Sunday, April 11, 2010

Mid-value First?!?

This was actually not so intentional. But it came out in this way natually when I tried remembering how I did in the last workshop. I used to define the darkest dark and made the rest much darker than the final values. Then adjusted those lighter values gradually to be the final. On the way, I might put the lightest at early to mid stages and narrow the contrast toward mid-values. "Yakima River" was a good example of that approach. With that way, the contrast between darkest and lightest tends to stay high in the finished paintings and those mid values are leaning toward either the darkest or lightest. That's what I had from the beginning when I started painting back in 2003. I now realize that.

I covered up most of canvas quickly with mid-tones. It looks dull at this moment but I think that' all right for now. I also started departing from the reference photo and arranging the bigger shapes in the foreground to have a diagonal line from the center on the right edge of the canvas to the left-bottom corner. It shows as if there is a passage along the line. This kind of change in composition never occurred to me until now. It's another influence from the last workshop.

However, it's coming to the difficult stage how to make the foreground lively and let the ridge shining with variations of colors. Which I somehow need to overcome.

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