Here is a snippet of the painting.
As you see, the shadow is very dark--too dark!
Can you see my frustration in the brushwork?
Can you see my frustration in the brushwork?
Work on
California Dreaming continues, though the painting has taken a turn on me (like
I had nothing to do with it). I'm not sure where the piece will go next. It’s
that darn shadow. I'm struggling to nail down the right colors and values and I
haven't found the magic combination.
All these
years of mixing paint you'd think I would have figured it out by now. Yet more
often than not, finding the right color and value is akin to herding cats. What
makes it so difficult? Color is affected by surrounding color. You can mix up a
shade of “shadowish” on your palette that looks perfect, but once you put brush
to canvas it’s suddenly too dark, too light, too green, too gray, or some other
color catastrophe.
Coincidentally
I watched my student Morgan struggle with the same thing this week. Studiously
she mixed and mixed—serious brow furrow in place—adding a dab of blue, a
dribble of medium, a little more cadmium red, a touch of white. Her shoulders
relaxed as she achieved the perfect color. She smiled and moved the brush to
the canvas to place the perfect glob of paint.
“OH!”
Big sigh.
"That's not what I wanted!"
Mix, mix,
smear, scrape, mix, wipe, rinse, swirl.
“There!
That’s much lighter.” Confidently she dabbed the canvas with the amended color.
“OH!”
“That looks
almost the same as the last color!”
After about
the fourth “OH!” we started to laugh about it. Finally, she found what she was
looking for.
At one
point I told her, "Mix it beyond what you think you is right. Make it lighter,
darker, cooler, or warmer."
Hmmm. Maybe
I should follow my own advice.
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