Sarah Sedwick - Understanding Value, Part 1 (Ep. 60 Mini) - Transcript
Please note: This is an incredibly rough transcript from my conversation with Sarah Sedwick, Ep.60. It has not been checked by a human. To listen to the full audio version, head here.
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Sarah Sedwick 0:00
When we look at a painting we are thinking color, color color, but the artist is not thinking that the artist is thinking value and how can I manipulate that value structure to create a solid painting.
Kelly Anne Powers 0:11
Hello, and welcome to the learn to paint podcast, the show that gives you the tools and ideas to help you design your own artistic path. I'm your host, Kelly and powers. If you're a longtime listener of the show, you probably already recognize today's guest.
Today I'm talking with Sarah Sedwick, who has a new book coming out called the “Dynamic Still Life” and it looks at essential concepts and techniques for modern painters. I asked her to walk back onto the show to talk about one of those very essential concepts value.
Because here's the deal. Good paintings have good value. It's as simple as that. But value is tricky. And as you'll hear more complicated than I think we give it credit.
In Part 1 of the conversation, you'll discover great tools for simplifying that complexity and why they are critical to creating stronger paintings. You'll learn all about creating focal points, deciding hierarchies and the power of contrasts, we really dive deeply into some of the preparatory steps said with teachers and uses, including her three value sketch and her five value painting, and all the problems she solves through those two incredibly powerful tools.
In Part 2, available over on Patreon, we moved from SolidWorks preparatory studies into how she thinks about value in her full color paintings. If you've been thinking about becoming a patron today might be worth it. It's just $7. And you'll have the full conversation part one and part two with Sedwick plus another eight team bonus conversations with guests head to patreon.com/learntopaintpodcast to sign up, it's super easy and works on your desktop computer or your phone.
For show notes. To Part 1 had to learn to paint podcast.com/podcast/episode60.
And one quick final note, the audio starts a little bit rough. But don't worry, it gets way better. Just a couple minutes in. All right, here we go.
First off, congratulations on the book. It's available right now for preorder. And it comes out November 15. The new book is called dynamic still life for artists. So first off, what is value and why is it important?
Sarah Sedwick 2:21
Well, Hi, Kelly. And thank you for having me back on your show. It is always great to talk to you. And value is one of my favorite things to talk about. And it is, as you mentioned, one of the totally essential concepts, fundamental concepts in painting, all people who are learning to paint are essentially learning about value first and foremost, and we talk about it a lot, because it is pretty key. So what are we talking about when we talk about value, we're talking about basically converting your artwork into a black and white image. And what is the effect of that black and white image that fundamental foundational structure under your colors, that's making your pain pop off the wall that's making that three dimensional form read to your viewer value is doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes of your painting.
Kelly Anne Powers 3:07
When you're looking at a painting, how does our human eye respond to value
Sarah Sedwick 3:13
so when we talk about value, we are really talking about converting the rainbow into black and whites taking a black and white picture of a rainbow, you're gonna have your dark grays and blacks by the Indigo is the violets, the blues, even the Reds are going to be a mid dark value and your lighter colors, yellow oranges, and yellows and yellow greens, those are going to be lighter grays. And so all color has value. And when we're looking at a painting, yes, probably a lot of what you're responding to, is color if most of us artists are here, because we love color. But the things that are making your brain read that information is three dimensional form on that two dimensional canvas. Those are values. And it isn't just values, its value relationships. And that's the concept that I am always harping on in my workshops that we aren't taking a hole punch out of the world, bringing it over to our palette and mixing up the exact same thing that we just punched the hole out of, and then putting it on our canvas in the appropriate place. And doing that over and over again. And then we come out with a great painting, what we're doing is gauging those value relationships. So nothing exists in a vacuum in the world of your painting. And we're examining those relationships between the values of what we're looking at, and relaying those onto our canvas. And that's how we're showing form to the viewer. So value works in another way when the viewer is experiencing your painting. And that has to do with focal point. So contrast is the way we see anything. We don't perceive anything unless there's some contrast somewhere and in your painting, chances are your focal point the place where your viewer enters the painting. And where they keep coming back to as they're looking at it is created by contrast. So focal point is an effect of contrast. You're not going to create focal point with your subject matter is what I'm saying. So let's say you're painting a banana, there's only one object in this painting, that's what the painting is about. But by default, that doesn't mean that that banana is going to become your focal point, your viewer is going to land in your painting at the area of strongest value contrast. And so maybe that banana has a dark little piece at the tip of the you know, peel, you play up that contrast. That's where the viewers eye goes first. And then they get to enjoy looking around the rest of your painting, probably coming back again and again to that spot where the contrast is highest.
