Hey everyone,
Today I am briefly talking about
how to avoid the “garage sale”
thing in your art.
To fix this you need to understand
DESIGN and VALUE
These were the first two Art2life Principles I
covered in last weeks Free Art2life Workshop.
If you find today’s talk helpful,
check out last weeks 2 lessons.
Both lessons will really set you
Up to better understand COLOR!
Lesson #3 which is coming out Tuesday!
Have an awesome Sunday.
Nicholas Wilton
19 Comments
Hi! I’m
Nicholas Wilton
the founder of Art2Life.
With over 20 years experience as a working artist and educator, I’ve developed a systematic approach that brings authenticity, spontaneity and joy back into the creative process.
Join me and artists from all over the world in our Free Art2Life Artists Facebook Group or learn more here about Art2Life.
Hi Nicholas, found your Sunday video on Garage sale really interesting. It’s left me wondering about mid tones though and how to use them alongside light and dark, as I don’t think you are saying only use light and dark. I’m thinking the relationship between light, dark and mid tones needs to be such that the mid tones don’t confuse the eye? Am I on the right track in my thinking?
Right @lin@lin_cheung:disqus of course we dont always have to use super dark and super light values….but we do need to be clear. Mid values, again, we are going to use those but we need to make sure that even if the values are close–that they are clear–so we can see the breakup of light and dark. If we can’t see that then it is kind of mushy…
Thanks for this explanation as it answers my question also.
i like the analogy to a garage sale! I think this happens to some of my work and this helped me see part of what might be going on. It’s funny you say that it’s sort of like indecision, because I can so relate to that. Hahaha.
Anyway, when you say “we do need to be clear,” I’m not sure I follow what you mean. Do you just mean make sure the difference or distinction between mid-tones is obvious? Perhaps just avoiding too many mid-tones in random places?
Or, maybe as a general rule if things seem crowded or confusing and muddy, that’s a time to consider maybe pushing values lighter and/or darker…
This was very helpful! Thank you.
Thank you for clarifying that point about “a middle value” can take away from contrast and cause confusion for the eye. Do you feel as if the above can “flatten” the pictorial space too??
No not always… the mid values are just in between dark and light..if we don’t pay attention and everything is the same “inbetween” then we just have a picture that is not as interesting as it has super limited range…It also can be tiring to work on as it loses it’s ability to stimulate the maker too.. inbetween is like indecision —
Thank you for this review! It’s so helpful and I can see the necessity of the contrast of the very light and dark values particularly when you darkened the light shapes.
Great Patricia…
i found that really useful and I would love it if you could do a video where you just darken the light shapes rather than add more mid tone ones. I think that would help a lot.
OK will keep that in mind Cassandra!
Very helpful!!! Excited to use these principles. Wish all the videos were always available to watch from beginning to end, over and over.
Lynn- at the top of each video lesson there are links to all of them..Lesson 3 coming out tomorrow!
This brought more clarity to the subject, thanks. I think it would be great if you would take a colored painting that’s a hot mess and show us how to edit it and simplify it. Maybe you already have that planned.
Thanks, that’s really helpful & I can see straight away how I can apply it to one of my paintings in particular! 🙂 Looking forward to Lesson #3 on color
So..do you apply small,medium and large to value ,like one color is dominant in size etc?
Garage sale is very helpful.Thanks
I didn’t think I could get unstuck on two paintings I have in progress. These past two lessons really started an anthill of creative thoughts flowing! So looking forward to the next lesson on color. Thank you!
OH great Traci! I teach Color as it relates to Design and value so you are all set!
I meant one value not color.
Thank you for these, Nicolas. My son (he’s 4) and I have watched each video. After the video on design, he played with his blocks and said, “Look, I’m doing the same thing as the man in the video but I’m using my blocks!” And he really was experimenting with different shapes and sizes.
Meanwhile, I’m actually finding this useful for thinking about my writing!