Composing paintings is much more than arranging shapes, colors and values. It's also making decisions about how to make a painting sing. But what if the scene is just blah!
This scene for example:
Okay, I know--this is a winter scene, but here in the US it's early summer. Doesn't matter-- blah can hit us in the face even in summertime, too. Aside from
that, just because the subject itself is not appealing doesn't mean we ditch it altogether. The ugliest kitten could turn out to be the best cat ever.
One fun way we can bring make a painting sing even when the reference is lacklustre is to work the warm/cool principle like the Luminists did. (Remember Quick Tip 275?)
A good way to begin is to analyze the values, which create the light/shadow pattern. That means (1) locate the source of
light.
Once the light source is located, (2) Do a general analysis of the value range
(3) Next, find a palette of colors in the scene
REMINDER! HOW TO THINK LIKE A LUMINIST
Referring back to Quick Tip 275, we learned that the technique the Luminist painters used was juxtaposing warm and cool colors in the same value range. Aside from
a few shape place edits, that's all we need to do to perk up this scene.
- Find a reference of a blah scene.
- Take yourself through Steps 1, 2 & 3 above.
- For each color, create a value line (See Quick Tip 130)
- P A I N T!
Here's how I used that the warm/cool strategy for the reference we've used here:
Have yourself a soaring weekend!
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