Values aren't always easy. In this case, it's the light and darkness of the image that I'm trying to get right, or just a bit lighter than the final goal. Having a black and white printout that I can test on is a massive help for me.
You can see lots of places where I got it wrong. And the places where I got it right don't show up at all. Thankfully, I got more right than wrong. It's training my eyes and maybe one day I won't want this trick. But that's a long way off as I find it difficult to judge how the paint will look with the "hold the palette knife up to the source" trick.
I got most of the cup and saucer painted to my standards of "good enough". It's time to start the flowers.
I say "good enough" but between you and me, I am absolutely chuffed with how this is turning out. I had no idea I could paint this well. I had a vision, I put paint on canvas, somehow the two things are matching! Amazing.
For reasons I hope will become clear once colour happens, the flowers have a lot of texture. Thick paint that will take ages to dry. I can tell already, this won't be ready for colour before the 25th and this makes me sad.
But it will be worth it. I want this to be a painting to hang on my wall, so I'll take the extra effort and time to make it wall-worthy. I might even buy a frame for it!
I don't know if you can see in the photos, but in person, it looks almost like there is colour in there. An optical illusion or a trick of how warm mars black interacts with cool titanium white? The cup and saucer especially already look the correct colour. It's weird.
It's taken me 9 days to get this far on the first layer. One would imagine the early parts of the painting would be dry by now, but no such luck.
Tomorrow is the 25th of May, the anniversary of the Glorious Revolution in the book The Nights Watch and one for remembering those we lost. I won't have the colour finished in time, but perhaps I can finish this layer.
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