Two Steps Forward - One Step Back

This week I had my oil painting class do quick poster studies of a silver mug and an egg. This is my demo piece. I call this The Value of Back to Basics. (I apologize for that but I love puns.)

I've had several students  quiz me about the difference between the color properties of value and temperature. Since experience is the best way to learn I designed this simple exercise to take them back to a basics lesson. Back to basics is a great way to freshen up and invigorate even the most experienced painter.

We used raw umber and ivory black to mix our darkest value, then mixed a middle value.

Using mixtures of the middle value with our homemade black we mixed two additional dark values.

Then we used the middle value with titanium white to mix two additional light values.

This resulted in a string of color puddles that gave us 7 values to work with. They should eventually work toward seeing 9 values.

This gave them experience breaking down simple forms into values without the complication of color or temperature.

It also gave them experience mixing paint into color strings, a great way to work and the method I teach.

We will be continuing with this for a few weeks in my class working on these color theory concepts, taking small steps backward and forward.  Learning to paint is that kind of meandering journey!

Here is a link to a few of my other post about teaching.