Challenge 28 - Spring Is Coming

What could be nicer than spending some time with beautiful artworks! Some of my friends tell me that simply visiting the blog and viewing lovely paintings - each of which is imbued with a soul of its own - is such an exercise in tranquility that they find themselves returning again and again.

I want to say a big Thank You to everyone who shared their lovely paintings and also those who took the time to provide comments and feedback.

We see so many paintings which captivated us with the 'illusion of light' - one of the focus areas in the last composition. Congratulations to everyone who participated in the challenge!

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About the composition

The last week's +18 degrees celsius (64 F) almost convinced me that winter is finally over and we shall savor nature in full bloom very soon. I am not sure how tonight's -11 degrees celsius (12 F) would defend these apparently overly optimistic expectations. However, in my mind at least, winter is officially over and a few visits to the indoor botanical gardens in Toronto last week reminded me of the gentle, enjoyable breeze of the coming spring.

In one of the indoor gardens I found this gorgeous, colorful inspiration for our next PADT challenge. It does make my day when I find something I hope all of us at PADT would like and feel inspired to paint.

In each composition, it's been my goal to highlight one key aspect of painting which we can perhaps focus on and try to master.

This composition has been chosen with the intention to demonstrate an effect which is called "backlight" or "backlighting". It is a very dramatic and very powerful tool in the hands of a skilled artist. For hundreds of years this technique has been used for achieving very sophisticated, special effects in the fine art paintings.

Backlighting refers to the process of illuminating the subject from the back. In other words, the lighting source and the viewer are facing towards each other, with the subject in between. This causes the edges of the subject to glow, while the other areas remain darker.

In this composition I would encourage you to observe and paint effects caused by:

1) Backlighting - a very pronounced bright edges of the tulip petals; a glowing strong yellow green light shining through the tulip leaves; a soft glow all around the tulip.

2) Soft, gentle, undefined but very effective background leaving a lot to the viewers imagination

Please send a photo of your painting latest by Sunday May 06. The next painting reference will be posted on May 07.