They can help you fix a
bad painting or avoid painting one in the first place. They can be inventive,
abstract, stress-free and fun.
Value study of my pieris japonica. |
Private lessons don’t allow time for the student to practice
what I’ve taught. Nobody can remember more than a few things at once without
applying their new skills. Having an instructor hovering while you’re practicing
can be overwhelming. But Roger is a good mid-level painter and this seemed like
an opportunity to work one-on-one on value studies with him.
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What I'd intended us to do was straight up value studies of an intentionally-boring scene, but we strayed. |
I set up a monochromatic still life that I would never really
paint: a wooden basket on a wooden tray, with wooden tools and blocks scattered
around it. Any interest came from the pattern of shadows and light. We sat down
with some umber paint and a handful of small cards and did a few studies of
the scene.
Roger asked me what had gone wrong with a plein air painting he’d started in
April. That was another day of changeable weather. The eastern sky had glowed pale
yellow across Rockport harbor just before it dumped icy rain on us. The odd
colors stuck with him.
My interpretation of the painting more or less as Roger painted it. |
When a painting is failing, I ask myself some basic
questions: Is my composition good? Are my paints fresh? Am I physically
uncomfortable? Are my brushes hardened into sticks? Has the subject changed
beyond recognition?
I thought Roger had abandoned his initial value drawing,
weakening his composition. When that happens, we need to go back and restate
the darks. In fact, this is a necessary step in almost every oil painting, but
it’s particularly important when you can’t remember what attracted you to the
scene in the first place. It helps to have your thumbnail study on hand.
How I thought he could improve the scene. |
We didn’t, so I painted a quick copy of what he had on his
canvas, and then a suggestion of how I might fix it. I’ve never done a value
study after the fact, but it proved helpful. I need to remember that when I’m flailing
around at a plein air event.
Meanwhile, the fickle sky had turned a deep cornflower blue.
There was nary a hint of the promised rain. There are too many ticks right now
to stand in tall grass and paint, so we moved our operation to my patio, and did
studies of the light playing on the roof of my shed. That pointed out one of
the great values of preliminary studies: they save you from wasting a lot of
time on bad ideas. Bleech.
My shed. Boring. |
My pieris japonica,
on the other hand, is a leggy, ailing shrub that nonetheless looks good against
the woods. Our studies of that turned out much better.
Lastly, I showed Roger my favorite game with value studies:
making abstractions and then applying real objects to them. This is akin to
finding faces in the steam on your shower walls. I create a loose monochrome abstraction
that I like, and then mate reality to it. I’ve demonstrated the process here,
with the final result here.
An abstraction that could become a figurative painting. |
His assignment—and yours too, if you accept it—is to create
a monochromatic abstraction and then use it as the basis for a representational
painting.
1 comment:
Carol, another insightful post. Thank you.
Cheers
Poppy
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