Small Paintings and Value Study

I’ve noticed that a lot of artists do small paintings and sell them either on eBay or their blogs. I’ve sold a few small paintings at the store in Milford, CT. I’m going to work on more of those and see what happens.

The small paintings are a lot of fun to do, and since they are small, I don’t labor over them as much. They are a great way to practice value studies too. I’ve found that my weakness is getting the values in my paintings just right. It’s really hard to wrap my mind around this concept. It’s in all of the art books and every teacher I’ve ever had emphasizes it, but it’s not easy to translate it on the canvas. Watching Richard Schmid, I noticed that he starts at his center of interest and works outward, but he doesn’t rework a stroke. He puts one down, leaves it, and works on one next to it. This is how he compares his values. It seems that if you go from one stroke to the next one over, you can tell better if your values are off. I can see how that might be true. Richard works with such certainty. It’s a confidence that is born from years of experience, I figure. I am trying to do this, but it’s really difficult. That’s way starting with something small works best for me.