#2166 "Robinson Lake Nocturne"

My friend Mark Patton was keen. Very keen. Mark wanted to do a nocturne. "I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day." –Vincent Van Gogh Maybe my nocturne painting should have been called the "Unstarry Night". I mixed the correct tone and the approximate colour and applied that paint with one stroke. No mucking around. No fuss.

Artists have been making night paintings since the early 17th century. James Abbott McNeill Whistler first coined the word "nocturne" for his moonlight paintings. In a letter to his patron, musician Frederick Leyland, Whistler wrote: "I say I can't thank you too much for the name 'nocturne' as a title for my moonlights! You have no idea what an irritation it proves to the critics and consequent pleasure to me — besides it is really so charming and does so poetically say all that I want to say and no more than I wish!" (from James McNeill Whistler: Beyond the Myth by Ronald Anderson and Anne Koval)

Painting by moonlight can be a challenging exercise in value and color discernment. You will need a light source so you can see the palette and canvas. The light cannot be so bright that it interferes with your night vision. From my limited exposure to painting in the dark, I do not see much colour at all. I see a lot of dark tones and ghostly purple shades but not much else. Perhaps I need to imagine the rest. A simple and limited palette works best. Priming your canvas with a warm underpainting will give more contrast and richness to the colors. Work a little lighter than what you see or the painting will likely appear too dark and dull in daylight.

Perhaps nocturnes need a full moon that might illuminate some of the colours. The trick might be to carefully study the colours and then include them on the canvas the best that you can. I had this unstarry night pretty much completed in twilight. In another ten minutes everything was black and you could not even see your brush let alone the canvas. I invented the window light from the cabin. In fact they arrived the following day so I was really only forecasting their arrival.

In any case Mark and I had fun. Tom Thomson did his share of nocturnes and it was a fitting way to end the day of the year on which he was born.

This was the 141st anniversary of the birth of Tom Thomson on August 5th, 1877. What better way to spend the day but to paint Canada en plein air...

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