The Value of Value

For this project, our goal was to learn more about value and saturation (which I will refer to as intensity.) Using some sort of tribal mask or a very strong geometric design, we set out to do two renditions.  One using a triadic color harmony (3 colors equally spaced on the colorwheel) and the second using one of those colors gradually mixed with a gray of equal value.

I used a photo editing app on my phone to verify my values were equal by desaturating a photo of both my yellow-orange and gray and comparing the two. I made sure I had plenty mixed of each so I wouldn't run out while painting my scale and mask design. 

Now, normally, I start with the lightest value and work my way to the darkest, but since my entire palette was the same value, things were a bit tricky. This is where I decided to look at the colors in terms of intensity when determining where to put what colors. The more intense colors (or true to the original yellow-orange mixture) stood out to the eye more, so I put it on focal points, like the lips, and the midrange colors seemed to recede more, so I put those around the eyes and other such places to still give the design that carved quality.  While I would have liked to blend in shadows and add depth, this class did not allow it. It is what it is. Sometimes by limiting yourself, however, you still gain a better understanding of the basics you are working with.

Modern technology is awesome, and I used a photo editing app on my phone to mirror and convert the original to grayscale to check my values.

As usual, the drawings were laid out on bristol board.

While the value wasn't truly consistent, the project still worked. The higher contrast of the top piece made for a much more appealing and dynamic painting.

Ain't No Mountain High Enough

First off, I have no idea how I even came to choose this subject. The only stipulation for this project was to use complimentary colors. Perhaps it was just me fully embracing my adventurous side and going for another completely outside of my comfort zone pieces. Either way, I really loved painting this. I must say, it feels good to try something I have never considered myself even remotely good at, and end up with something so successful. Of course, there were hiccups, and there are some flaws, but as part of my fresh and freer approach to painting, I just let it go, and accept the piece for what it is.

I started out with permanent yellow medium, straight out of the tube, the added dabs of violet to match the values of my reference photo. I wasn't trying to be exact. Remember, we are still working in shapes. No blending. 

For the scale, I went from permanent yellow medium and violet. I worked my way to a solid midpoint the same way as I did with the previous scales. For this one, however, I added white to another few swatches of the midpoint to show a nice beige tones.

As I came to the foreground, I got into using the yellow mixed into violet shades to make sure it all stood out from the mountain. Normally, the darker values cause an object to appear further back, but with atmospheric perspective, it is generally those foggy tones making up the distance. For this sun soaked mountain, the higher key colors represented the light best.

That foreground was proving itself to be a bit difficult. Perhaps I should have worked out the different values on the reference first (like with the Johnny Cash portrait) Either way, I painted over the foreground with it's lightest value (which was still pretty dark) and started again.

Taking longer to rework the foreground on this piece, I ended up bringing it home to the studio.

What made it tricky, was how dark the wet paint was. That splotch in the middle is actually the same color as what is immediately around it.

Finally making the large rocks look like rocks to my satisfaction, I used straight violet for the silhouettes of the climbers. While violet isn't the same value as black, the vibrancy of the figures makes them stand out almost as much as the mountain itself, without competing with it for attention.

Analogous Schmagalogous

Third project. Analogous Color Harmony (3 or 4 colors next to each other on the color wheel)

Sooo... this one was off to a rough start. We were told we couldn't do another portrait, and since I had already been working on a colored pencil drawing of a beautiful Maine Coon cat in an analogous color scheme, I figured I would try using the same reference for gouache. 

Bad idea.

I found out the hard way that I have trouble letting go. I struggled to look past the subtle details of the cat's face and simplify it into shapes.

I tried. I really did. I liked the colors for this subject; yellow, yellow green, green, and blue green, but breaking the reference into shapes was just making it look very unappealing to me. Perhaps I just jumped from pure yellow to such a rich yellow green too quickly, and would have gotten better results to capture the pattern of the fur without making it look too splotchy. Either way, this lesson was certainly hard learned, as it happens sometimes. 

