By Tracey Maras

The Sun is yellow. Right? Isn’t that how we have always colored it in? From our earliest days of cracking open our first box of crayons, our color of choice for the sun was always yellow.

But now as we try to capture that intense glow of the sun in our paintings, at best yellow falls flat, at worst looks garish.

We know that we can never achieve the intense brilliance of the light imparted by the sun. But we can create the illusion of a shimmering glow if we approach the color application sequence thoughtfully.

We begin by considering the light as it influences the color of the sky surrounding it. The blue of the sky shifts warmer and actually a little more gray near the sun. The warm light of the sun mixes with the blue of the sky, and as with complementary colors, neutralizes the colors a bit. Near the sun the sky takes on a very light neutral subtle greenish hue.

For my palette for this demo, I used Unison Pastels on white Art Spectrum Colourfix pastel paper.

I began by using light blue to establish the blue sky.

I then lightly glazed light beige over the top of the blue near the sun.

Then we begin building the sun from the outside in. To avoid our sun looking like it is cut out and pasted onto the painting, avoid a hard defined edge when creating the circle. Let it be as soft as if the coronal light is emanating from the sun.

I began with a vibrant yellow/orange around the circumference of the sun, diminishing the amount of pastel applied as I approached the center.

Next, I moved to a slightly more yellow hue, beginning its application just inside of the circumference of the sun, and again, a lesser amount as I moved towards the center.  I kept the edges soft and “shimmery” to avoid creating stripes.

To impart the sense of brilliance, I used true white for the very center of the sun. As white is actually a “cool” hue, it will establish a warm/cool complementary relationship within the sun and will enhance the vibrational quality we are trying to achieve.

So, to get our shimmer going, we just need more yellows…..and a touch of white.

Read more from Tracey at www.traceymaras.com.