Daily Painting

The next assignment in the class was to create two value studies - one high-key and one low-key. It is one thing to know the difference (theoretical knowledge - I have a lot of that!) and another to be able to practice it. My photo, below, was low-key, so the value study was easy to do. Just copy the values - and exaggerate them a little to heighten the drama. Once I was done with the low-key value study in Payne's Gray, making it into a high-key was not so easy! It seems obvious now, but after reading Page 90 of "Powerful Watercolor Landscapes" by Catherine Gill, which I own, I understood that because the largest shapes take up the largest area, changing the values of those shapes alters the key of the scene.  I did a high-key study (not posted here) but it seemed like a washed-out version of the low-key. Although I didn't deliberately do it, I took each field and made its value a little lighter and there was my high-key study! It looked washed out, and worse, had no...

When I meditate, and as I go through this journey of spirituality and watercolor which inevitably leads to self-discovery, I am finding more and more that following these principles in this order is essential in everything.  A A E P Awareness - Acceptance - Equanimity - Perfection I am still striving for the next level - to be a better person, a better artist - but the awareness of where I am right now is key. Right now, in this moment, I am aware of where I am. I accept where I am (which does not undermine the striving and the Big Plan for the future). I need to be equanimous with what I have discovered about where I am - not disappointed/dejected nor ecstatic/complacent - it is only in this moment that it is where I am. And finally, this moment is perfect . It is where I am meant to be in this moment. As they say, the present moment is inevitable. I catch myself thinking I love doing value studies - when will I ever get to the next thing? It is important to enjoy those value ...

We are so obsessed by the upward progress we make as artists, or want to make, that sometimes it is easy to forget that it is ok to go back and focus on basics. The more one knows, the more intelligent one feels, and the harder it might be to admit we don't know something basic from earlier in the journey. In all my learning about composition and good shapes, and the 4 edges of the painting, I forgot that one skill I haven't yet mastered is sticking to the value plan, and choosing colors to match the grayscale study. I can get ahead of myself with some very important aspects, and feel like I am understanding them and able to practice them. But if an earlier concept isn't mastered, what good will excelling at a later concept do? To that end, since I love doing value studies, I did this study en plein air last Sunday sitting on my front porch looking out into the front garden. I love the cluster of the four chairs encircled by a semi-circular hedge under the trees. The play o...