I know there is a painting in here....

...somewhere.



The setting- a farmer's market.
The story so far - tried to mass in using color. Wiped it off. Tried to draw it carefully and paint each section. Wiped it off.

The trouble is values. My head knows the logic, but my hand can't seem to make it happen. There are many colors and lots of different market "brick-a-brack" but I am not holding the correct values in full color.

So I reduced it to basically three values and am gratified to see that I am right, there is a painting in this scene! But to make it happen in color - there is the rub.

Stay tuned.

note: tomorrow we share our Moses-Botkin Monthly Challenge paintings!

In Search of Light

I read an interesting tidbit in an old magazine Color, a special publication put out by American Artist. One article had some exercises in working with relative values.
So I tested the colors I've been using to try to capture the effects of bright sunlight to see how they'd convert to a grayscale. I painted a few squares using hansa yellow, cad yellow light (hue), and white with yellow ochre. And cad red light hue just to show how dark it is in value, no matter how bright the color appears. When those are changed to grays in Photoshop, you can see how they compare to the lightest value of white (the background). The yellow ochre with white actually gives me the lightest value. Anyway ... I thought this was interesting to see that even if a color is very bright, its value maybe is not so light.

Value Study

I don't know if this is worth sharing, but I found the exercise helpful. I think Kim English is a master of light... his paintings just glow and I've been trying to figure out how he does it. So I copied one of his painting images from a gallery website, and turned it to grayscale in Photoshop. I wanted to see how his values break down. He seems to have the full range of values from 10 - (black) to a 1 - pure white.



An important part of a successful painting is of course, having a one range dominate the scene with accents of the other. And I think that connecting those value ranges is important so that your eye doesn't jump around the painting too much.
My scene has a few less values. And midtones seem to dominate as usual.



Honestly, working from photos makes me worry that I would get too dark or too much a range of values. When I work en plein air, the values are closer generally. At least I always get them close. With so much light bouncing around you don't see very dark shadows. My trouble with painting on location (landscapes) is that I seem to end up with something looking like it was all painted with 5 values... midtones. I've always had to really push myself outdoors to get a range of values. Maybe I need to push more in the studio too!

Over the Fence

I have no idea how the color will appear on these. I scanned them onto my parents computer (and have to clean the white paint off it now. Even my quick-dry white won't dry. I guess its the humidity!)
Anyway - these little sketches are of the house behind the fence at my folks'. Its newly built but in an old farmhouse style. The first one was most complete but never thought I quite got the values correct. The white house, reflecting a lot of green and blues, was deceptive. Until I really squinted, I could not get the sky and house the correct values. I then did a "thumbnail" painting of just those values with no details. I think it is closer to reality. But maybe if I'd done it in grays, I would have gotten even more accurate.
We are having such a nice time - its so nice to NOT have to do anything. This is my one break each year.