Painting Workshop: Day 3: Massing

Today's exercise was about massing. One of the basic tenets that Karen and Jack teach about is to not draw each landscape piece individually. Rather, separate your painting into the dark and light areas.

The point is to create large masses of values. This can be done by squinting or looking through a colored piece of glass. In addition to massing, you still need to apply the rules that were present in the first two days.

So, rather than do a large painting (8 x 10), I worked on my thumbnail size painting again. This helped me forego the detail work and pay attention strictly to the mass shapes and their values. In this case, I first laid down the sky, then brought the color into the furthest mountain. From there, brought some of the color into the farthest treeline, but started adding more greens. The bushes in the front were done with less of the sky color and more of the green/light colors to bring them forward. When I had all of the masses laid down, it was a matter of playing with the values to bring the bright bushes forward and the darker trees to the rear.

Overall, this was a good study and worked out well.