Composers of music understand that a musical work begins in a key, but they also know that the same piece can be played in a key other than the one it in which it was originally written. Painters can do a similar maneuver by painting a scene in colors different from the colors they are seeing. It's a wonderful exercise for honing the eye to see both colors and
values.
Back in the day before color photography (yes, I was there!), photos were printed in value tones. We called it "black and white."
But nobody argued with whether they could recognize the images. That's because it's the values of images that define them, not their color.
We painters, then, can transpose a scene from one color set to another by keeping the values the same as we see them. So a summer scene
can become a fall scene like the one I did here. (I did rearrange the composition to make it stronger, but the subject is the same, just a different set of colors.
This exercise is excellent for teaching yourself to see the values of colors. Not only are you forced to recognize the values of your
original scene, also you must recognize those same values in another set of colors.
Using the reference below, do a small study in which you transpose the colors, but retain the values. You may keep one of the colors if
you like, or you can go wild and transpose the entire lot.
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