Backwards journey

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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 of light and shadow created wonderful shapes, and I was happy with the value study. Rather than do the whole study in color which felt overwhelming, I picked my favorite part of the value study (the chair on the right with its beautiful white shapes), and just focused on translating that to color: choosing pleasing color, matching color to value, and focusing on brushwork (another basic that has to be mastered first!), and edge control - another basic that needs to come naturally.

It was quite a tough exercise. It is not as easy as it seemed, and I was only dealing with one chair!






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