Exploring Tonal value

As artists, we must learn to be self nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them – to restock the trout pond, so to speak.
- Julia Cameron


Beach and trees - tonal value exercise

My watercolour workshops with Angela Eidelman are two weeks apart - every second Wednesday - and probably just as well - after three hours of watching, listening, planning, and actual sketching exercises, I find myself totally exhausted afterwards, and I'm telling myself it's NOT an age thing! My younger counter-parts like Cathy Gatland (read her workshop up-dates with Hazel Soan here) and Debbie Schiff (read Debbie's posts about her art class with Hazel Soan here) have both complained about the same thing. It's hard and exhausting work setting up your work station, trying to take in everything and anxiously trying not to make a complete botch-up of your exercises, right there where everybody is witness to the whole thing!

So for two weeks until my next class, I've got plenty of time to practice all the basics. At first I've been trying to do everything all in one painting - the planning, good composition, focal point, light source, tonal value, and where the most detail or the least detail is. I've given that up as a bad job and am spending a day or two on each point - the exercise above is mostly about tonal value, but it also gave me a chance to explore the source of where my light is coming from and making sure I don't have shadows running in all sorts of directions!