Learning about Colour from Linda Kemp: Value

In my never-ending quest to improve my skills, I started following colour-theory lessons by Linda Kemp, a renowned and well established artist.  I know, I know, "Colour theory...ewww how boring!".  I can't agree more!  I also find the topic incredibly terrifying!  There seems to be no end to the rules and arrangements of how and when to use colour.  However, the title of Ms Kemp's video "Simplifying Color" does give me a sense of hope that I may be able to finally grasp this usually very dull topic :)

She's approached this subject very systematically, which I appreciate.  The video starts out by outlining the 3 properties of colour: Intensity, Value, and Hue.

You can see in this strip that Intensity contrast is when you contrast a pure colour with a neutral colour, thereby making the pure colour stand out.  Value contrast is when you paint from the lightest light to the darkest dark (here the orange is lighter than the black).  And Hue contrast is when you paint contrasting colours (i.e. orange and blue) to make either or both stand out.

In this post I will be focusing on my work following her Value contrast lesson. 

First, it was important that I understand the relationship between light and dark values.  Similar to a black/white value finder, I followed along to create a gradation of values using only water to change the colour.  I'm not sure I succeeded too well here, as I seem to have a lot of gradations that are very similar in the lighter values, but hey, I tried!

Next I was to learn the difference between "low key" and "high key" paintings.  Low key paintings use values ranging from mid to high (very light/white), while High key paintings use values ranging from mid to dark (black).  I think I did okay representing the high key values, but the low key values gave me some trouble.  I'm not sure if they were supposed to have more blue in them to increase their value levels or if I was supposed to keep the colours pure and specifically choose ones that would have a high value level.

Now onto the fun part :). 

To illustrate her point, Ms. Kemp chose to demonstrate how to paint a value contrast painting (following is my attempts to follow along).  The really fun aspect to this demonstration is that Ms. Kemp LOVES to work in the negative.  This generally means that instead of painting the shape directly (i.e. a circle), you paint everything else in the space EXCEPT the shape and voila, your shape appears!  You'll get a better idea of what I mean if you follow along :)

First I drew some flower shapes on a piece of watercolour paper.  Then, selecting a colour that could easily go from lightest light to darkest dark, I painted around each flower shape in the lightest value of the colour.

Next, when the paper was completely dry, I drew in some stems for each flower and mixed a slightly darker value of the colour.  Then I carefully painted around ALL the drawn shapes.

After the paint had dried completely, I drew in some leaves and a few more stems.  I mixed an even darker value of the colour and repeated my painting around the shapes.  At this stage, smaller "captured negative" spaces have been created that must be painted properly or it all falls apart.  You see the tiny dark green spaces between the flower stems in the upper-middle?  Those are captured negatives.

This was by far the coolest step for me.  I have always been told that in watercolour you MUST NOT ever use white or black, and I gotta say that this has been darned inconvenient at times!  But Linda has generously given permission to use these values to mix with colours to aid in creating the values necessary.  In this case, I mixed some black in with my green paint to create the darkest value.  I drew in a few more leaves and painted around everything accordingly.

It's really important when painting like this that I take a step back periodically to see all the shapes and how they join, and where their spaces are.  I came very close a few times to completely messing up the exercise by painting the wrong thing!

While I can't say the painting itself is incredible, you definitely get the idea of what a value contrast painting should look like.  Now, there's nothing saying that you have to do this process in the order presented here.  Depending on your preferred methods, you could probably mask out the white flowers, leaves and stems and start dark, lifting mask and painting lighter as you progress.  This would be an example of painting in the positive.

I plan to continue the video and present my efforts in my next post.  Wish me luck!