How to Clarify a Composition Using Values

so this painting bad angle bad lighting I apologize but it's late at night and this is best I can do anyway this painting is one where I started playing it's all mishmash at the moment and one of the things were in this week of values where we start in black and white and this is obviously more than black and white but it's a lot of black and white in it one of the things that I'm getting out of it watching it the second time around is that it's all about defining the loud conversation at first and then you can go in and make quiet conversation so it's all about defining where you want people to look and what the point of the painting is and clarifying that with lights and darks and so that's what I'm going to try and do on this one now because it's a big mess and mean I may not work so at the moment I'm not concerned with color having worked out that this is what I'm trying to do just clarify lights and darks I'm gonna make a mishmash of all my colors blue black whatever and go in and really put in where I want darks really strong and kind of bring that to the forefront so then I can go in and make it more soft or later doesn't have to be subtle there just has to be has to be kind of like a sledgehammer and beginning and I think there's a lot of mid values here which need to be the light and dark like what are they supposed to be decide and then refine the design so that it's clearer where you want people to look for example I have it kind of not even you should never have half and half horizon and sky and even though I didn't wanted to this is still turning into a landscape of the horizon so given that's the case I need to really kind of emphasize and light it up to make it not a painting of half and half and I'm not worrying about the way I'm applying paint at this point it's a mess worried about is clarifying the loud the loud and quiet conversation so that I can then go in and make each the loud conversation this dark against light then within that within the darks I can make a quiet dark conversation with in the lights I can make quiet light conversation but the strongest conversation of all needs to be clarified and strengthened by making clearer where it's light and dark and this is where Nick referred to I think when he was teaching the course he referred to the fact that once you've clarified this then then you can tell what's working and what isn't much more clearly clearly than if you've got a ton of values so here for example this blue is a very mid value so I'm taking that down doing it more like a glaze so that what I had wasn't lost in a few other places [Music] appearing like quite a big mess defining the shapes and the lights and darks and I think what I want is I want the dark go in here and kind of along there but I want light here where I've got it fairly mid value to start off I'm whitening back to emphasize the difference between this brownie section here which I need to put some dark in too because it's not dark enough so you saw it it's it starts to get clearer what I'm trying to do and these don't have to I'm putting some black on now and I don't actually want pure black I don't think any point all that's certainly not the plan but I'm putting it in because I can define it and I was what you Nick do one of his shapes videos about values and it's so different to the way I paint and obviously the way I paint is so different to the way you paint but I'm hoping that just by showing you a different another different way if anybody is a bit stuck on this section this might help to see oh yeah it's not just about squares and ribbon shapes and triangles on a surface which isn't my tres it might not be yours it could be about shapes on my face it can be about shapes in a landscape the point is everything shapes everything in life is made of shapes and now I'm telling you what I want you to look at and I have to decide what that is at the moment I want you to look at this sweeping land because my interest is always in the size and scope and space of the landscape so I want you to look at this so I'm making that very strong and clear down here and through here we can we can refine the color at any point we're just trying to decide what the designs gonna look like so I'm trying to show vast space whether I'm succeeding is anybody's guess but the that's what's guiding the decision I'm making so when Nick's making his decisions about his shapes it's all very it's very different you know he's got a different set of things in mind but the principles that was talking about know exactly what I'm flying when I'm doing this exactly the same same idea and and this is just an example I'm doing this to just demonstrates not gonna stay in the painting but he is an example of a quiet loud conversation as well so this is within the quiet conversation I've come in with what was supposed to be a subtle shift but it's not that subtle it's quite loud so that means turning there and if I want it to be part of a quiet conversation but now I'm just and coming in here and I'm putting these shifts in that I don't know how to explain it but I know what I'm trying to do and why so what I'm trying to do is clarify dark and light dark and light we can go into subtleties later like a way of making subtlety maybe we can start making those subtleties once we've established the design for example I think this needs something it's got very strong marks here it's got very strong marks here if I did another giant strong mark though it would be too much but I think it needs strong there and then down here so but that stands out because I want me to see that if I want you to see that I need to make sure that other stuff is not getting in the way of it do you see so that don't matter coming up there now it stands out it stands on its own it needs to be even lighter up here but at the moment it's wet so that's hard because it's all smushed into each other into its sub but now it's starting to take shape as having something and by the way you'll see that I I just made a dog's dinner I'm here there's all sorts of the bubble wrap and stuff that doesn't need it's too much that's just there again to give me something to react to I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of tone that down just fine you know piggley's still wanted to leave some of it there to make interest but we don't need to be quite so strong and with this this is a burnt umber area up here so I can be in your face as it was that we might decide there's just too many dots so I might paint those out but I'm like one of the things I'm finding my life is you know having classical music you get a theme I think they call it a theme running through a piece so the same sound keeps reappearing in different ways and I really like that with pattern and brushstrokes on color so I like the pink that's up here to reappear down here and here and here I like the pattern to appear white here but then very muted here and pop up here and even within the white here I'll leave a little bit of that pattern showing I like that sense of a theme the pencil marks they should go all the way through pencil reappearing as a theme you can pop it in all the way through so that the whole thing is like a dense and now that I've put pencil in here and here this looks too much so I'm just gonna say all right enough pencil is enough you have to go overboard but the more you put in the more you have to react to and the more options it gives you so we're starting to define this painting now in terms of shapes and light and dark [Music] and the next thing to do for me will be to then refine that and start bringing some more sophisticated painting but I'm really pleased and you'll see how I'm echoing this gray throughout again this is the music theme I want this burnt umber to come in somewhere else down here I just want to keep these colors flowing but I'm not that keen on it being an