Postcard No 24: Life by the River
I’m drawn to painting reflections and living beside the Huon River there are plenty of opportunities for that. It’s rare to have a day when at some point there aren’t some pretty amazing reflections to be seen.
Whilst perfect reflections are fascinating and beautiful I prefer almost perfect. A little ruffle of a breeze across the surface and the perfection breaks up slightly making for a much more interesting painting. Perfect reflections create to much symmetry for me whilst a few ripples can help to elongate the reflected image and upsets that symmetry.
In this little postcard the coot’s reflections are slightly broken up and help to differentiate the coots from their reflections.
The grasses are further from thewater’s surface so there is more divergence from the perfect reflection which make for more movement.
My best tip for painitng reflections is to paint what you see and not what you think you see!
There are lot’s of rules you can learn for helping to get accurate reflections and they will help you understand why the reflections are as they are. One example is : Reflections appear as if you were looking at the object with your eye level at the surface of the water so if you are standing on a river bank looking down at a boat with an orange bucket sitting inside it you will see the bottom and sides of the boat in the reflection but NOT the bucket inside the boat.
What do I think about these rules? Well I think that if you are painting from life and you observe carefully and paint what you see then you will be better served than trying to remember rules. If you are painting from photos then you can adjust any photographic misrepresentations by knowing some rules for example, what factors affect the colour of reflections and why a reflection may be longer or shorter than you expect.
If you’re interested in painting reflections my advice is get outside and start really looking at them: in puddles, wet streets, rivers, lakes and seas. Notice what you can and can’t see of an object’s reflection, see how the local colour of the water influences colour, check out how the angle of a post is reflected and how a post leaning away from you will have a shorter reflection whilst one leaning towards you will have a longer reflection, feel the breeze and see how it changes the reflections. Then let me know if you feel more confident in painting them!
Lindy Whitton Studio 
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