Values are among the most important concepts or techniques in painting. Often teachers will tell you that if you have the values down right, it really doesn't matter WHAT COLOR you use to paint a form... it will look right if the values are right.

I've been taking classes from Johanna Spinks for almost a year now and was feeling more confident about seeing and (more importantly) painting values...... until the gold vase appeared in this still life set up.

In Johanna's classes, she patiently teaches a five value system which she has learned from many sources. She teaches both still life and figurative painting and strongly feels that one genre compliments the other.

The trouble with that vase was that it was so pretty and if you look carefully at the above photo of the set up, you can see that while the light is coming from the side to the right of the photo there seems to be this lovely golden "light" on the dark side. Well that's the way I painted it at first. I painted what I saw. I had done the "unthinkable".... I had painted a light family value on the dark side. I even painted in lovely reflections there. (And I liked it too..)

My mistake was forgetting that no value that is in the dark side can be as light as any value in the light family. Johanna did a quick four-minute demo (which I've tried to duplicate above) since several of us were struggling with ourselves trying to overcome our seemingly overwhelming desire to paint what we saw, not what we know. She said that unless we painted the values correctly we would loose the form... the turning of the vase. So I dutifully repainted it. The above WIP is how I left it on the first session. Mind you, Johanna is always saying that there "are no rules... just tools", and that all teachers will say different things... so it is up to the STUDENT to decide what works, then break the rules to become famous." She's said and I've often read how dangerous it is to become a workshop junky... jumping from one school of thought to another without really UNDERSTANDING and letting one school of thought become YOURS. I don't want to become a clone of another painter... but I would like to deeply understand what makes that painter successful... and use that to paint my own successful work.

Part of the reason I blog is to help me process or review in my mind and that's what I'm trying to do now. This set up was more complicated than many, so Johanna will set it up the next time we do a still life and we'll all have another go at trying to complete it. Hopefully by that time I can "get it".

On a less frustrating note for me... Johanna always brings in her books showing the work of various artists to illustrate a point she's making. During this class she began talking about David Leffel and his books, one of which I had recently finished and blogged about in an earlier post. She helped clear up for me what Leffel was talking about when he talked about a concept of a painting. Basically, I think, he's talking about what Johanna calls the "story of a painting"... or perhaps, less broadly, the composition. She used several of the fabulous paintings from his book to indicate that one painting was "about" the light while another was "about" the objects in a space. This was more understandable to me.... thus easier to use as I plan a painting.

I love learning and trying to really understand things... it's a real gift! It's one of many gifts my Mom and Dad passed on to me... ... Thanks for passing on the gift of life and love! (Today is my birthday.)