Kelly Anne Powers 5:33
Thinking about your process, where in your process do you think about and plan value specifically?
Sarah Sedwick 5:40
Well, I'm thinking about value the entire time, my work is really pretty colorful. And a lot of my paintings are kind of born from a color idea, I decide what I want to paint, and then I go hunting around for other colors that make me happy when I look at them together. But really, I am thinking about value from the very beginning of the process. As I'm choosing the elements, I paint still life. So objects and colors in the background, usually different paper, sometimes fabric, I really liked cloth napkins for added color and value elements. But as I'm gathering the elements from my still lives, I am thinking about value, you have to create some contrast, color isn't enough to carry the image. So I assemble a bunch of colors that look really good together. But then if I see that everything is kind of the same value, I know I've got a problem, you know, this is before I've even picked up a pencil or a viewfinder or anything, I'm just looking at a grouping of objects, you can squint at them. And if you don't see any contrast when you're squinting, that's kind of a red flag. And so I do think about having some variety, what's kind of tricky here is that we can manipulate the value, let's say I get a bunch of objects, and they are all pretty close in value, like an orange piece of paper, a tan bowl, and maybe a green apple, and they're all kind of a mid value color, I can use lighting to bring an added element of value to the arrangement by casting really strong dark shadows, I'm changing the value structure, you know, with the lighting, and that's usually the last piece that I bring to the table when I'm assembling still lifes is the lighting because we have a lot of options. And I like to play with that. But I usually save it for kind of the end of the still life setup process.
Kelly Anne Powers 7:20
Why not just figure out the values in the main painting? Why do you recommend to your students and then in your process to do value thinking before you pull out the colors and the paints?
Sarah Sedwick 7:33
Yeah, so the tools that we're going to talk about today for planning your paintings, specifically thinking about values, I don't use all of these tools, every time I paint, I almost always do some kind of preparatory sketch, or composition and considering value structure. Anytime I'm working larger than say 12 inches on a side, I certainly and I get this question a lot, actually, because I'm walking students through this process in my workshops, and I'm telling them, Look, these are tools, you don't need to use every single tool for every painting, but having a bunch of options at your disposal, so you can pick the one that works the best for you. And then maybe you only need to use one of the kinds of sketches. And sometimes I can skip that process entirely. But the reason that I'm able to skip it and still be able to hopefully reliably come out with a successful painting is because I've done those steps and that process so many times I can do a lot of it in my mind. Now, when I was first doing daily painting, and for many years, I was doing that value study process on my actual canvas. When I was doing the under painting, I would make my under painting and that really is a study and values. There's no color involved. I do my under painting in a kind of a burnt sienna ish paint is either actually Banksy on it used to be but now I'm sort of mixing that color. And so even though it is a color step of the process, the underpinning, it really is more about value. And so I used to investigate the value structure of my work in that phase. But the problem with it was once I was on the canvas, it felt like I was in the ring. This was happening. This was my painting. And I was very reluctant to make changes to experiment to critically question my decision making I was painting, you know, so I didn't want to backtrack. I didn't want to rub things out and redo and that really resulted in a higher proportion of unsuccessful paintings, paintings, I ended up being really ambivalent about because I wasn't able to be objective and self critical enough when I was actually on the canvas painting. And I'll tell you, I will slaughter a sketch. I will screw around with a sketch and try things and even my black and white oil studies. They are not precious, I'm scraping stuff off. I'm trying different things. I love doing it in workshops, because then I'm actively showing my students my thought process for decision making and what you're making decisions about mainly in a value study is what to do with the mid tones in your work. You've got a hierarchy of values and the sooner you get for familiar with that hierarchy of values, the batter. And so in these preliminary studies, we're acquainting ourselves with like the governing laws of the universe of this subject. And those governing laws are, what's the lightest thing I can see, what's the darkest thing I can see, those are the parameters, everything else has to fall in the middle, and every subject is going to be different. So yeah, so really, the place where you've got the wiggle room is the middle values in between that darkest dark and lightest light, which are sort of a no brainer, they basically are there and you just find them what we're really making decisions about when we're doing these value studies, sketches. However, we plan our painting, as we're deciding what we're going to do with the mid tones, are they going to get sent closer to the darks? Are they going to get sent closer to the lights, what's the overall key of our painting going to be is it going to be dominant, dark value, dominant light value, some of these decisions are taken care of already, based on the kinds of things we've chosen to assemble in our still life, or whatever our subject is, you know, you go out and paint a nocturn landscape at night, and you're gonna have a low key painting a dark painting, you know, most of my still lifes are pretty high key, I like to paint light backgrounds, I think it offsets my colorful things nicely. But I don't know, I think it's a little bit temperamental, with artists, you know, we have our voice and our unique temperament and the kinds of value structures of paintings that we ended up gravitating towards making over and over again, that's part of our artistic fingerprint. And so you pay a lot and then you observe what you did. And that pretty much shows you what your own artistic voice is, and the key, the value structure of the paintings that you repeatedly seem to gravitate toward. That's a big part of it.
