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Try again
Sorry to hear you had to trash that painting of your wife. It was really a stunning piece.
I have some advice that may help. I used this with a student and it seemed to help her over her color "block". It can be overwhelming to
face a value painting and not know where to go next. Also if a lot of canvas is showing then your initial strokes of light color will appear disorienting because they will read as dark against the light of the canvas.
Photograph your wife in the pose with the light on her. Open the photo in Adobe photo shop and correct it to appear as close to life as possible. Click on color picker and begin to scan over the portrait clicking on different areas of the face, hair, and background. You will begin to notice that there are only a few basic colors that make up the image. The light area of the flesh may be a grayed orange overall and the changes that occur in that grayed orange may be by warming or cooling, changing in value or intensity. That basic color and those sutble changes will turn the form. Identify a basic color for the shadow area of the flesh as well as the hair and the background. Mix the three or four basic colors that appear on your monitor. Use LOTS of paint. Plop them in the middle of the pallete with your cool colors on one side of these puddles, your warm colors on the other side, and a big worm of white on the end. At this point you can either have your wife sit for you or work from the photo. Using the "skin in light" puddle find areas that can be described perfectly by that color note and lay them down. Working from that point outward begin to read the form you are describing. For instance, you can begin to read the light area by saying to yourself, "the side of the nose is the basic gray orange color. The area next to it is the front of the nose, it is warmer and 1/2 step darker". You can then experiment by pulling some of your warm colors into the big main puddle and finding a match for what you see. If the area next to the top of the nose is cooler and lighter pull colors from the cool side as well as the white. Continue the read the figure in this manner utililizing the main puddles as the foundation for your painting. The beauty of using Adobe to initally identify the colors is that it helps take away the overwhelming "I don't know where to go with this" feeling. Your drawings and painting are very beautiful and I am sure you will find the way to creating great work in color. Michelle gave some great advice about still lives and doing a lot of little paintings of whatever is around you. Hope this helps.
Vianna
(spell check is not working for me so forgive the many spelling errors)
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Linear Mode
