My Color Notebook and More Tips... (Oh! No! Not more on Value!)

The past several days have been especially difficult as we had to put my Mom in the hospital on Saturday.  She apparently has cancer that has spread to several places in her body.  We will know more on Wednesday but until then I am struggling to maintain some control... Mom has lived with us for the past 16 years so it will be especially difficult to let her go.  I sit at the hospital desperate to separate myself from the situation so I work on art related things that can be done on the "fly" with few supplies.  Today I penciled in some quick exercises in one of my sketchbooks so that when I had a minute I could just add the color to them and my samples would be nice and tidy in an actual book instead of "floaties" that tend to disappear.  When I got home tonight I just had to hold a paint brush in my hand for a while (at least I can control that, right?) so I painted a few of the samples.

I can also round up all the "floaties" and put them in the book and everything on color will be in one place.... well, almost everything on color.  What about you?  Do you keep notes on mixing colors and samples of different formulas?  What do you keep yours in?

I hope you are starting a notebook on value... if so, here are even more tips that I found on a handout that I have.

• Place a middle value first for a better grasp of the whole range of value and to reveal light areas.  Add darks last.
• Full value range paintings lack a dominance... omit unnecessary values.
• Take a black and white picture of your painting.
• A small halo of light accents an edge where it meets a dark.  Conversely, a small gradation of darker value will relax the same edge.
• Keep middle value paintings in the #4 to #7 range... middle values hold a painting together.  We need middle values in large areas or shapes for cementing.  They are the walls that support your windows of light or upon which darks can be patterned.
• Dark value paintings should be kept in the #5 to #10 range.  They give punch, drama and like light values can be used for structural unity. 
• Light value paintings should be kept in the #1 to #5 range.  Light values give life, breath and sparkle to a composition and can be used for structural unity.
• A photo of a sunlit subject usually blackens cast shadows.  Lighten these and put more color into them.
• Alternate value contrasts along extended edges.
• It takes a value change to separate a tree from the sky.  Don't rely on a color change to separate it.  Even worse, don't rely on texture.
• Most brighter colors come to full intensity in mid-value
• Give most of your attention to the four to seven largest pieces of value in your painting.  If these few large hunks are not the most distinguished shapes you can make, your painting will fail.

Haven't had a chance to work on "Daydreaming" but maybe soon I will have an update on it.

Be Still My Art,

Kay