Rose Study

Rose Study

5x7in  oil on canvas board   90.

This is a demo I did for the Artist Guild members this morning. It was based on Qiang Huang's lesson of Painting the Light. He teaches five light effects. This one is Casting Shadows.


I started out by carefully analyzing the darkest area first. I painted that area and then moved on to the next darkest area, gradually working my way up to the lightest area. I painted all areas going strictly by value.  The rose was the lightest part of the painting but its deepest shadow areas were a middle value...same value as the lightest part of the cloth.

Below you see my handy, portable, value and color checker.

Most of the time I see darker values way darker than they actually are, so I curl my fingers into a tunnel and squint through to the the tiny hole at the end. This may take getting used to but it really works because the inside is completely dark and you can gauge your values using the interior as your darkest value. When I did this with the rose study I could see right away that my dark areas were not as dark as I thought they were because the inside of the tunnel was much darker.

I hope this is not too confusing, but learning to compare my values has helped my work so much.

This is also a wonderful way to isolate colors in the distance when painting a landscape plein air. I do have a proper card for isolating, but it isn't always with me when I need it.