Work in Progress... values

Things felt good this afternoon as I had some uninterrupted painting time.  As I worked on this painting I was thinking a lot about the values I had planned.  Instead of working the entire painting like I did yesterday in just trying to get some color down, I started working more on individual areas of the painting.  It is difficult to judge the values when you don't have much color surrounding the area you are working on.  So, I pulled out an old value chart that I probably cut out of a book and punched holes in... so I had something to compare the values to.

Value chart on white paper

                           Value chart over the painting... what value would you say
                            the blue is?  It looks like a great middle area value to me...
                                only problem is it is supposed to be a dark value in that area.            

Here is the painting so far... remember it is a WIP!

Daydreamer.... in progress

I keep a poster on my wall that I made about analyzing a painting.  Of course it comes from some book that is long gone... sorry.  It reads:

All details must be eliminated so each object in the painting

is reduced to its basic shape.  Then the structural skeleton can be seen.

The examples of this are paintings by Grunewald and El Greco:

Altar Triptch by Grunewald

Kneeling Saint by El Greco

Notice how the paintings are reduced to three values in black, white and grey and then simplified by removing details and combining shapes.  I seem to be able to do that in my planning... now the trick is to carry it out in the final painting.  Sounds so easy, doesn't it???  Do you find it that easy to do?  Not me!

Be Still My Art,


Kay