demo #100411

i'm selling the below study aid for $30. it will be helpful to students to see it in person, along with reading this blog post.

SOLD

to paint light convincingly you have to keep all shadows darker than anything in the light. if your paintings just arent working 9 times out of 10 its a value problem. either the light/dark design is weak or you have light family shapes creeping into the dark family shapes and visa versa. here i've mixed blue and a touch of orange to white to get five piles/values.
i take the medium gray pile and draw out the design and "mass in" the shadow family shapes.
then i use the other two values to differentiate the differences in values of the shadows. then i do the same for the light family.
here's the original plein air study as reference. i didnt like the roof or chimney on the brick house and the roof and shadow on the white house. the values on everything else were working i thought.

Now go back to the very top picture with three paintings across the top:

the first one on the top left i did with only two values of shadow family, and two values for the light family. the second was done with three values for each, with both familys sharing medium gray. the last one is translating all this into color and you can see that the reason i didnt like those shapes (roof, chimneys etc.) was because they were the wrong value.here's what had to be done according to the little value studies:

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  the shadow on the side of the white house needed to be lightened as did the mid tone side of the white house.
  



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  the roof of the white house had to be darkened

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  the chimney of the brick house and the roof had to be darkened

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  i also lightened the sky just a hair

i can now go back and correct these flaws on the original after working out the defects with these little 4x6 value studies.

so dont paint out those paintings that arent working if you like the composition, drawing and colors. work out the problems with little value paint sketches and correct the flaws on the big one. not only will you bring back a painting from the brink of death but you'll also learn an in"value"able lesson as a bonus.