A Lesson on Values and Tones...
As many folks now know, I have just retired from a 35 year career with DuPont Chemicals. During this same time I have also been a Professional artist, as well as a Commercial fisherman. Now that I "have a life" and can take my time with whatever I am working on, painting, or thinking about...things are making much more sense to me. No longer do I hurry along to get jobs done, or worry about how long it will take me to get them done. The same holds true with my painting skills. Always trying new techniques or ideas has kept my artwork fresh and evolving into new creations. Terms like value, composition, color, hue and perspective have their own place in the creation of an artwork..all of which are critical in the entire work. While teaching these facts to students for several years now, and seeing their resulting works has been very rewarding for me...I wanted to "teach" myself as to seeing objects in a different way. My freedom to walk down a road, drive places that I have never had a chance to, and having the time to really "see" and study objects has given me an entirely different approach to my work. Summertime here in Tennessee has everything growing and...GREEN. There is green...everywhere. But even the color green...has different tones. So I began to really pay attention to the tones of color. Of course value is supposed to be the primary concern, but I decided to place a greater emphasis on tones and to always keep my values in place. How did I do this?
Many artists use a wash of Burnt Sienna to "tone' their canvas as well as to remove any of the white showing thru when painting. Sometimes I will have 2 to 3 paintings and ideas going at the same time. Recently I completed a painting of an old abandoned farm house of which was still very wet and drying. But I was not happy with the piece. The perspective was not right, and I planned on destroying the painting. Wanting to start a new work, I did not have another canvas ready to paint on and then...it happened. I noticed the TONES and primary color of the older work...were close to the painting I was about to do. Using a palette knife, I partially scraped off and smeared the paint on the painting I was going to destroy. Now I had a canvas that was full of life already..before I ever started the new piece! Using a palette knife and getting the composition placed in a basic layout, I started the new painting. Adding tree trunks took several layers of paint because of the thickness of the wet layer underneath, but with each stroke...the primary tones of the painting prevailed yet allowed the trunk of the tree to protrude out and be seen. Controlling the thickness of paint in areas gave the look as well as the appearance of dimension to the painting. More thickness of paint for darker values, less thickness for lighter values. Under tones of color which "liven" the painting up make adding objects harder...but with much more definition and softness of edges. This yields a much more "painterly" type of painting.
With each new painting that an artist does...comes a new lesson and more knowledge.
Shown is the resulting painting..which evolved from another painting.
Title: Grinder's Switch Train Trestle