Ugh

At this point, I decided it best to move on. Rather than get upset and frustrated when a piece doesn't work out, just carry the lessons from it, and move past it. Don't dwell on or get discouraged when you realize something just isn't working. From here, I figured I might as well just leap as far from my comfort zone as I could get. I have pretty much always done portraits of some sort, so I decided to challenge myself with something completely different.

Being a fan of Star Wars, and surrounded by my girlfriend's Pop! vinyl toys and wall hangings, I couldn't help but be inspired.

It also helps that X-Wings are simply awesome. haha

Don't forget to spritz!!!

So, with my composition laid out, I set out to do a 16 piece value scale that went from solid yellow, to orange, to red.  I tried to be more subtle with my value changes this time, even though I was still using so many colors.

This time, I made sure to start from the brightest value and work my way up the scale steadily.

I kept my value scale right in front of me as I went through layers of color

Working with subtle value changes from layer to layer, I found it was also easier going from light to dark when the layer underneath is already so similar. This allowed me to change values without having to pass the brush over an area more than once, even when working with diluted paint.

Now, one might think that you need black to get the best and boldest contrast. Here, it would have just changed the whole graphic pop vibe completely. This painting was fun to do, and it was good to get out of my element and really try something new.

Same as last time, trimmed final painting to an 8x8 square, then mounted it on Bristol board with my value scale. Now it is your turn. Try a subject you have never done before and run with it!

MATERIALS

Designer's gouache (any combination of analogous colors, 3 or 4 )
     Cyan Blue
     Ultramarine Blue
     Permanent Red
     Magenta
     Permanent Green (middle)
     Permanent Orange
     Permanent Yellow
     Violet
     White
     Jet Black
Straight edge ruler (at least 18" with cork backing)
Bristol board 11x14
Tracing paper 11x14
Pencil
Watercolor brushes (varying sizes)
Small spritz bottle (optional, though I find it helps the paint lay more smoothly and give you a bit more work time)
 Pallet knife
Pallet (disposable pad works great) 
Value scale

Finding Your Niche

All the way back to some of my earliest writings in high school, I had this minor obsession with finding my niche, my specific talent or skill that I would be the master of. At first, I thought I would grow up to be this awesome screenwriter, bringing the likes of When Harry Met Sally to theaters on a regular basis. I was also in the Art Club, loved drawing portraits, but believed it when I was told that there was no future for me in art, so I fell away from it for a number of years. 

It's not that I didn't believe I had skill or talent, I just saw being a working artist the same as being a working actor. The business of being a working artist just never appealed to me, and still doesn't. I just like to make art because I enjoy it, and enjoy giving it to people I care about. I have sold some of my artwork, because when the opportunity has presented itself, well, I do still have bills to pay, and it has allowed me to invest in more art supplies. There have also been times when I did make a mild effort to market myself as a working artist. I have always loved portraits,  so decided that must be my elusive niche, I just have to work harder and focus on it. 

Well, that took a lot of the joy of making art out of the art making process.  I get distracted,  and want to try something else. Even now, as a senior in college at the age of 35, I have a (let's call it eclectic) portfolio that I know doesn't really flow well. I was forced to make it a portrait portfolio,  that went through several of the different mediums I have tried. I was told my portfolio should be more consistent,  and that I should beef it up with more works with fewer mediums.  I am still learning,  because I want to learn so many things. That's the consistency of my portfolio.  I was basically being told to force myself into a niche for the sake of my portfolio,  even though my portfolio is supposed to be a representation of myself as an artist. See what I am getting at here?

Well, having learned to let go and accept that I don't have or need to specialize in any one subject or medium, I have freed myself from that feeling of lacking that I carried for so long. I prefer not to try to pigeon hole myself any longer. I am in no way saying that someone who does have a specialty is in any way holding themselves back from trying new things. I just finally understand what kind of artist I am. Having embraced this, I am now thoroughly enjoying challenging myself with each new painting to try something completely new. A few weeks ago I painted an X-Wing, and most recently tried a mountain scene (these project reflections will be posted in the coming weeks.) 

