Recent Inspirations - A Fun Little Study - Paintings 13 & 14

 Yesterday I had a single student in the studio and we worked on learning value, color mixing and brushwork. It was a fun little exercise. I enjoyed playing around with the brushwork on the little black and white study. As I told my friend, you can get away with almost anything when it comes to painting, as long as the VALUES ARE CORRECT.
 I use a value scale to teach my students this very important concept.  The value scale should be only five values, and we name them, starting with the MIDDLE VALUE - and to the right of that is MID-DARK, then DARK. To the left of middle is MID-LIGHT and the first one is LIGHT. You can paint your own value scale on a piece of canvas about 3 inches by 16 inches. Carry it with your painting supplies. Use it to compare each color you mix. If you mix a color, using your palette knife, hold the knife with the mix over the value scale while squinting. When the knife disappears, you have landed on the value of the color you mixed.
We design our painting with a notan, and NAME THE VALUE OF EACH SHAPE, (L,ML,M,MD or D), before mixing our palette to begin our color study.
If you want to learn more about values, paint lots of small studies, and maybe one or two before you begin any painting......

 A small sketch notan should look something like this (above). I did three of these as I was exploring my DESIGN. After this I chose the best one before I began my painting. (I like #3) In it there are 5 values - do you see them? Can you tell the difference between the mid-dark and middle value? Do you see the darkest value? Notice that the eye connects these value shapes. This is how you want to paint.

A small painting notan should look something like this. I ignored any detail here. I was deciding on how big to make the darkest value shape. This is the design process before you begin to paint. 

I know it will take patience to do these studies but it will pay off BIG. As you continue to do them you will find freedom in your paint brush!

ps, I'm leaving town for a quick trip to Sacramento for a dr's appt. so I'll be back in the studio next week. See ya then.