Oct 16 - Demo forty minutes in

Ah, finishing up and adding the last details... that was what took up the last ten-minute section of the demonstration. Adding the huan element of that picnic table is what pulls the viewer into the image. And all of that is planned from the get-go, and with the careful orchestration of the brushwork and keeping the values down, now you see the angles of the table and know the scale of the place. The viewer (you) now "fit" into the scene.

Here's an interesting part of this... taking the image into Photoshop, and doing a levels view on it, I see this graph showing the amount of the values in the painting. Note the nice bell curve shape of the values. HUGE amount of mid tones, and small darks and lower values, and also small lights. Note that the majority of the painting's values are humped to the LEFT of mid point, showing that this painting is darker in values than a more balanced image. Using the "Levels" can teach you about your work in ways that are not accessible through just looking or asking your significant other or spousal unit, "Honey, do you like this?"

I hope to begin a larger, special painting tomorrow, and will share the development of that one with you as well.

This painting, entitled "Sanctuary" will get some more tweaking before I call it finished, but I did sign it.

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