New Painting

Yesterday I started on a new painting.  I did the drawing and used maskit on the areas I wanted to remain white.  That was pretty tedious work so I didn't get any painting done other than a wash of blue over the entire painting.  Today I have had more time to paint so I have made decent progress on it.

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This is one of those paintings where the details will make or break things... IMO!  I don't have a lot of patience so I have to work on the painting a bit, then get away from it for a bit... then go back and work on it some more, and so on.  Slowly, usually very slowly, it begins to pull together.    Do you ever work on paintings with lots of details?  Do you ever get lost in all the little shapes?  Value will be a big key to this painting... that is what will pull the small shapes together into big shapes.

 Color Formulas (in case you don't have them already or have forgotten about them...):

• Burnt Sienna + Ultramarine = very attractive gray which dries with subtle granular patterns. (An excellent mixture for painting skies)
• Raw Umber is ideal for dulling blues, yellows and greens.
• Paint several sequences of colors in areas that move from light to shadow:

                   Red, Carmine, Violet - warm shadow

                   Thalo Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Violet - cool shadow

• A neutral gray blue - Cobalt Blue + Burnt Sienna
• Shadows:

                  Dark Shadows- Winsor Blue + Permanent Alizarin Crimson

                  Intermediate Shadows- French Ultramarine Blue + Perm. Aliz. Crimson

                  Subtle Shadows- French Ultra. Blue + Perm. Rose

                  Vary the shadows from cooler (more blue) to warmer (more red)

                  Warmer in foreground, cooler in background

Be Still My Art,

Kay         

            

More Color Tips

These color tips come from the same source as yesterday's ... and that is "I don't know where!"  It is another handout that I have had sticking on my bulletin board for longer than I care to admit.

"High Key" - refers to values in the light range, ie. high light, middle light and low light.  No matter what colors are used the effect will be soft and pastel.  Foreground ~ values 0 to 9, Middle ground ~ values 3 to 5.5, Background ~ values 1 to 3.5


"Middle Key" - refers to values in the middle range.  Foreground- values 1 to 10, Middle ground- values 6 to 9 Background ~ values 5 to 7


"Low Key" ~ refers to dark values... makes the painting feel dark, mysterious and dreary.  Foreground- values 1-10, Middle ground - values 6-8, Background- values 7 to 9

• Mix Burnt Umber with New Gamboge to make a good value 10 "yellow".
• Mixed grays can be especially useful when you are trying to achieve a warm or cool color dominance in a painting.  If you are using a predominately warm color scheme, you should also use warm grays.  In a predominately cool color scheme, use cool grays.
• Alizarin Crimson, Phthalo Green and Burnt Sienna is a nice mixed gray.  (Don't use this to gray a color
• To intensify warm colors, try tempering them with a little Carmine or Opera Pink.

My Mom has been ill and we had to put her in the hospital today... so my painting time today was not to be.  I did find a small amount of time to paint yesterday, so here is the progress on the painting... such as it is.

Soooooooo much work to be done yet....

Be Still My Art,

Kay

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

More on Value and a WIP

My Mom (who is 90 years old) had some medical tests run last week and sitting in the lobby waiting brought back memories of when she had a stroke several years ago.  At that time I was in a critique class led by Polly Hammett.  Polly is a master at design and composition and really emphasized underlying abstract value designs.  She suggested that we take old art show catalogues and look at the value patterns of the winning entries and/or paintings that we liked.  By putting a piece of tracing paper over the photo one could see the larger value shapes in each painting.  I happened to have a sketch book that I had made by putting a sheet of drawing paper and then a sheet of tracing paper, until I had enough pages for the book.  To pass the time while at the hospital I started my Value Patterns Book...

Award winning paintings

Value Patterns of the paintings

Award winning paintings

Value Patterns of the paintings

Stephen Quiller

 I filled an entire sketchbook with the underlying abstract value patterns of winning watercolor paintings and also with the paintings of artist whose work I admire.  It was a very soothing exercise and I think I really learned a lot from doing it.  One thing I began to notice in all the value patterns was the use of large value shapes.

Value Patterns

Arne Westerman

Today I finished the drawing on my next painting and got the first glaze put on!!  Yea me!  Persistence and perseverance... one little step at a time.  Any progress is good progress... as long as it is progress in the right direction!

Work in Progress

Be Still My Art,


Kay

The Value of Value

I'm still working on the portrait and suspect I will be for several more days.  Right now it is not fun...grrr... paintings that just seem to paint themselves are so much more fun.  Don't you agree?  I have been struggling with the values in the ladies face all day.  If she were here and I could look at her I would probably have better luck seeing the values, but she isn't and I am working from a photo so I am struggling.  Not long ago I was working on a painting and I knew there was a problem... but for the longest time I couldn't put my finger on it.  Then the light came on... (that happens once in a while cause I think I have a short in my brain somewhere!!) I grabbed my camera and took a photo of the painting, put it in photoshop and turned it black and white and printed it out.  I wanted to compare it to the value study I had done earlier.  As luck will have it sometime, the problem stuck out like a sore thumb... all the values seemed to run together.  Oh that all problems would be so simple to fix...  today I came across a color value chart I made several years ago... you may have one like this...

Since it was made so long ago I couldn't remember if I ever checked the values in black and white to see how close I had gotten with the colors.  So, I checked it... like I do my paintings.

And, another light has come on... so I'm going to take a black and white of the portrait and see if I get a little better perspective on how it is really coming along.  It may be a heart thumping moment after all.

Be Still My Art,

Kay