Peter Keegan is a professional artist and tutor based in Buckinghamshire. Trained at Cardiff School of Art, Peter is an ambassador for Michael Harding Oil Paints, has exhibited with the ROI, NEAC, RBA and RBSA and is the presenter and founder of the art podcast Ask an Artist. For more information on Peter's in-person and online painting classes and workshops, please visit www.peterkeegan.com
Light, with no overstatement, is everything. We need light to paint by, light to illuminate our subject matter and, if the artistic muses are in our favour, divine light may strike us with artistic inspiration when we most need it, often without warning! As the Victorian art critic John Ruskin rightly pointed out, 'Light is not so much something that it reveals, as it is itself the revelation.'.
For us painters, understanding both the quality and direction of light can greatly assist us when we're making crucial decisions during the painting process. Light can be presented to us in a myriad ways, each with its own unique appearances and feeling. Here are some of the most common types of light you might encounter.
coming from one single place or direction, such as the sun illuminating a tree, or the lamplight
