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Day 2 - VALUE
Gah. My brain was overflowing, hemorrhaging, last night as I tried to process all the information I'd glommed onto.
So I pushed today's lesson to Noon and continued working on my show pieces while I thought about "Design".
Lots of good things today too!
I remember this lesson from when I took this workshop years ago, the idea of LOUD and quiet conversations being a new concept and could quite easily see this in my current (then) work.
What I DIDN'T recall was the absolute magic that happened when Nicholas demonstrated the concept of quiet conversation, adding low contrast items to a page without ANYTHING changing to the high contrast shapes.
Folks, this is a game changer for me.
My work often has subtle stuff going on behind the scenes but I've struggled with not allowing it to take over and become a Garage Sale. (OMG love this term!)
Previously I assumed I needed to put in less which always made me feel a little sad. But it turns out all I have to do is lessen the contrast. One value up from pure white and I can put in ALL THE STUFF. Who knew?!?
Yup. Game Changer!
A corollary of that idea is the control you have over where the viewers eye goes. It notices contrast above all else.
So yah. Having that in my back pocket is HUGELY useful! Not to mention looking at all my current show work thinking, 'Ugh! I should change that!' But not THIS day!
A final nugget was a comment Nicholas made ...maybe quoting a participant?... about how the painting is both the question AND the answer.
I've always been interested in this idea of having a question in mind when starting a project or series but not always on an individual painting basis. And while I've inherently understood that the process of moving through each work is the conversation that ensues from that presented question/idea, that it can also hold the answer? Well that's new to me.
Why? Because it means you can formulate the question so the answer occurs. Does that make ANY sense? Maybe it's a semantics thing. But it galvanized an idea I've been pondering for some time.
Without a formal lesson on Wednesday not sure I'll be posting but if something comes up, I'll be back.
Okay. Off to finish up some work so I can get to playing with these concepts!