Paxton vs. cads and shadow help please!

[Linda Brandon]

Joan, I'm not quite at the Paxton palette yet so I'm not sure I should respond to this, but remember that warm and cool are not only relative terms, they are comparative terms as well. If you go cooler in the lights your shadows will look warmer. Spend a day making flesh charts with your paints - experiment with your reds, yellows and a blue or green - and hang them somewhere where you can refer to them.

Stop worrying so much about the color. Concentrate instead on making that head look three dimensional - bring some parts forward, move some parts back.

[Joan Breckwoldt]

Hi Linda,

Thank you for your reply. I have lost some of the head's 3-D quality since I've painted over this so much, which is a shame. I can see that I've lost some of the shape since I've been focusing on the color. I can get that back though.

Are you saying that if the lit side is very cool, then the shadow side can be cool too? But if it's not AS cool, it will look warm? I've read so much about cool and warm on this forum, I thought that was a 'rule'. Though I can hear Marvin saying that once you learn the rules, then you can break them (Marvin, hope I got that right).

Joan

[Joan Breckwoldt]

P.S. Linda, are you saying my lights don't look cool enough? I thought they were pretty cool, but I will take your advice and make a chart with different colors. I didn't know if you were talking in general terms or specifically about the face I painted when you said I could "go cooler in the lights".

Thanks again,

Joan

[Joan Breckwoldt]

I thought I would post a charcoal drawing I did from life to illustrate that I can see the darks, it's just the dark colors that I'm having a hard time with. I had an instructor once tell me that if the world were in black and white I would be great. But, thankfully, the world isn't black and white, so I need to learn this. If I were to paint this guy, he would most likely look A LOT flatter than he does now.

I usually do my underpainting to get the values correct, but then when I start to go over it with paint, the shadows get lighter and lighter because I don't like the dark colors I come up with.

I hope this helps to illustrate my problem.

Joan

[Janel Maples]

All I can say is attend a Marvin Mattelson workshop. With the information he gives about how to use his palette, your questions about "what color is that and how do I get it?" will be answered and you will understand why and how you got it.

Words can not express how happy I am that I studied with him.

Good luck.

Janel

[Joan Breckwoldt]

Hi Janel,

Unfortunately that's easier said than done. I live in Houston and have two young children at home so it's hard for me to leave for a week! I did try to get to his July 26th workshop in NYC but the dormitory was full which meant I would have been taking the subway to and from the class to a hotel somewhere (and the school had NO recommendations at all about where to stay), the plane ticket was expensive and my dad ended up in the hospital that week so I really needed to be here. Had I been there I would have had to leave in the middle of the workshop.

I have heard so many great things about Marvin's workshop, that's why I tried to make arrangements to go. There is still hope for next summer though. It would just be easier to get away when the kids are in school during the school year, but he doesn't teach his week long workshops during the school year, he's busy teaching his regular classes.

I certainly don't mean to whine but I need to get this figured out, even if I am able to get to one of his classes in the summer of 2005 that's still a year away.

Thanks,

Joan

[Renee Price]

I have studied with Marvin and, with my partner Denise Hall, organized Marvin