Light and Dark

We had an another session in National Gallery. I really liked it!

This time was about using brightness and darkness effectively.

      

This drawing shows where the light is. As we see any pictures, we see the lightest part firstly and then move on to the dark part like hideandseek. There is also "hide" part in this painting where is the soldiers are waiting outside of the room. 

(Samson and Delilah, Peter Paul Rubens, about 1609-10)

 With this painting, I concentrated to the man lying on the ground.

  

      before:he is leaning back     pose as the painting                after he wakes up

Now, there is a short story. As they are so tired to go further, they decided to take a rest for a bit. They are not supposed to sleep. However, the guy who just tried to leaning back  fell asleep unconciously. After he waked up, he felt a guilty of sleeping.

(The Agony in the Garden, Giovanni Bellini, about 1465)

 

First of all, I drew only background which express nice contrast of light and dark. Then I drew ships and harbor on transparent paper. When I put the transparent paper same as the original painting, it looks like they have been through the all the strom and it really gives a tension. When I reverse the transparent paper, it doesn't give much tension any more and everything looks just normal. It was quite interesting to see the difference depend on the direction of the light.

(Calais Pier, Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1803)