incredibly colorful painting this particular one because I'm using the same power over and over again but I want to just to be very different from some of the blue and purple ones that you've seen before same blue almost the same black but I want this to be less Goldy Gospels and so I'm putting in different shades of the same colors and actually what I'm doing now at the moment is I'm letting the paint kind of mingle on my palette where it's getting dirty and just mix up some of the colors so there's more variety so again I say what I keep saying I am NOT saying setting myself up as some kind of expert because I'm not I'm learning as I go I think what I can do is show you what what I've learned and what I'm experiencing because I think I did grasp a lot of what Nick was talking about and I think I've been able to use it in ways that has been you know that's working for me in developing what I want from my art and if I can help anybody else to to do the same and to get someone to say I'm out of it I would like to so that's that's my my position on this is I'm not the person who's going to tell you this is the right way to do it you all know that you you're all finding wrong way I might be a person who can share some of what I'm finding in a way that might be valuable to some people and if that's the case I'm happy to keep doing it because I'm quite enjoying explore well I'm very much enjoying exploring all this now that CVP is over I'm just finding it just keeps giving keeps giving you just learn more and so here see I'm lightening more of this because I want to keep him I can keep stressing that very quiet conversation keep clarifying it the blue was nice but it was a quite a dark blue so by going in and just lightening it thing but whatever about where and then I can see does this work does that work it's clearer because I that doesn't mean that they at some point I can't come in [Music] because I want a more quiet conversation right but it just means that for now as I try to work this out I'm putting it on making it more extreme anyway I hope that helped I'm just playing there so I'm kind of shushing things around really doing let it dry and have a think about it and then see I think I like this format I like this sense of space I think what I would like to do now is bring a sense of light real light into the sky especially here because you get that here you get this amazing contrast in sky and this painting for me as much as it's about landscape is about internal landscape and the way I am is that I have these incredibly dramatic and dark patches and they have these moments of great light and that's my emotional experience of life and I'd like to bring it out in a painting I'm constantly striving to I never get there but this might be the one you never know so I've just had kind of a revelation which is I've always struggled with how to move between the spontaneous play stage and the thinking analytical stage and those are two very different mindsets and so I was thinking in terms of clarifying design and value and I realized for once I haven't lost the energy of the painting yet still time and the reason I haven't is that I've been thinking about where I want lights and darks and different size shapes but I'm applying the paint as loose as ever as loosers at the play stage and at some point some of this needs to be made detailed and tidy otherwise it just looks like I'm I'm a completely messy painter but the energy and vibrancy if the painting isn't getting lost in the thinking stage yet short because I'm keeping the brushstrokes loose so for example just like this it's not in the past this would have been me that's not the way to be that's not the way to be for me anyway what I have to be is this and that I don't like but it's not a disaster because I can easily cover that up at the next stage but what it has given me is this and this this which feel energetic and good so it's I'm realizing that for me and this was probably different for everyone but for me it's a case of thinking what the painting needs design-wise i'll value-wise but applying it in a completely free and energetic way so that I don't so that I don't lose the interest in energy of what I've been creating because for me because I think that's a big part of my paintings I think I have a very sorry for the old wounds I have a very immediate connection to my own emotions which I've realized most people don't have a lot of people don't have that I know what I'm feeling and I know why and I can articulate it and it's like a direct line to from my emotions to my thoughts to I gave it all I know why it's all happening the way is and I think that's the strength as a painter it makes me able to communicate that stuff in my work if if I'm expressive and free and not and not caught up in trying to be something or communicate something if I just let what I'm trying to communicate come out I think that's the strength I'm starting to think that's the strength of my work and if that's the case then painting freely is essential until we get to the stage where I need to refine some bits to just make this more sophisticated than it currently is so I've come in this morning and what's happened to this painting is something that often happens when I work at night which is the painting is too dark the light is too dark in other words a like this they're quite dingy and because the light in here is bad at night this often happens so I have mixed up some very light gray my palettes and I'm gonna have a go at just and also the sky is very bitty there's a lot of strokes in it everywhere and I'd like some solid areas which staying exactly as it is that's a really kind of lighten it and also that principle of difference is it still applies in you know when you're talking about a big area like this if it's all small brush strokes it's a bit samey and boring so I'm going in there and I'm just this is like a silicone is it silicon I don't know I said it's a rubbery brush thingy without bristles that are quite like for making different kinds of shapes and textures might be going too far with this see here's really dark so I'm gonna put some other light into there so it really draws attention to that and really drawing attention in here and here and again this can all be torn down so now the idea is just to lighten up that and to create differences and interesting that bit that has got a bit samey and a bit lacking in energy and this will be to say in there that this is all a light gray but that's easy to fix by going in and working on the quiet conversation once I'm happy overall maybe with glazes or just different colors different brushstrokes so yeah I think he's already got my life and my white in it and I'm quite happy with just not doing too much more than there and this is something else I'm really working on is I feel I only contribute to the painting for a few minutes after that I'm just Dibble dabble in right now I really want to start dibbley but doubloons not gonna help this painting so I'm gonna leave it for now and then come back and see what I think so that's it one last thing I'll miss painting I was getting an urge to get too finicky with it and so what I've done to stop that from ruining everything is gone in with this magenta type oil pastel thingy and just tell some squabbling totally random sorry for my finger just messing it up so that I can't be too finicky go in here so that when I come back I've got something that's alive and active to work with instead of something that stilted and boring and that's it now I shall go and leave it and come back now right now I shall leave it no it's got energy still

Channel: Louise Fletcher Art

Views: 29,260

Rating: 4.8984485 out of 5

Keywords: acrylic painting, composition, abstract painting, loosepainting, abstract landscape painting

Id: GUiEuPMtoMo

Length: 27min 33sec (1653 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 15 2018