Kelly Anne Powers 11:37
So then when you're setting up your still life, are you asking yourself, what is my lightest light? What is my darkest art is that thinking beginning in the setup, or in the still life setup? Are you mainly just making sure that you have contrast?
Sarah Sedwick 11:51
So the simplest way is just to make sure you've got some contrast, setting up a still life is the hardest part of being a still life painter, in a way, it doesn't really matter that much. And if you start to let it, it becomes the most important thing in the world. And it can just really take a long time and be quite painful. It doesn't have to be. But yes, the simple question is, am I creating any contrast? And where is it, and there's lots of things to consider when you're setting up a still life. And I do talk about those things in the book quite a bit, I've simplified it down into what I call the three V's The first one is variety. And that's not just any old variety, it's repetition with variety. And of course, the second one is values. And you want variety in your values to you want an unequal amount of the values. So we just got done talking about having a dominant value or an overall key of your painting. But you want the whole value range in there somehow a painting that doesn't include the entire range of values, even a little bit of all of the values all nine or 10 of the values, it's not going to pop off the wall as well as a painting that's got the whole range of values represented. So yes, as I'm setting up to still live, I'm asking myself, Do I have any contrast? And where is it and hopefully, I'm creating my strongest contrast in the spot. That's also my center of interest, my intended focal point, the thing the painting is really about, so you want to get those things aligned. And then yeah, I'm asking myself, what's my lightest light, and what's my darkest dark, what's my area of strongest contrast also, and sometimes this is where value can get really tricky. When we talk about converting value into color, no moving from your value study into your painting. There are lots of types of contrast value contrast is like the easy one, it's the easy one, when you're trying to create a focal point, put your focal point of your center of interest at the spot where the strongest value contrast is, that will work. But there are other kinds of contrast and color contrast is a big one. So we have more saturated areas of color in our paintings and your spot of highest Chroma your most saturated spot in your painting is also going to be an eye magnet, that's a great way to create contrast that will create or reinforce a focal point your most chromatic spots, or you could use complimentary color contrast, which is another great way to leave the eye. But really bright saturated colors. Let's think about an orange I mentioned taking a black and white photo of a rainbow and how some of those colors that we might think are light are actually mid tones or mid darks. And so think about painting an orange, the lightest side of that orange with the lightest strongest, you're seeing a very chromatic color, it's probably it could be Cadmium Orange straight out of the tube in just a couple of little spots. There may be even, that's not a light value color, necessarily it isn't but our brains tend to read highlighting chromatic color as light even something like a lemon, that lightest most saturated yellow on the light side of the lemon. That's going to be pretty close to the to meaning it's probably not going to have any white in it, meaning it isn't as light of a value as we think it is. Oftentimes high chroma gets mistaken for light value. And this is a mistake because if we want those really saturated colors to be chromatic, they can't have white in them and the more white we add to paint, the more Chroma we knock out yes, we're increasing The value, but we're also reducing the chroma White is a neutralizer, it's going to knock that punch out of your color. And so your orange that was so brilliant and beautiful and chromatic is gonna start really kind of calming down and maybe even getting chalky and if we want bright, really saturated color, where that light is strong, that paint is not getting lightened, what we're doing is we're darkening the darks to make that chromatic saturated spot feel like the light that it is you have to darken the darks because especially with warm light value colors, if you're lightening them with white, you really are killing them out too much.
