Day One of Kitty Wallis Workshop

You've heard the expression "Color gets the credit but value does all of the work"? It's true! You can see how value carries this painting along and gives the shapes their meaning and place, despite their color. This painting was rendered from a black and white photo using a playful limited value palette.

We are rapt whenever Kitty paints demos. She starts with a pigment dispersions to create with wet media under painting that becomes her value map. Once it's dry, she adds pastel marks to the top. Her first question when she start with the pastel is: "Now, what do I need correct?" That's where she starts with pastel.

This is my second painting today, done from my own photo reference. I made big mistakes with the under painting and then muddled my way through the rest of the painting. Sigh. Still so much to learn!

Kitty Wallis. Extraordinary artist, teacher, and human being.

The value of value

It's not pretty when values run amok! After gaining such insight into values at Kitty Wallis' workshop earlier this fall, I have been disappointed to see that I must have amnesia or something.

How is it possible that I understood something so perfectly, even down to the lightbulb over my head, only to lose that insight as soon as I left the workshop?

After confessing this to Kitty this week, she suggested that I go back to the value palette exercise and practice it daily for a week. I already posted my first attempt and here are the others I've done so far.

So far it's difficult, but I'm starting to like what I see in the results. Stay tuned!

Kitty Wallis Advanced Color Intensive Day 1

Kitty Wallis emphasizes the importance of understanding and mastering values.

"Value" means the darkness or lightness of a shape or pastel.
"Value" does not mean color intensity, saturation, purity or anything else.
"Value" has nothing to do with your preference for a color.

One exercise she has her workshop students do is to create a playful value palette using different color families in an evenly stepped progression of pastels from dark to light. Next, she has students use that palette to render a black and white photograph.

In the top photo you see my photo reference and my painting. Isn't it amazing how the color is not important when the values are right?

The bottom photo shows the renderings from all of the workshop participants. Notice that different artists sometimes chose the same reference to work from -- with different results!

Time for a good night's sleep. More workshop tomorrow!

Workshop Day Two

Today we started by creating our own value palette. The object is to have a playful group of colors that are even steps from light to dark on a value scale. This is so much easier to do with grays!

One the left you see my process. First start with five broad value fields and then test colors on top of those fields to determine if they are lighter or darker.

Are you eyes crossing yet?

On the far right you see my final value palette.