Seeing Color and Values vs. Matching Them

See Through and Blue- 9x12- Available

you can always tell when its crappy weather here on the coast of NC by checking my blog. if theres a landscape or two on there its sunny. if i've painted a still life or commission, its rainy. kinda like the weather forecaster string. havent heard of that?
ok what you do is nail a string to a tree outside your window. make a sign under it that says
" if string is flapping= windy
if string is dry= sunny
if string is wet= rainy
if string or tree is gone= hurricane"

did a little tutorial for Bonnieluria whose becoming quite a regular visitor here lately. she's a wonderful artist living in the carribean. check out her work by clicking here

she thought it was helpful so i thought why not cut and paste and save all that typing. not that i'm doing much today. the string on my tree is wet and flapping. LOL

p.s. you miss alot when you dont click the word "comments" at the bottom of the post. thats where you can respond and also see what the conversation (or thread for you pre- 80's computerheads LOL) is. alot of good stuff goes on. please join in!

so here it is-

Seeing color and value vs. matching it
We all have a problem seeing the way we need to. we're trained from birth to match arent we? my idea for you to counter this natural tendency would be to do little excercises to train yourself differently.
heres one:
take a magazine and cut out any random photo and tape it to your easel. mix paint to paint on the shapes that is different than what is really there. you can do the first one monochromatically (in white and black) to get the feel for studying value relationships. remember that a white shape or no.1 value reads right as long as the shapes/values around it make it a white/or light shape.
in other words you can make that shape a 2 value as long as you drop everything else down 1 notch as well. are you confused yet??
if not let me go on. LOL
everythings relative. a shape only looks light in "comparison" to shapes that are much darker next to it.
so do one, matching exactly
then do the next one dropping the shape thats a 1 value down to a 2 and drop everything else by the same amount. this trains your eye to compare shapes to other shapes instead of trying to "match" the value and just paint it on. seeing it in relation to whats around it is better than just copying it. then do the third one in color. then on the fourth try to change the colors that are really there keeping the same value but either warming up the shape or cooling it down. but KEEP the same value. these excercises will help you "see" instead of match.

hope this helps. BTW i was a sign painter before i started my fine art gig, so i know about matching!