Kelly Anne Powers 15:38
Some of what you're saying is it's learning to see truly learning to see and then learning to translate the goal into how paint works as a physical medium.
Sarah Sedwick 15:48
Yes, so nature doesn't really have that many limitations. And paint has a big one. And its major limitation is that it never gets any lighter than titanium white. And so getting a handle on that hierarchy is really important so that we can conserve our values. Think about painting a white bowl, you're painting the light side of that white ball, and it's a shiny ball. So it's got a zingy highlight on it a specular highlights, if you paint the light, areas of that white bowl too close to Titanium White, you'll never be able to get that Z highlight to feel like light. So everything has to get pushed down the value scale. So we can conserve that lightest light, I am really fond of saying that whenever you're encountering a value problem in your work, a value relationship is not working. And it really is like a jigsaw puzzle, one piece has to fit into the piece that's next to it. And that has to fit into the piece that's next to it. And so you're just going around, and you're making these little mini judgment calls all over the place when you're observing your subject. And they all have to work together and fit. So one thing that I have been saying a lot to my students lately is when you've got a value problem to solve, the best thing to do almost always is to solve it by going darker. When you've got a value relationship that isn't correct. Almost always the best solution is to fix that problem by darkening something, not lightening it because the more you lighten, you're going to hit that wall really fast. And oftentimes, we have way more wiggle room to go down toward the darks. Yeah, it sounds really complicated. And it can be I think, you know, painting is not easy, but it can be simplified. And so when I'm talking about value studies, I'm not talking about Let's mix up nine or 10 values, I really do keep it simple, I don't want to do a value study with more than five values. And even three, I think is enough. And so it can really be simplified. And I also like what you said about this, this learning to paint thing that we're all engaged in for a lifetime here. This is not something that we're learning how to do between our hand and a brush and the canvas. This is definitely something that we're learning how to do between our mind and our eyes and the world. We're going
Kelly Anne Powers 17:47
to talk about some of the tools that someone has to help them with value. And the first is the three value sketch. And if you check out Sarah's Instagram, and we'll link to that in the show notes, you can see these occasionally pop up, and they're always so beautiful. But they're also really informative. So first off, what is a value study, or a value sketch to someone who is really new to value
Sarah Sedwick 18:10
these value studies, they're just little plans for your painting. And another benefit that they have is weeding out paintings that you don't really want to make, it's a wonderful way to really understand whether you're into this subject or not. Because if you get through a value study, and you're kind of going, Hey, that's a clue, you probably shouldn't make this painting. And that happens to me less than less lately, but in the past, it really was probably about maybe two and 10 times I would do a value study. And I think now, this isn't happening. And that's great, because that just saved you a whole lot of time, energy effort and materials making a painting that you were ambivalent about from the get go, but you couldn't realize it. And so yes, and thank you for what you said about my value studies, I really liked making them I don't spend a lot of time on them. And if we're talking about a three or four or five value study, there are a few ways that I do it, either a drawing or in paint. And with drawing, I do two things. I either sketch on toned tan paper, so you're radically when you're working on tan paper or gray paper, the paper is the mid tone, and all you would need to add would be black and white. Now that's kind of tricky. And it's almost a watercolor mentality where you're having to sort of save out that mid tone and not drawn and so that's kind of hard. And I end up messing around with that quite a bit. But I like the tan paper and the general idea of working on tan paper is that the mid tone is there supplied for you, all you're doing is putting in the other two ends of the hierarchy. And so when I sketch on the tan paper, I begin with ballpoint pen I love drawing with things I can't erase and that I pretty much you know block in the composition and you are thinking about composition here too. And it's not just value structure. It's where's my cropping going to be? Where am I placing all these items that are in my still life on my canvas, those kinds of things. And I like to sketch in the middle of the paper, like I'll draw a box in the middle of the paper. So if I need to push one of those edges out I can I have a lot of flexibility in that sketch, if I put it in the center of the paper so that I can kind of push and pull on my margins. Once you get onto the canvas, you don't have that luxury, you're kind of locked in once you get into that format. And that's one of the decisions that I'm making with these studies. So I set up a still life, you know, the still life is working for various reasons for me already, it's clicking, but I don't know what shape of a canvas it is yet to do. I don't know if it's a square painting or a rectangular painting a horizontal or vertical rectangle. That's a decision I make after I set up the still life. And I'll give you a little insider tip for still life painters, which is that it is much easier to set up a good still life that clicks with repetition, variety, good values, nice colors, viewpoint was the third V to consider when setting up still life variety, value and viewpoints. So you've got all those things clicking and working. And you're still like it's