So I reached to my favorite teacher, Jeannette Meyer to ask if she had any good hints (she always knows what to say to get me moving in the right direction) and she suggested I take two things into consideration...
How do I want the viewer’s eyes to move?
and
Where do I want the areas of highest contrast?
Good advice (as always)....but with this piece really I had no set visual path in mind, no focal point to highlight.....well....at least not yet!
What I thought this needed was some inspiration. So I thought I would take a look at how other artists handled value in their pieces. One that instantly came to mind was Edvard Munch, The Scream. One of the great things about this painting is how he uses value to direct the eye right to where he wants you to look. The grayscale version of it really shows how masterful the placement of value is!
I could even look for inspiration in paintings that are more abstract like Gerhard Richter's #9 Abstrakte Bilder Series. I love this painting mostly because of the mystery it holds. Still, I never thought about how the wonderful colors really disguised how well the underlying value was working. Its really is an interesting placement of lights, medium, and darks.
But no matter how great these were they still didn't seem right for my piece. Then I started to look at my old blog posts because not only is it a great place for quilt, fiber artists to meet every Friday but its also acts as my creative journal. I mean, come on, this isn't the first time I've wrestled with value! So I popped back to my post here and it gave me the idea to look at my pinterest boards! Not to mention it reminded me how much I liked LunaPic and how easy it was to use.
And finally.....FINALLY.... a value layout I like!!
So I used this......
I'm thinking this one is a KEEPER!! Now I just gotta get the pinwheels done!! This weekend I got about 30 of them done listening to The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone which I'm enjoying quite a bit. It starts out a bit slow and then you can't stop listening!!
Well, that's one more thing I can check off my THINGS TO DO list!!
What Have You Been Up to Creatively?
So funny you shared The Scream. for an upcoming challenge I almost used the painting for snippet quilt.
ReplyDeleteIn 2015 I signed up for Elizabeth Barton's Master Class. Lesson 1 was about value -- and our pieces had to be made in a selection of monochromatic fabrics. It was definitely a challenge -- but very (pardon the pun) valuable! I struggle still with values that aren't obvious (something to do with my astigmatism -- both eyes -- I think). My "Ruby Beholder" doesn't illuminate as much for me as it does for others, but I keep trying. And the more I practice, the more I work with fabric, the more I advise customers in the yarn shop where I work part-time, the better I get at it!
ReplyDeleteHey I took that class Margaret - you can see that I'm still working on it!!
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