I am currently working on my BFA. My minor is psychology. It took me nearly 10 years as an adult to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I love making art, and sharing it with other people. While I was deployed in 2011 I jokingly referred to my time drawing as art therapy. Turned out Art Therapy is a real thing, and now I am roughly halfway toward my goal of becoming an Art Therapist. My niche was never a specific subject, style, or medium, but a way of making whatever kind of art I want, and use art itself as a medium to help others. 

Man in Black: A Monochromatic Study in Gouache

Color Theory. Studying monochromatic color harmony in gouache. Having chosen a portrait of middle aged Johnny Cash, I felt Ultramarine Blue best captured him. Now, for the assignment, I had to print the original image, then use tracing paper to separate the basic shapes made by the different values. Some people just opened the image in Photoshop and hit "posterize." In art school you hear a lot about focusing on the shapes, not the whole image. This certainly helps in the beginning, when a student is breaking down value, tone, shade, and color harmony; learning to recognize them and be able to break them down. Many are also advised this way when they are intimidated by the subject of the assignment, such as a portrait, initially disheartening themselves by believing already that they have no talent for faces. These same students are also often told to work on their piece upside down, so they can look past the face and see the shapes.

The biggest deal with this project is the value scale. On either end you have black and white. Somewhere in the middle lies your chosen color straight out of the tube. I like sticking with an 8x8 inch final painting, so use 16 1/2 inch strips where I steadily mixed white into the blue, then blue to white, until I reached a smooth transition from white to the solid blue. I then approached the black in exactly the same way. I also did a separate scale using just black and white.




From here, I looked for the shapes on my reference photo and assigned them a value by comparing them to my scale.










Approaching my first real painting in gouache, I was unsure where to begin. Accustomed to watercolor, one would start with the lightest value, then work toward the darkest. For oil, it is the opposite. I eventually decided to start with my blue straight from the tube, which turned out to be my median value and, coincidentally, the dominant value as well. It didn't take long to discover this wasn't the best approach, but I had already started, so I just continued on testing darker on top of lighter value and visa versa to see how well they did or didn't layer. It's funny, because I was working on my first vector portrait in my Digital Art class at the same time, and ended up running into the same problem. With the vector piece, however, it wasn't nearly as big a deal to start over and work straight from light to dark. The lighter values simply weren't opaque enough since I was working with more watered down paint. I tested the strictly light to dark approach on my next project with great success. I wasted considerably less paint to boot, since I was just adding color to my initial mix.
The highlights on this were not as clean as I had wanted, since some ended up on top of darker values and I had to layer several times for some and ended up making them larger shapes than they should have been and began to show more brush strokes and look sloppy.












I am still satisfied with the final result as a first piece. This was definitely a learning experience. Bear that in mind when trying this project for yourself. Enjoy the experience, and don't be too hard on yourself. This is merely a familiarity exercise.





After cutting out the painting itself into an 8x8 square, I lined up my value strips and trimmed them to 2" pieces and mounted them neatly on a sheet of 11x14 Bristol board.
















MATERIALS

Designer's gouache (any primary or secondary color works best )
Cyan Blue
Ultramarine Blue
Permanent Red
Magenta
Permanent Green (middle)
Permanent Orange
Permanent Yellow
Violet
White
Jet Black
Straight edge ruler (at least 18" with cork backing)
Bristol board 11x14
Tracing paper 11x14
Pencil
Watercolor brushes (varying sizes)
Small spritz bottle (optional, though I find it helps the paint lay more smoothly and give you a bit more work time)
Pallet knife
Pallet (disposable pad works great)

Value scale

A Valuable Study

Gouache seems kind of like an in between of watercolor and acrylic, neither of which I am an expert in, but I have more experience using watercolor. For this project, the journey was our main purpose. We merely had to mix the colors and see what we got.
Our initial step was to create 6 thumbnail sketches of designs. The shapes could be organic or geometric, so long as you ended up with about 50 separate shapes. I laid out 6 4x4 inch squares on a sheet of Bristol board and headed to the library for inspiration. I prefer to leaf through hefty art books to clicking around on Google any day. Of course, the design I chose to work from was actually inspired by the layout of hardwood flooring (I do work at a hardware store, after all.)

