Working with a chisel tipped pencil
The Winslow Art Center weekly Art Chat offered most Thursdays has had several artists talking about the importance of doing a value study—and the cliche—color gets the credit but value does the work.
The artist showed several of his value studies of several landscapes–I don’t remember a still life–that might be easier. He used severral shades of gray markers and a fine Sharpie to do his initial setup before diving into paint.
I thought—I need to do that.
I bought the markers—and stared at tehm for a long time.
Last year in late January we took a long awaitied trip to Big Bend.
I gave those markers a try—not so easy.
I have also been watching Ian Roberts every Tuesday demostrate painting. He does a value study –or even several to try out his compostioin and values before starting to paint.
Of course, he makes it looks incredbily easy.
Our first lesson was how to sharpen our pencils to form a chisel point.
I’m not so good at that either.
In years past, I filled a sketchbook for each art class I took for my masters degree—but we were supposed to use a ball point pen—I got very used to that pen—hard to switch back to a pencil. But I gave it a try.
Here is one of our class homework assignments.
It has been difficult to get good lighting—we have had dreary rain for days–and now brilliant sun with huge shadows—
I am determined to figure out this value stuff—I think we will be figuring out how to do a value sutdy from a photograph—easier than from real life–=light is constant and I could cheat by dropping the values to 3 or 4 in photoshop.
Nope, not cheating—it is a tool to get me to where I want to be.
Sylvia Weir Art 