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Years of painting by natural light have made me hyperaware of the sun's schedule, and that's especially true during the winter months as we approach the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. Right now I'm noticing the light in my studio begin to fade around 4 in the afternoon, and that will happen a bit earlier each day as the next few weeks go by. Whatever hours of daylight there are, it always feels like a wonderful gift to be able to work under the cool diffused light coming in from my studio windows. Much of my painting life though, was spent in less than ideal lighting conditions so here's a few tips for making the most of whatever situation you're in. There's a huge mystique about the whole north light thing but the basic concept couldn't be more simple. Outdoors you have two light sources --overcast light from the entire sky and point source illumination from the sun.  The overhead umbrella of the blue sky provides an ideal light source to work by, whereas the always shifting sunlight and moving cast shadows across your palette, canvas and arrangement can be a distraction, to say the least.  Basically, when working with natural light , the 2 main things you have to watch out for are sunlight and multiple light sources. For all of you living in the Northern Hemisphere, north facing windows will catch the least amount of direct sun but if you're in the southern hemisphere it's the opposite and it's south facing windows you want. At the equator, I'm not sure what the solution is since I've never had to deal with it or known anyone who did. At any rate, even if all you have is an east facing window and the sun has moved overhead for the day, the diffused light should be constant enough to be able to work by that window for a few hours in the afternoons. A west facing window can in the same way provide fairly consistent light in the morning. Even when the sun isn't directly coming in a window it can still bounce off of surfaces outdoors and to some degree affect the quality of the light indoors but generally speaking it will stay consistent enough to work from. If you are a still life painter working from life and the light from your window doesn't reach far enough to accommodate both the arrangement and your work area, then my suggestion would be to use an artificial light for the still life but park yourself, easel and palette beside the window. The full spectrum natural light will serve you well for color mixing and as a bonus may also improve your mood, especially if you are sensitive to lower levels of light during certain times of the year. In other words, avoiding Seasonal Affect Disorder is yet another good excuse to spend time at the easel! Before you get started on setting up an arrangement, place a highly reflective glass or metal object on the table where the still life will be. If there are multiple highlights on that object , eliminate or minimize as many as you can by using a shadow box, shades over some windows or whatever does the trick. The objective is to have one clearly dominant direction the light is coming from so you'll be able to capture a strong feeling of light and shade. Just as with painting outdoors, anticipating what the light will do and how long the best working conditions will remain constant is all part of the process, but in my opinion, well with the extra trouble if you can manage it.

Still on the topic of light, here's a fun exercise in observation skills that's easy to access during the holidays. I have a bad case of Magpie Syndrome anyway -- a fascination with shiny, sparkly things --- but with the abundance of colored lights around this time of year, I never get tired of noticing the dramatic visual phenomena of the shadows appearing to be the complement of the color of the light. A red light will have a blue-green shadow, a blue light will cast an orange shadow, etc. Regardless of whether life at the moment has too many interruptions to allow time at the easel, you can still practice your observation skills in this way. Noticing these color relationships when the chroma is so vivid can help solidify color principles in your mind and be very helpful when working with the more typical painting situations where the color of the light and its influence on the shadows is much more subtle. Studying a shadow and trying to determine the color can sometimes have me rotating around the entire color wheel, but remembering and using this guiding principle helps to keep my color decisions in context and the overall composition will end up having a more consistent feeling of light and harmony as a result.