a lot easier to do that and then look at it and say is this a square painting of a rectangular painting then to go into your studio and say today, I'm gonna set up the perfect still life for my 10 by 20 canvas that I also have a frame for and the gallery wants it next week. That's the kiss of death, you'll never set up that still life. So my preparatory sketches on paper I do in two ways. The first one is the tan paper with ballpoint pen. And then I use Sharpie for the darkest darks black Sharpie marker. And I use a white pit pen which is an Indian ink pen, my favorite Castel put pen to put in the whites. There are other options for adding that white Posca pens, there are acrylic paint pens, those are good options. I also have a white gel pen, think it's a uni ball. signo is the brand but like a jelly roll, I think those are those also work. And those could be for some finer white lines, it's really fun. The other way that I sketch on paper is with just good old pencil and Sharpie. And that's white paper. So the white of the paper is your white, and the pencil is your midtone. And the Sharpie is your dark Sharpie and pencil play very well together. And then of course, if I need to add in any bonus whites, I would generally be dipping my pinky in my white oil pay and just sort of popping some on there. They're just very quick and dirty. And I swear I'm not spending more than 10 or 15 minutes on these sketches
Kelly Anne Powers 22:00
for those three values, sketches. You talked about format, you're making those final decisions. But are you also making final decisions about this is where my focal point is. And this is my dominant value.
Sarah Sedwick 22:11
Yeah, I am thinking about my focal point for sure. And if you have seen any of my sketches on Instagram, sometimes you'll see a grid overlaid, I'll just draw a grid right on top of it. And what I'm looking for is the rule of thirds, the sweet spots, rule of thirds is a very simplistic technique for placing a focal point a very simplistic lesson for composition. And certainly there are lots of quote unquote, rules for composition. And I'm all about people should do what they want, they should break the rules. But I think that sometimes it's nice to know about the rules so that when we really get into trouble, we can kind of come back to them and say, Well, let's start over from the basics. Let's look at my sweet spots. And so the sweet spots, the rule of thirds grid is you divide your canvas into thirds vertically and horizontally. This works for no matter what shape of canvas it is. And the intersections of the lines. Those four points are called the sweet spots, they are just general areas that are nicely enough inside your canvas that they're a good place to locate your focal point, you don't want to put your focal point right at the edge of a canvas, because then you're leaving the viewers eye there and then they just leave, they go out to the next painting and they buy that one and take it home, you know, instead we want to bring the viewer in in a good place to then just keep them moving around and those sweet spots their guidelines, but those are a good place to put a focal point. So yeah, I've got my still life setup. I've got my viewfinder in my hand, I've got a pencil and a Sharpie and some paper and I'm looking through the viewfinder, and I'm squinting. And at what I'm first looking for is what I call the big dark shape, which is pretty much the silhouette. Imagine a Rorschach test, the inkblot test with that kind of abstract dark shape that's happening on the paper. When I'm squinting down real hard. I'm asking myself, what's the Rorschach test of this still life? What is the silhouette that this arrangement this lighting is creating through my viewfinder? And is it interesting? And that's totally subjective, which is the good news. You know, you don't have to get out your rulebook at anything like that. But you know, I really don't think about dominant value that much. I am very conscious of creating contrast and pleasing color scheme. And both of those things kind of working hand in hand. And then I suppose I would make the sketch and then I would look at it and I would think hmm, yeah, that's a mostly dark painting, or we got a lot of mid tones going on here. Let me make sure that I know where my lightest lights and darkest darks are. And the great thing about these preparatory sketches, whether we're talking about on paper, or with black and white oil paint is it's a conversation back and forth between that value study and the subject. So let's say you're painting a portrait and you do a quick value study to find your lightest light so your darkest darks can determine the overall key of the painting but then you see that there's that a lot of maybe the detail of the hair is kind of getting lost in the darkness of the background or it just feels Oh For all too brooding and heavy with a dark background behind the model, maybe you would go and change it out for a white one and do another value study of it, the elements that we choose to include in our paintings, they affect the outcome so much. And that sounds like a very simple thing to say. But I don't think that a considering what we're actually assembling when we're setting up to paint, whether it's portrait or still life or landscape, and we don't say I don't. And I also think that a step that gets often overlooked, is just looking at what you're about to paint, you know, take a deep breath, look through the viewfinder, imagine this thing, imagine your eyes are black and white camera, first, look at the value structure, but then look through the viewfinder and try to imagine what you're seeing as a painting. You know, keep searching with that viewfinder until you find something that looks like a painting to you,
Kelly Anne Powers 25:45
you've said that you don't necessarily walk through all these steps in this order every time but for a hypothetical, if you move from a three to a five, how do you know you have what you need in that three, in order to move to the next five value painting.
