Relearning Watercolor - Value Studies

It appears that I enjoy the beginning of things, as here I am again at the beginning. I was enjoying the application of color onto paper and allowing the color to swirl in and out of each other doing what color does. At that point, I was unaware that I knew nothing about how colors react with one another or did so instinctively, but never gave it any thought.

At times, when lucky, I can command the backgrounds of my pieces and find a feeling of calm and peace within that structure. The images were created by using different colors and very few values. When I got to the foreground, nothing- no sense of direction, no understanding of what comes next.

Well, when texts do not satisfy that need of understanding one must find a human who can demonstrate these things so that they can become knowledge. In so doing, they become skills that naturally flow easily from mind to hand to brush to paper and enable the creator to further the story telling. The solution to this situation- a beginning class in watercolor at the Peninsula Fine Arts Museum under the instruction of Bill Holber.

We began with lesson one-usually a good starting point -learning flat and graduated washes- and then with a painting of the Great Smokey Mountains in Mist. A single color painting.

So, how do I begin - I believe it all begins with one color working with itself to speak through the visual image. Single color telling the story.

The eye must know how far that color must reach to give depth and clarity to the piece. It must be thought out - knowing where to begin a painting is often only found when you have seen the entire painting. Values within that color must represent the entire story when using a single pigment or enhance each part of any pigment. Well, of course if anyone is reading this already knows this, but I did not and finding it has given my self critic a bit of joy.

First of all, the painting must be sketched to produce a value study. After procrastinating this in detail, I finally stumbled my way to the paper and went to work. It was developing - yes I can see it now. Let me count the values - could it be as many as - 9 and then perhaps a touch of yellow for some green.( I do believe in my next piece, I will do myself the favor of not having to do this step but do a gray tone scale of the jpeg in photoshop and study that.)

"Oh my," she exclaimed as she thought, "Now where do I go from here?"

I attacked the problem as any good potter would do and set out to make my "paints" the proper color and amount for each of the paintings I wanted to attempt. I added so much of this and so much additional water and there were little math problems to help recreate each value. After admiring and trying to use this new procedure, it was rapidly abandoned for what now seems so natural. Get that first value down and then work them up.

It is fun to paint.
"Oh, my!" she exclaimed again. "I can see."

These are the 3 pieces that I presented for my value study.