Love Glass Glass Glass.....

Here's the work set up......I LOVE MY NEW PAINT BOX & CANVAS HOLDER!!!

(for more information on this set up, please email me. ginlammert@yahoo.com)

Yes, I'm working from the computer monitor.  I need to invest in a tablet so I can truly be mobile.  The pics I print off just don't look the same.....not as vibrant as what I can view from the monitor.  Of course, the BEST solution would be to work from life.  That, unfortunately, can't always happen.  I'm thankful for a good camera. :D

Here shows where I've established the basic composition and started adding my value range.  The canvas board has a slight tone ( light value range).  I just find it hard to work on white. 

Okay.....lights and darks added....check!

....and the end result.  

 "Bottle Study #2"  10" x 8" Oil on canvas board

Painting with friends......

Friday afternoon I had the opportunity to share time with two fellow artists, Marybeth Heikes and Deb Baughman.  Yes,.....this is a big deal for me .....because.....we all are working artists with days almost always booked full with meetings, commission work, creating for shows, MUST "TO DO" LISTS.......you get the picture.

So, it's ALWAYS a treat for me to spend time with any of my painting friends and share our passion  for creating artful things.   (the conversations can be interesting too)   Here a few pics I took yesterday, along with the finished oil study I worked on.  Wish I'd taken more close ups of what we all were doing.....I'm making a BIG "post it" note  to remind myself to do that next time.

 Enjoy!

Here's Marybeth working on pencil outline sketches.  Since this is her studio, she planned to leave the bottles in place .....  adding watercolor to what she's working on here.

Deb  looking serious here....just an amazing watercolorist.  (She also paints with acrylics, & oils)

I love how she can take a "gray day" winter scene photo and make it brilliant with color and life.

....and here shows the view of bottles where I was standing and working with oil paints.

The finished work.....

"Bottle Study #1"  10"x 8"  Oil on canvas board

Toned background Experiment.....

~Click on image to enlarge~

both - 8"x10"  Oil on gessoed matboard

Here are two examples of the "toned" colors I use instead of painting on white canvas.  The gray here (on right) appears a bit darker then it actually is.

In the past, I've used the color Red Light to tone canvas for landscape and figure painting.  It gives a "glow" around objects and makes blues and greens read differently then just on a white surface.

The interesting thing is, the red background (on left) is in the same "VALUE" range as painting on WHITE.

The Gray on the right is what I'm used to using for almost ALL the pastel work I do. It "reads" as being a "MIDDLE VALUE"  .....so, on a scale 1 to 10.....it's definitely a 5.

After attending artist John Preston's Plein Air Workshop , I've been applying a clear primer 

(Art Spectrum's Colourfix Multi-media Fine Tooth Primer found at Dick Blick) to the panels I use that are brown.....the same color as cardboard.  The"VALUE" range is the same as using the Gray.(Yep...#5)  

In ALL my workshops, I tend to be a Drill Sargent....always repeating about the importance of breaking everything down into  5 basic values.....Light / Light-Medium / Medium / Medium-Dark / Dark.  (with the most repeated being "Light/Medium/Dark".)   Any 2 Dimensional work MUST have these to create the illusion of form. 

So, I thought it would be interesting to show here, how different an object can seem based on the value range it is painted on. (I used the same color mixes for both paintings).