Sarah Sedwick 25:59
Starting with the three value sketch, I'm thinking about my sweet spots, placement, just the very basic building blocks of composition, where's my cropping going to be. And then when I move into a five value painting and oils, I'm continuing that decision making process and refining it. So we talked about mid value colors a little bit earlier. And really what I'm doing as I move into that five value study, as I'm making decisions about my mid value colors, whether I'm going to choose to see them as being closer to the lights or closer to the darks. And also, in that five value study, I begin looking for loss edges. And that's really related to those decisions about the mid tones. Because let's say I've got, you know, maybe a back to that orange again, and I have a yellow mug in my setup too. And there's overlap there, there might be a slight value difference. But when I only have the five tools to work with, I'm being forced to kind of choose, you know what I'm not mixing in between my value piles, I've got a yellow cup and I got an orange. And in the light, those things are pretty close in value, certainly not different enough in value, that with only five value piles on my palette, I'm going to choose two different value piles for that orange and the yellow cup, they're going to probably be the same because they're close enough Is that making sense, they are not the same value, and they're not the same color. And if I had 20 values on my palette, I certainly could find a different one for the yellow cup and for the orange in the light. But because I only have five, I'm forced to lump them together. And that's probably going to be a value two or a value three, value three is the best value there because it's the midtone it's the player that that's for both teams. So in a five value painting three is the dark on the light side, and it's the light in the shadows. So back to my mid tones, the great thing about being forced to lump them together and that five value study is it opens my eyes to the possibility that in my color painting, I can also do that I can manipulate just a little bit the values, I don't have to slavishly copy reality, I can choose to say maybe that yellow cup gets painted just a little darker than it is so I can bring it closer to that orange. And then I can have a last edge where they overlap potentially, this is golden for me, because last edges are really the key to my painting style, which I'm calling loose realism. And you know, loose realism is all about visible brushwork. And definitely lost edges are a big part of that. It's a big part of what makes looking at loose painting fun.
Kelly Anne Powers 28:24
This is a little bit off topic, but I'm really struck by talking about loose painting, is it in some way value is like it is this workhorse underneath all the things we see. Because we don't see it immediately, like you who are skilled experienced painter probably see it very quickly. But someone who's earlier in their art journey may not realize like, oh, the reason why all of that is happening. The reason why it's a loose painting, the reason why my eye is moving the way it is, is because of this thing called value that I may or may not have ever heard of.
Sarah Sedwick 28:57
Sure. Well, I listened to your podcast a lot. And almost every single person that you have on your podcast says this and so I get to say it too. But color gets all the credit value does all the work. Yeah, when we look at a painting we are thinking color, color color, but the artist is not thinking that the artist is thinking value and how can I manipulate that value structure to create a solid painting, you know by massing values together to create bolder, stronger shapes. That's one way the slight manipulation I just mentioned of the values of certain colors is also a good tool to have in your arsenal and we learn this in painting classes we learn it by reading books and we learn it by practicing you don't have to even be painting to be practicing seeing value you can be out in the world and squint I play this game all the time you just squint and you ask yourself what's the lightest thing I can see right now what's the darkest thing I can see right now. And what's really great about color gets all the credit but value does all the work and really this is critical for my painting because I am not a colorist I am a tonalist I am thinking much more about value and value The relationships that I am thinking about matching color when I paint, that's not the program that I'm running in my head. And I spent a lot of time those of you taken workshops with me, you know, we spend a lot of time mixing paint with a palette knife, specifically for our subject before painting. But still, I am not as concerned with matching the color of something that I'm painting as I am to matching the value relationships, because it's those value relationships that are going to create that three dimensional form, not the color and not the details, we want the form first. And the way we're going to get that form is matching the value relationships that we're observing. So the good news about color gets all the credit that value does all the work is that if you match those value relationships, and you capture them accurately, you can paint something any color you want, basically. And that's good news, because it takes the pressure off of color mixing, we don't have to be perfect when we're mixing colors. And it also is great because it opens the door to really have some fun. I'm walking around on a workshop classroom, and I'm yelling at everyone take some risks with color, do something with color right now that is wrong, do something incorrect, we're matching the value relationships, we don't want that incorrect. But as long as we get those value relationships, we can be very experimental and have fun with our color. And that's, you know, my paintings are pretty straightforward. And they're fairly accurate. They look real there. And I'm not making like, you know, portraits with a big flash of purple on the face or something like that. But I do want to be able to be experimental with color, where it's appropriate and exaggerate color where it's appropriate. But what I'm not doing is I'm not exaggerating or messing with my values, my value relationships too much,
Kelly Anne Powers 31:36
you're talking about value creates form, how does value create form.
