can create very powerful images – and moods. Turner’s homage to the development of the Great Western Railway – ‘Rain, steam and speed’ – symbolises Brunel’s challenging not only the landscape but also the the elements. And Gustave Caillebotte’s ‘Paris Street, rainy day’ is a wonderfully atmospheric poem in shades of grey.

As it is physically challenging to actually paint in the rain – though Pete Brown attempts it in his DVD ‘Oil sketches’ – it is more reasonable to paint rainy or snowy scenes from photo-reference. Just as depicting sunlit scenes calls for an analysis of the contrasting colours mentioned above, so it is necessary to study the colour mixtures needed to describe these convincingly. My basic advice must be to explore mixing greys from cool primary colours plus white. Start with mixing contrasting primary colours, then modify these by adding small amounts of other primaries, to make the mixes either warmer or cooler. Then contrast cool greys against warm to develop a full tonal range.

In these experiments, avoid using any version of black or manufactured grey.

Just as aerial recession needs to be explored and understood in sunlit scenes, so it is important to use it when painting overcast subjects. The same rules apply – more distant colours appear more blue and adjacent colours show less contrast – but within a narrower tonal range.

It is tempting to suggest mist by using glazes of white, but this tends to produce chalky colours which are distracting rather then real. Instead use pale grey mixes.

Snow scenes are very popular subjects, but again many painters tend to assume that snow is white. It is light in colour, certainly, but it reflects sunlight in the ultra-violet spectrum so is often seen as pale blue or even violet.

Despite Turner, it is hard to paint rain. Sloping streaks of colour are seldom convincing because raindrops do not have any particular colour – they reflect and refract all the colours surrounding them, and we do not really look at raindrops so have no experience of what they look like. Instead, suggest rain, as I have done in the example shown of the side street in Aix en Provence (below).

One aspect of the weather – the storm – has found favour with artists and can produce powerful paintings. The key thing to remember is that an overcast sky will drain colour from the land beneath.

One subject which is worth exploring is the wind. Scudding clouds with gaps between allow shafts of sunlight to slant down, creating dramatic patches of sunlight.

DEMONSTRATION

When designing any painting, from the blocking-in stage the painter must be aware of the feeling and the atmosphere to be conveyed in the final work. I have started with a simplified drawing, based on a quickly-taken photograph, omitting a big van and other unnecessary detail.

I have then laid in loosely my ‘atmospheric’ colours - a palette of Payne’s grey, cadmium orange and alizarin crimson.

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Using only the grey and alizarin I have reinforced the linear design for the painting, giving it structure and checking that street furniture and buildings on the right correctly balance the receding street on the left.

Adding cobalt blue to my palette, I develop the basic patterns of light areas within the framework already defined. The tonal balance within a painting must be maintained as carefully as the colour balance. Indeed, classical artists used tones of grey as the basis of their paintings, producing ‘grisaille’ cartoons for approval by their patrons before starting on the coloured final paintings.

Adding phthalo blue to my palette I began to develop the tonal depth I was looking for to suggest a dank, overcast day. The colours were mixed into a medium – in this case Liquin – to produce a glaze, a semi-transparent layer of colour. Again, in the classical painting tradition much use was made of glazing to develop rich and complex areas of colour, whereas the Impressionist preferred to use directly-applied broken colours.

Keeping with the same palette, I was able to add further glazes and scumbles (more opaque mixtures of colours in my medium) to deepen and strengthen shadowed areas and to darken the sky to indicate the cloudy conditions appropriate for rain.

In the last stages of any painting, I have to work in short, separated sessions, alternating with the development of other paintings. This allows me to let the painting ‘settle’ so that I can more clearly see what final adjustments may be needed and prevent me from over-working. Practice tells me that at about the half-way stage I have to stop relying on any reference material and start to let the painting suggest what to do next.