We're almost halfway through our month of daily watercolor tippettes. Do any of you have one that you'd like to share with my readers? If so, write me and I'll give you credit! Give me your tip, along with at least one image and I'll be extremely happy to share it with everyone here! Now on to today's tippette:
Think VALUE...not COLOR.
When I demonstrate for my students, I often get asked what color I'm using to paint this or that. It inevitably catches me off guard, because I don't think about the color as much as about what value I'm going to use. (Value refers to how dark or light the color is.) You use value to accomplish contrast. To make things look like they're receding into the background, use a lighter value for those things that are progressively further away.
Now, let's look at this black-and-white version of one of my paintings. Without peeking at the image below it, try to envision which colors I've used to create this painting. (For those of you that already "know" this painting, humor me!).
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| Black-and-white of "Walk with Me" by Helen K Beacham |
Could you tell that this is a sun-dappled path that leads from a somewhat shadowy, cool foreground to a sunny background? Of course you can. Yet you have no idea what colors I've used. So...what colors did I use? Green? Yellow? Brown? Where did I place them? What other colors do you envision?
Now let's scroll down and see the finished piece. Are you surprised? Why or why not?
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| "Walk with Me" by Helen K Beacham |
In a future tippette, I'll discuss how I mix my paint to accomplish values - See you right back here tomorrow! And thanks for sharing my tippettes with your friends! I've enjoyed meeting many of them!
Come with Helen K. Beacham and Kelly Medford to paint Venice this October...
click HERE for details!
I hadn't thought before about thinking in value instead of color even though I passed your test and guessed the colors and values you used. You made a good point. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteYay on passing the "test", Sonia! You're probably already thinking in values when you paint, but it's freeing attitude when we realize that's the best thing to focus on.
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