This is my favorite painting of the day, and it was the last one I did. It's an example of simplified shadow mass (using one single color and value to represent everything in shadow), about 5" X 4". I think this principle is particularly enhanced by the practice of "surface quality" where the dark values are painted thinly, and the light values have heaps of texture.
The first day was devoted to still life, and we started with value plans and converting them to color. Peggi talked about the 2/3 -1/3 guideline: making a painting more visually satisfying by dividing any particular aspect into 2/3-1/3 instead of evenly divided in a painting. Value, warm/cool color, it works for most elements of painting. The first two studies below are, respectively, 2/3 dark 1/3 light, and 1/3 dark 2/3 light. Both are roughly 2/3 cool color and 1/3 warm.
In making a value plan, we use 2-4 values, trying to not exceed 4. Nonetheless, when we convert this value plan to color, there may need to be allowances made for the sake of "making a painting." The value study below looked very promising, but converted to color, it presented a lot of problems. I tried nine different color solutions and it still isn't working as well as I hoped.
Possibly the best result for this composition was found in the next exercise, Limited Strokes. I think the painting below is a better solution, in 17 strokes. Possibly because the warm/cool ratio works better, I'm not sure:
And my other limited strokes painting was an apricot in a blue dish, 16 strokes:
These are all exercises that can be found on Peggi's DVD series: Value to Color, Limited Strokes, and Simplified Shadow Mass. The painting at the top of this post is an example of the latter, and I'm very happy with how it works there. The one which preceded it is below. It's a primrose with a small figure sculpture that Peggi did, pictured here from a slightly different viewpoint:
And the painting, using a different shadowmass color than the one above:
Tomorrow: Day two, the figure.
