Values before Color


Sometimes in the rush to paint, an artist will skip their very own good rules. I did that yesterday.

You see, I have a new pretty little light green cup that I just wanted to study in anticipation of using this cup soon in a large scale painting. I love the shape and I love the color of this cup. I 'm happy just thinking about it. Anyway...I pulled an odd size panel (12" X 6"), set up the still life pretty quickly this time, did a fast pencil sketch and started mixing and applying paint.

(The small drawing issues that will clear up as I continue to work.) However, the larger problem is I am not getting the feeling of the light on the object the way I see it. That's a sure indication of incorrect values. It was obvious that I needed to make my shadows darker. But I was in love with the colors I painted! but I love the light! Value wins out. For the purpose of demonstration, compare my color study (as a B&W digital) against the B&W of the live set up. I am not painting from the photo hence the differences in perspective and drawing.

So why did this happen to me? Because I wanted to just start painting and I didn't want to take the time to grey tone my panel, I was painting on white . If I had tone my panel grey, I would have read the darks correctly when I applied them. So tomorrow, I will scrape the shadows out and mix them up again until I get it right.

Value is more important than color, every time. Stapleton Kearns reminded me about that last week in his very excellent blog but see how easily we can forget important lessons in the rush to paint. Colorholics Anonymous; that's what I need.

PS. Tomorrow I aslo start #3 TOP SECRET painting. Oh what fun! What folly! Today I decided that I am crazy but that I would have regretted NOT painting doing this. I REALLY don't have a choice.

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