Sunlight Twinkles in the Forest

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When winter days are dark and damp I try to get in touch with vibrant nature through art. This is one of those “sunny” projects.

I’ve been learning how to do the Bokeh affect which softens light and adds depth to paintings. Bokeh is a Japanese inspired method which means to haze, blur or keep out of focus. Here is my reference photo which has a defused sunlight background and an illuminated Maple leaf.

reference photograph
I taped down a 5×7 piece of Arches 140lb watercolour paper on an angle because its comfortable for me to paint that way.
After drawing the leaf shape, I painted plain water on the background then brushed in a variety of blues and dark greens to mimic the reference photo. When the background was still wet I removed some paint with a dry brush where the stem will be.
The first layer on the leaf was a light yellow green. I was careful not to go right to the edge because I wanted the leaf to keep it’s “backlit” look as it had in the reference photo.
The background and the leaf layers of green paint have been dried with a hair dryer. I am ready to do some Bokeh affect on the background. My supplies are a circles template, a round stencil brush and a piece of paper towel.
With clean water on the stencil brush, I used a circular motion inside a template circle to remove paint. I dabbed the wet circle of paint with a paper towel to pick up the moisture. I repeated this Bokeh technique on several areas of the painting using a variety of template circle sizes.
A close-up picture of my Bokeh soft light circles. I was very happy with this process. What I didn’t like was the white paper showing around the leaf. It looked unfinished and unnatural instead of backlit as I was trying for. Next time, I will keep that gap between the leaf and the dark background much finer.
To correct and soften the white edging, I used a small brush and plain water to bleed some of the leaf colour into the white.
The orange coloured wood frame is complementary to the green of this fun forest piece.
reference photograph (pixabay)

2 thoughts on “Sunlight Twinkles in the Forest”

    • Hey Pam! Thanks for your comment. I see that you’ve been doing a lot of photography lately. Did you ever start up a Farmstand in Lillooet?

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