Showing Light

 When you want to emphasise a Light area, you have to put a contrasting Dark area next to it.   Obviously this works in reverse too.

This sketch shows how that works....

Let the paint do the work

This example sketch of a tree trunk shows how simple this technique is.  

1.  The ink outline forms the shape  

2.  I wetted the trunk with clear water

3.  Then dropped in random (and I truly mean random) colours on the right hand side of the drawing

Yellow Ochre - Burnt Sienna - *Sap Green - Burnt Umber

*the Sap Green was the only one that I purposely put to the left...don't overdo even though it is tempting!

THEN when the colours are in, I 'carefully persuaded' the paint to drift to the left, but not too much.  It's good to leave some gaps of paper showing.

Leave it to completely dry.  The magic happened all by itself...in fact the painting PAINTED ITSELF.

Go on, give it a try.

TONAL VALUES

Having trouble finding the Lights in a scene?

Example this photo for instance:

THEN  LITERALLY  SQUINT

AND THE LIGHT AREA WILL JUMP OUT AT YOU.

Happens to be 3 areas in the above photo:

1. the sky

                             2. the reflected light under the bridge

                       3. the strip of grass that runs across the scene

 

plus by Squinting

the DARKS will be very obvious too.

SO REMEMBER TO SQUINT AT A SCENE

IT WILL HELP YOU SO MUCH WITH TONAL VALUES 


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