Values!

As a self taught artist it took me years to know what I didn’t know! One of the things I wish I had figured out sooner was how values work. Most of us paint in colour. And though colour has its own value (a place where it sits on a scale of light to dark) it is surprisingly hard to see. Maybe because we perceive about a million different colours! Colour dazzles and distracts us. BUT an incredibly useful skill is to recognize the value of colour and make it work for you in your paintings. That’s why, in my recent PLAY DATES free workshop, I asked students to start with three primaries (of their choosing) plus black and white, and to mix a variety of mixes. They painted papers, cut out shapes (thinking about their visual language) and then constructed collages. I love this exercise, it’s almost a tactile way of absorbing both the importance of value in the structure of painting and the role of neutrals and colour interaction.

Three little collages showing different colour interactions. Neutrals were carefully chosen for their colour temperature: for example purple darks for the yellow piece on the left. My visual language here is drawn from the French countryside (where I teach art most years): steeples, crosses, and arches.

This was such a fun and helpful exercise, I set this as our first “mission” for students who have just started my 5 week SERIOUS FUN acrylic, mixed media workshop. My visual language here was drawn from my garden, leaves and seeds.