Sarah Sedwick 31:42
So round form, or square form, you know, any three dimensional form on a two dimensional surface is created by accurately capturing value relationships. And it isn't just how dark the shadow side is, compared to how light the light side is that it's doing it, although that's part of it. It's the transition between the values, that's saying a lot about the form. And what does that line where light and shadow meat look like. So think about you've got a round sphere, the line where light and shadow meat is curved. And the shape of that curve is showing your eye the shape of that object. But the transition from light to shadow is showing your eye the texture that you're observing. So let's say I have velvet, the transition from light shadow and velvet is going to be free, it's going to be gradual, it's going to be soft. And then if I get out some silk, maybe the higher the transition from light to shadow on that silk, it's going to be much, much harder, much of a sharper transition with lighter lights next to darker darks. And then maybe I bring out some metal and what's gonna say metal texture to the viewers eye is that that those bands of dark dark next to those really bright highlights, and that says metal to your eyes. Yeah, it's not just form that we're showing with those values and the value transitions and the value relationships. But certainly, that's a big part of it. Well, then, for
Kelly Anne Powers 32:59
you in that five values study, you've made a decision about your mids. And you've looked for places where you can move value so that things can have lost edges. Is there anything else that you figure out in that five value painting, and then how do you know you're ready to bring color in to your work,
Sarah Sedwick 33:16
if you get through that five value painting and you're still into it, you're still into that subject, and you're definitely ready to move on to color. And you've made some decisions, you know, you've found your lightest light, your darkest dark, you know where your focal point is, maybe you've located at least one last edge, these are all good things to check off the list before you're ready to be done with your five value study. But what are the other decisions that I'm making. So one big one, and this is something that I manipulate a lot has to do with value in the negative space. So we've got our objects, and then we've got naught objects. And I'm always encouraging my students to maybe zoom in a little more, you know, maybe paint your objects a little bit bigger on the canvas, so you aren't stuck having to fill in a sea of empty negative space. Negative space is a bummer. It's not fun to paint. And it's painstaking. Because often what I'm doing is I'm back painting I've heard it called. So I'll paint the object out a little bit larger than it is and then I come in and refine the edges. And I almost get another chance to redraw it as I'm painting in the negative space around that object. And so it's paying it can be painstaking, I want the least amount of negative space to deal with as possible. But back to the decision making your negative space. Let's say you're painting on a flat table or you've got a flat wall behind your subject either way, your negative space, even though it's flat, it's still subject to the action of the light source. So you've got a part of your negative space that is lighter and then light falls off as we move away from the light source I've taken to calling these hotspots. Where are the hotspots in the negative space? Where is the light the strongest because it is not flat and uniform. We have to find a way to activate our quote unquote empty spaces in our paintings or else they'll just be really flat and boring, and they won't add depth and they won't you know that they'll just be flat. How do we activate those and one way that I do that is by locating the place in the negatives As for the latest, the strongest showing that to myself in my five value study, and then going forward into the painting, I need to be looking at that five value study. That's the number one thing you know, it's really helpful to make a five value study in oils before painting in color. But it's even more helpful if you actually look at it while you're doing the painting. And remembering where I intend to put those brightest spots in the negative space is a big one. And I experiment with that, you know, I, let's say I want to really draw some attention to my focal point. So I'll choose to see the lightest part of the negative space near the focal point. But maybe I don't actually like that for some reason. And so I will feel very free to experiment in my black and white oil study, with things like that changing things like that back and forth, where is the latest spot in my negative space? How can I reinforce the focal point, you don't want to be experimenting with these kinds of things later on in color, it's really a drag to have to do that, to make those decisions. You don't want to be making those decisions later on in your color painting. And the kiss of death. Kelly is when I hear this all the time. And I hear it in my own head too. It's the sentence, I'll figure that out later. If you're saying I love your face right now, if you're saying to yourself, in your mind, I will figure that out later, I guarantee you you will not something will happen. But it won't be your choice, it will just be something that happened. And we want to we want to have a little more control over those things.
