Part 3 Practise your drawing and painting skills as you paint a moonlit woodland scene from a sunny photograph, with Ian Pethers

Ian Pethers

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

■ How to adapt a sunny photo into a moonlit scene

■ Develop your drawing skills

Throughout the centuries artists have been fascinated by moonlight, capturing that magical silver light from our nearest celestial neighbour. It is exploited in the works of Joseph Wright, Henry Pether, John Atkinson Grimshaw and, of course, the great Turner himself.

Painting by moonlight is always going to be an awkward task and photographs often fail to pick out the essence required to form good reference material. Because of this, I took my camera to my local wood in broad daylight, using the sun as my ‘moon’ (below left). With a spoonful of imagination and a change of colour scheme, I produced a pleasing work that gave me the mood and atmosphere of a moonlit forest (page 15).