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Polar



"Polar," 8" x 8", Golden acrylics on an Ampersand Gessobord, still life painting depicting an old stuffed polar bear on a white ground. Polar can be yours for $399, which includes shipping and handling inside the continental US - inquiries may come to me. Please and thank you!

Look Again - White isn't White.

You've heard me say it before. 

And to prove my point, I'll share a little exercise I do with my students.

Take a white object (Starbucks cup, coffee mug, etc) and set it on your kitchen table. Observe how the apparent color of that white object shifts - it reflects the light around it, including whatever color your kitchen table is.

Now take a bright tea towel or tshirt, and place it under the white object. See how that object changes again?

This happens with everything in our world - it absorbs and reflects the color of everything around it (including the color of the light).

The object is still "white," we aren't changing it's local color. But we are changing it's surroundings, and that reflects/impacts the variations of "white" that we see across it's surface.

This is most easily experienced with our own eyes - cameras rarely capture it (go ahead - take a photo of that same setup with your cell phone - see the difference?). Hence the importance of painting from life, so that our paintings capture the essence of how we move through the real world.

And the importance of painting what you SEE vs  painting the LABEL your brain assigns a "white" object" - there is no pure white paint in this piece, despite how it may look on your monitor.

Thanks, as always, for following along with my artwork!
Happy holidays!
Warmly, Kim
ksantini@turtledovedesigns.com
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