Some days the paintings work, and some days they don’t. Yesterday’s was a real stinker, and I’m trying to figure out why. (Maybe I’ll post a picture of it later.) The scene was a group of backlit trees and a tombstone painted late in the afternoon. The foreground was in complete shadow.

What Went Wrong, and what to do about it next time

The drawing was sloppy, but I’ll forgive myself for that. I was actually more interested in a reasonably quick value study than in fine draftsmanship yesterday. On to the other issues:

Value
I generally have more success when I establish a strong middle or dark value up front, rather than working from light to dark. The challenge comes in deciding which value to establish first. In this painting, I started with the light yellow/green around the plants, which was probably a mistake. Then I made the greens in the left side of the paintings too dark. I didn’t establish my darkest values until the end of the painting. So, what what lessons did I learn?

  • Establish a large area of a middle or dark value early on in the process, preferably in an area that I can go back and glaze later. Clear skies are ideal because they are easy to correct later.
  • I should have established the darks, the tombstone and the tree trunks, sooner. If I had already established the value of the tree trunks, then I would have known immediately that the background leaves were too dark.
Composition
Composition problems usually turn out to be value problems in disguise. The paintings tend to work better when I play back and forth between what I observe and what I think the abstract design should be. In yesterday’s painting, I was much too concerned with trying to capture exactly what I saw.
Color
Although I usually don’t squawk too much about color, color was a problem yesterday. (Or was it actually a value problem?) The tombstone and foreground were muddy, even though it was a single wash. Perhaps I should try to darken the tombstone? I’m not sure whether the failure was a value problem or a color problem.