Mugshot 56 Zombie.

I just felt like a Zombie.

Mugshot 55

In this one I used a purple/yellow palette as opposed to yesterday's red/green.  By this I mean, I mixed a large amount of winsor red and ultramarine blue to make a dark purple, then combined it with yellow ochre to give me a good gray. I worked from this base, combining other colors as needed, particularly viridian to give me some cooler grays and some violet blues where ever I could arrange that.  This is the second go at this possible family member who happily eschews the computer, and therefore won't be upset.  She has  always had the most fabulous skin, luminous in fact, so it is a challenge to paint it.  I tried again to have the background be made from the color of the turning edge of the shadow, but it has photographed bluer that it really is.  I was going for atmospheric grey/blue/purple, the color of air.  Sort of.

Mugshot 54

I am in another short Jennifer Balkan class and we are working mighty hard on those values again. This time I blocked in all the dark areas, then the light area, then I painted everything into those.
Also, I gave some thought to background rather than whacking it in (aaaugh!) and used the color of the turning edge, or the mid tone that lies between shadow and light.  In this case it was viridian. That is a reflected light in the nostril...lots of glare on this.

Value Study 12

4 values and the dark light ratio: 2/3 dark and 1/3 light. So interesting that you can get a metallic feel (the prongs on the plug) with just four values and no color, I wouldn't have thought it.  Clearly, it's getting the values in the correct place. Those sneaky tricky values.

Value Study 11

A cautionary tale, this little one.  THEY say, you should have a ratio of 1/3 : 2/3, light to dark or however you want to divide it, but not equal parts of everything, and why is this? because for one thing, it is much easier to read, or to quickly grasp the forms and their relationships to each other.  In this, I have 1/3 black, 1/3 dark, 1/3 light and a few highlights (white).  When you look at it,  you have to stick with it for a white to figure out what is happening.  I am usually one for chafing under the rules, but in this case it is easy to see why the light to dark ratio is useful.  Also, it is another element that needs thinking about before you start painting, even before you set up the still life.

Value Study 10

I gave some thought to  the traveling rhythm of an elongated horizontal composition, how the forms would touch and separate - it's a whole universe! just that, the touching and not touching, the syncopation of it, and then the forming of a whole as well.  This was fun and illuminating.  I spent more time on the thinking planning part than the painting, maybe 40 minutes for the painting.  And the early morning just waking up time and the standing in line at the post office time, etc. for the planning. I also darkened my  light/medium value, so I was using the requisite 4 values, black, white, dark gray and light gray, but a darker light gray than previously.  I am becoming more aware of what would be the better workable values for the desired end.

Value Study 9

I went back to look at Liz Wiltzen's explanation of these exercises and just as I suspected, I was missing an important element, the part about finding ways to link the darks so a rhythm of forms appear.  Those are my words, the rhythm part, but I think that is what would happen...so I set up my still life more carefully and painted it more slowly, thinking about what I wanted to happen.  I might not make the 50 in 30 (days), but it's worth it to take it to the 50.