gave me the itch to paint; it had been a while since I’d actually painted on canvas instead of digitally, and I decided now that it was overdue.
For today, though, I was focused on helping Kelly organize his new studio.
“Well, I guess now that I have an easel…” He dragged a box in from the hallway and cut the tape. From inside, he pulled out a canvas wrapped in brown paper. After he’d unwrapped it, he hesitated, glancing uncertainly at me, then put the canvas on the new easel.
It was a still life comprised of some copper and cast iron cookware beside a sunny window. Setups like that were deceptive—they looked simple, but with the dramatic lighting and various surfaces of differing reflectiveness, they could be incredibly challenging.
Kelly shifted beside me, and he quickly said, “It’s, uh, still kind of flat right now. I’m still adjusting the values a bit, and I haven’t done much at all with the highlights yet.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to apologize for a work-in-progress looking like a work-in-progress.” I smiled at him. “It’s on your easel, so I assumed it was unfinished. But it looks really good so far.”
“Does it?” He sounded timid and self-conscious.
“Yes, it does.”
Chewing his lip, he stared at the painting as if he were silently demanding it to look better than, in his mind, it did.
I understood. Every artist was critical of their own work, and every piece looked different to the person who’d been scrutinizing it up close than it did to someone who was taking in the whole picture from a few feet away. For that matter, I’d been a novice artist at one time too, and there’d been nothing more intimidating than a more advanced artist looking at my work, especially if it was unfinished. Even now, I cringed a little if one of the art professors at work lingered for very long on one of my pieces, finished or otherwise, and God help me if a renowned artist doing a guest lecture saw anything I’d painted.
And that was after having nothing but support from my family from the time I could hold a crayon. Kelly had been fighting an uphill battle just to be able to make art, never mind get any validation for it.
I turned to him. “I mean it, Kelly. Your work is a lot better than you think.”
He met my eyes, forehead creased with unmistakable skepticism.
I went on, “I don’t know if you were taught composition, or if you just have a natural eye for it, but everything of yours I’ve seen has consistently been composed perfectly.” I gestured at the piece in front of us. “There’s energy in the way your paintings are arranged. The viewer’s eye is naturally drawn to the focal points. Everything around the focal point enhances it and complements it without competing with it.” Meeting his gaze, I quietly said, “I have students working on art degrees who still struggle with that.”
Kelly swallowed. “Really?”
“Really.” I looked at the painting again. “And I mean, this one is a work-in-progress, but I can clearly see where it’s going. The shadows are all where they belong, and the highlights are obviously coming along.”
He stepped closer to the painting, arms folded as he scowled at it. “I wish I could say they were coming along easily. I have a hell of a time with highlights sometimes. If the light source is really bright, and part of the surface needs to be way lighter…” He groaned, rolling his eyes. “I don’t know why I struggle so hard with it. I mean, if it’s something shiny, I’m good. But if it’s matte, or like fur or something? Or like on the cast iron stuff? Ugh. There has to be an easier way.”
I thought about it for a moment. “Do you use transparent mixing white?”
He met my gaze. “For mixing? All the time.”
“No, for the highlight itself.”
Kelly blinked. “What?”
I stepped closer to the painting and gestured at a section of cast iron that was in direct sunlight. “A thin layer of transparent white would light this up.”
“A thin…” His lips parted. “It’s… You can’t be serious. It’s that simple?”
I pulled up a photo album on my phone and thumbed to a shot of the painting I’d done of one of my wedding portraits. Turning it so he could see it, I said, “You see how Aaron’s jacket is lit? On his shoulders and the back of his arm?”
Kelly looked closer, and he nodded.
“That’s transparent white.”
“It