I recently took a workshop with a well-known regional landscape painter named David Schwindt. The workshop was held at the Starlight Ranch Artist Retreat and B & B which has wonderful accommodations and spectacular views. The colors this time of year are just delicious!
This particular workshop dealt with strategies for painting the landscape indoors, and seven kinds of color contrasts, two vital elements in successful landscape painting, especially for those of us who don’t have many opportunities to go out in the field and do a lot of painting.
David has spent much of his life studying color and his paintings “are about light and how various kinds of light – morning, evening, high noon and twilight –affect the way we perceive an object and especially our natural environment.”
One of the first exercises I chose to do was to translate a value study into color. Successful paintings always have a basic value structure underlying the color, like the “bones” or skeleton underlying the “flesh” of the color and detail. As artists, we must learn to see colors as values, light to dark, and translate those colors into the right values, or the painting won't "read" correctly. I’ve often heard it said, “Color gets the credit but value does the work.”
I painted this value study from a small (and not very good) photo I took several years ago of the Taos Gorge. The next day, I “translated” the value study into a color study. It was a good exercise. Both paintings are 5" x 7" oil on canvas board.
No comments:
Post a Comment