Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Squatty Old Coffee Cup


Even simple objects present their own challenges. Today's squatty old coffee cup was about identifying and painting the dark vivid blue hue. It was easier to see the relationship of warm and cool hues since I placed the cup on a complimentary (orange) wooden shelf.
I matched the hues and values on the cup and table top fairly accurately on the first attempt, but that white cloth was a different story. Who would have thought it was that dark!

The handy, dandy, little color checker that I purchased from Mark Carder author of the Carder Method, is a marvelous little gadget for checking values and hues. It is one of those things that is sooooo simple, you have to ask yourself, "why didn't I think of that".

The color checker isolates an area in your still life set up and compares the paint you have mixed to it. You can readily see if the mix needs to be darker, lighter, warmer, cooler, duller or more intense. The paint I mixed for the fabric was off 3 values on my first attempt! Had I painted it that light in value, it would have dominated the painting. The cloth was all in shadow, except for a tiny little bit. Shadows are dark, even on white objects. It just goes to show, you can not always trust what the mind is telling you.

Squatty Old Coffee Cup 5x7 Oil

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