“Water reflections can change a whole painting,” Xiagong Zhu says. “They give you more space and depth. For example, if you paint a landscape, it's probably very solid. You may have the sky, the field and the background trees, and each of these elements appears to be separate. But if you add water, the scene suddenly opens up because the water reflects everything. And when you have that, the painting becomes more interesting and the colors more balanced.”
The Washington state artist routinely uses this strategy to add an extra dimension to his work, and over the years he's developed some definite ideas about how to get the most out of reflections. "I first treat everything as a color and a shape," he says. “And I paint my subject and its reflection at the same time—I don't think of them as separate shapes. For example, if I'm painting the tops of trees and their reflections, I see them as a single thing. That way when I'm mixing my tree color, I can make subtle changes for the reflection colors and get them immediately."
Capturing these subtle color differences takes careful observation but, in general, Zhu says it helps to remember that even the clearest water usually has some color in it. "Let's say you're painting a white building and its reflection,and the water in the scene has algae in it,” he says. "The algae will make the water a little greenish, so you'll have to add a greenish tint to your reflection. Also, water tends to neutralize color—the darks become less dark, and the lights become less bright. So in the case of our building, the darkest areas will be lighter in the reflection, and the lightest areas will be darker in the reflection. But you'll have to look closely: This is fairly common, but it's not true for every case."
Open It Up
Xiagong Zhu often uses water and its reflections to give his work a more open feel. In Grand Canal China (above; gouache, 16x24), for instance, see how the expanse of water creates plenty of room for subtle reflections and color shifts.
Water reflections tend to have a narrower value range than the objects being reflected. For example, in Lighthouse (at left; gouache, 10x14), Zhu made certain that the colors in the building's reflection aren't as bright-or as dark-as they are on the actual structure.
