WHAT TO STUDY
• Light — find the single source. One steep, raking light decides everything: what you see, what you lose, and where you look first.
• Massed darks — squint. The shadow side of a figure and the background become one shape. He never lets you pull them apart.
• Directness — no preparatory drawings. He painted straight from the live model onto a dark ground — corrections and all.
Things to look out for in this vid:
WHERE WE TEACH THIS
Chiaroscuro — building the picture from light and shadow — is at the heart of our Oil Painting and Portraiture courses.
CARAVAGGIO (1571–1610)
One light, and the nerve to let everything else go dark. Caravaggio pulled his figures out of blackness with a single raking light and painted them straight from life — no studies, no polite transitions. Four hundred years on, his pictures still feel like something is about to happen.
TRY THIS
Set one lamp low and to one side of a simple object — an egg, a pear, a white cup. Paint only what the light touches, and let the shadow side melt into the background as one dark. If you can’t tell where the object ends and the dark begins, you’re doing it right.
VIDEOS
Four favorites on Caravaggio’s light — watch below.