That Was One Of My Better Ideas

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I figured that I would be distracted (which I am), but I also wanted to keep up with my painting practice. Several days ago, I thought it might be interesting to work on painting in neutral colors and to really, really focus on values and shapes.  My self-assigned game was to pick several pictures and paint from them using 4 levels of values by using the app, Notanizer. I also decided to stay with neutral colors.

Here is the result.

#159 - Hammett in Values - 8" x 8" - STD palette

This was a pretty incredible experience and this painting came together quickly. This exercise helped with a lot of things. First off, I really had to slow down to see the 4 different levels of values when I was looking at the picture. I kept switching between the view to get 3 levels of values versus 4. I could easily see the lights and the darks, but it was hard to distinguish the 2 middle levels of values. It was a bit frustrating to realize this. I think I have two issues. One is that my eyes just aren’t good at seeing values, and I hope to improve over time, plus I don’t always slow down as much as I should. 

I only needed 3 shades of paint to represent 4 values. I decided to mix one shade of paint and paint all instances of that value. This is not my normal practice. I tend to jump around a lot. I painted the second lightest value, followed by the lightest value, and finished up with the second darkest value. What this caused me to do was also to slow down and really think about each paint stroke, place them well, and also make sure that I captured all places that contained the value that I was working. I did have to do some minor touch-ups, where I missed one of the lighter values.  

This is all elementary stuff. It’s the basics, really. I just struggle to slow down and focus enough at times. Many times when I’m painting, my mind races ahead and wants to be further along in a painting than I am.  

Last, but not least, when I was done and stepped back, it was surprising at how much the fussy little details don’t matter.  The basic shape and parts of the cat read just fine without them.