I also felt a little Yellow Brick Road vibe here. lol

Step 2 was to then finalize the design on a sheet of tracing paper that we were to use for our painting. I decided on an 8x8 inch final piece, so set up my design just a little bit larger. I have learned through working with Adobe Illustrator that this is referred to as a "bleed," not to be confused with a watercolor bleed.

I felt this final design was a bit more interesting.

I changed up the design by bringing the vanishing point to about 1/3 of the way down and 2/3 of the way to the right. The rule of thirds can apply to any composition, and my portfolio shows my obvious preference for placement in these 1/3, 2/3 sweet spots. We will get more in depth with the Rule of Thirds as we get more into composition.
For this piece, I merely used a ruler to draw lines radiating from my vanishing point, then placed alternating lines between them to create shapes. Be sure to draw lightly so you can completely cover the graphite with the paint. Yellows are very translucent, and you don't want pencil marks showing through. When using gouache, any decent watercolor brush will do. I use a variety of different brands, but mostly stick with my Windsor & Newton size 4 round. The paint I am using is Turner's acrylic gouache, available at Jerry's Artarama. If there is ever anything specific I can't find at Jerry's, I can always find it on Amazon. For this project, we are strictly mixing colors straight from the tube with other colors- no black or white. I have listed all necessary materials below.
This project is strictly for familiarity and experience. Don't worry about the design so much as pay attention to how the colors play together and lay on the paper. This was my first time using gouache as well, so the pictures show my lack of experience with it. It dries much faster than I expected, so I started spritzing my paint on the pallet regularly, though had to learn to lay the paint on thick to keep it opaque.  The nice thing about continuously adding water, however, is that it also virtually eliminates brush marks and leaves the painting nice and smooth. I was worried that gouache would be chalky and awful, but was pleasantly surprised to find it has a nice velvety feel instead. So, paint away. Have fun with this one and get acquainted with this versatile medium!

MATERIALS

Designer's gouache (other colors are optional, but not necessary)
     Cyan Blue
     Ultramarine Blue
     Permanent Red
     Magenta
     Permanent Green (middle)
     Permanent Orange
     Permanent Yellow
     Violet
Straight edge ruler (at least 18" with cork backing)
Bristol board 11x14
Tracing paper 11x14
Pencil
Watercolor brushes (varying sizes)
Small spritz bottle (optional, though I find it helps the paint lay more smoothly and give you a bit more work time)
 Pallet knife
Pallet (disposable pad works great) 

Out With the Old

Impromptu overhaul of the studio has put a pause on any actual work getting done in there for the moment.

Yeah, it was mostly for the cats. Haha.

 Plenty of painting at school, however. No matter how fundamental,  every art class can teach any artist. This semester I am taking another, more comprehensive,  color class where I am using gouache for the first time.
Now, I have this aversion to flat, chalky paint, so you can imagine my initial feelings towards it. Full time job, cat rescue, and full class schedule make it difficult to do any extracurricular experiments,  but I will try to carve out some time over the next week as I work on my class project (monochromatic portrait of Johnny Cash) to test out some ideas.
So far all I have done with, it is a couple of value scales. I will be posting detailed tutorials here soon of each of my projects. I have also started up a page on Patreon that I will often link back to my blog on as well. I am currently backtracking a bit to start my entries chronologically from the first project.  I wouldn't call these tutorials so much as just a documentation of my learning experience. These will serve as a reflection on my process and the project as a whole, and I am offering these reflections to anyone else looking to try their hand at any of these sorts of projects that I will be working on throughout my academic career and beyond.