Kelly Anne Powers 36:23
I really am laughing at the because in my head, it just sounds like oh, we can figure that out later. Like there's a certain timbre in my voice that when I say I just know like, oh, no, like you need to stop and try this. Again,
Sarah Sedwick 36:37
I can hear it, I can definitely hear it because I hear it in my own mind. And the thing is, the reason we won't make that decision later is because color is all consuming. When we move on to the canvas, and we're making our painting, we have the main program running, which is color, color, color color, it gets all the credit, and it starts to take over the world once we are dealing with it. And it becomes really difficult to walk back to that place of observing values and value relationships, we do it but it's how it gets harder and harder, the more we get into color. And so really spending some time for a loading that time where we're only focusing on the values is extremely beneficial later on.
Kelly Anne Powers 37:14
Is there anything you feel like we missed,
Sarah Sedwick 37:16
I really do want to stress that I don't use all these tools every time I paint, but every time I use them, it results in a better painting. And the trick is to figure out really what works for you your own self as an artist in terms of being the most effective, and also economical tool that you can use to get better painting outcomes by economical I mean, we're not spending a lot of time on it. So they are not going to stress you out and make you so tired that you don't have anything left for the painting. These preparatory methods are meant to make your actual painting time smoother and more enjoyable and more successful. And if they're not doing that, then something's not right. It shouldn't be a stress or it should be something that makes you more comfortable as you move into the ever tricky realm of color.
Kelly Anne Powers 38:03
So we've been talking about value as one of the essential pieces of painting, but you have a whole book coming out called dynamic still life for artists a modern guide of essential concepts and techniques. So could you just give people a quick overview of some of the other things that you cover in the book?
Sarah Sedwick 38:19
Yeah, I did. I wrote a book. And it's called dynamics to life for artists. And it's coming out in November. It's really a workshop in a book, it walks you step by step through still life setup and lighting to value studies as you and I have been discussing. And then we go into my three step process for alla prima painting. And all the while I'm talking about where to find inspiration, I'm talking about techniques for keeping your painting loose. I have a whole chapter on motivation and starting, which is probably my favorite chapter in the book. And it's a topic that I just can't get enough of talking about. But I had a lot of fun writing it. I've got something like 17 or 18 wonderful artists contributors. So it's not just my art in the book. And in the book. It's full of just beautiful, inspirational, still lifes of all kinds. And this book, like my workshops is really intended for artists of all levels. I think it's accessible for beginners, and I definitely hope that there could be a lot to enjoy for more experienced painters as well. I hope you'll check it out. It's available for preorder now, but it'll be on your doorstep and time for holiday reading.
Kelly Anne Powers 39:27
You can learn more about Sarah Sedwick including her new book at her website, Sarah sedwick.com. And we'll link to everything in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining us again today,
Sarah Sedwick 39:36
Sarah. Thanks for having me back. Kelly. It is always great to talk to you.
Kelly Anne Powers 39:39
We're done with part one, but part two is waiting for you at patreon.com/learn. To paint podcast, sign up at any tier. It'll take you five minutes and you can cancel at any time. In part two, you'll discover new ways to think about your most saturated colors, reasons to pre mix your paint piles, and why Sedwick is Always keeping an eye on her whites. For show notes for part one had to learn to paint podcast.com/podcast/episode 60 Thank you to everyone over in the podcast art club. extra shiny thank yous to high gloss supporters, Andrew Attebery, Debbie and Brian Miller, Reanna Da Rold, Janet Wheeler, Nancy Bryant , Kathryn Ordway , Pam Lyle and Victoria Young. See you at Part Two at patreon.com/learntopaintpodcast, happy painting