Changing Weather Iridescent painting of cows lying down on Dartmoor

Here's the finished painting (as posted last time) viewed under normal lighting conditions. Notice that the sun seems to be shining on the distant hills on the left.

In the next picture (below) the the painting is viewed from a different angle and the distant hills are now duller as if the weather has changed to cloudy conditions. This effect is a direct result of the interference acrylics that were used on the hills.

 The photo below shows the painting under dimmer lighting conditions. Even though the sky and background hills were over-painted with interference blue these particular lighting conditions result in the complementary interference color showing up, in this case (interference blue painted over these particular colors) the result is a coppery / reddish brown. This gives the effect of "sunshine and showers" over the distant hills i.e. it is as if the sun is shining as the rain streams down over the hills (weather conditions commonly seen on Dartmoor the setting of the painting).

 

In the fourth photo shown below, the painting is shown again, but this time in even lower lighting conditions. The sky and distant hills have now taken on a misty, luminous appearance while some of the interference blue is starting to glow thereby illuminating the foreground cow.

 

The picture below shows the effects obtained by viewing the painting in very low lighting conditions. Now the hills are nearly consumed by the luminous blue while parts of the foreground heather are also illuminated giving an eery night-time feel to the image.

Finally here's the painting once again shown under normal lighting conditions. The combination of 3 types of acrylic i.e. conventional under-painting that is then over-painted with alternating layers of interactive and interference acrylics allows subtle, changeable iridescent effects to be produced. These can either be well controlled and quite deliberate (e.g. the sky and distant hills) or more random and left to chance (e.g. the changing color of the cow and heather in the foreground). I plan on experimenting further with this technique in future work.