This little, and might I say simple painting was a demonstration based on getting the values of the scene set correctly before painting. I used as always a value pattern. The day promised to be extremely bad weather so we were working fast. I produced a fairly interesting combinations of boats and island and a hint of the distant activity on the left but totally ignored the foreground. This is almost always a problem, leaving the foreground really uninvolved in the painting and splitting the composition in half top to bottom will create a fairly boring piece. Parts are nice but in total not very good.
One of the good things about this post although the painting lacks in composition, it reinforces the need for a preliminary design, because I had a concept, early morning light, and I think I captured that and the brushwork for the water is fairly nice. Just because a painting isn’t everything that you want it is a step towards becoming a painter, and progress as an individual.
the great thing about water color is that you can always cut the paper to create a more balanced work-and yes I know it is cheating- however my question is in regards to the value sketch-it appears in the reproduction that the value of the boats was far darker than the value of the foliage-but the painting appears to have that reversed-is that what it is or is that just a problem with the photo? thank you again for your posts.
In the value pattern I was was reacting to the scene and made sure I made the white boats dark enough to make a point to the class, when I painted it I was trying to bring the two shapes landmass and boats closer together in value.
I love your painting and I learn a lot with your comments about what you are doing and why. In your reply to the comment by a follower, you say that you bring closer tohether intentionally the values of both the boats and the landmass. Have you perhaps so tried to move these elements out of the foreground? thankyou Steve