I REOPENED THE PANDORA BOX...

Hello ^⁠_⁠_⁠_⁠_⁠_⁠_⁠_⁠_⁠_⁠^

I have great news — at least concerning myself. I made a value study (gasp!). WITH ACRYLICS (play Beethoven 5th Symphony).

If you read, one of my previous articles — Fun fact, I have only one subscriber aka myself. You know that my relationship with acrylics is quite particular. It's a love-hatred story.

Having 2 hours of free time on a Sunday, I decided to paint after watching a great video explaining on how to see values (despite colors). I picked the watercolor set... *Wait a second... It's my first time making a value study and watercolor is not a great option if I want to paint over mistakes*. Then an illumination came... I have acrylic paint, but I hadn't a great experience with it.

However, for the sake of art —but in reality, I didn't want to lose these 2 hours, now 1h47 min. I took my suspicion to side and opened the box where I kept them (you get it?).

And this time, I made sure to be in a well ventilated aka windy place. I used two colors : Titanium white and Black. I also made sure to mix (in quantity) 90% white with 10% black, to obtain grey, and not as the popular belief 50% white and 50% black, credit to Mei, Instructor by Winged Canvas.

And it worked!

Sketching out the shape of the head and hair, adding guidelines, mixing the paint and painting with a medium size brush.

It was a success. My painting was a success. So was my day. My weeks. Months. Years. And my life. Ahem! I'm exaggerating, but you get it...

# How did I get there?

Glad that you asked <⁠(⁠￣⁠︶⁠￣⁠)⁠>.

Recently, I wanted to level up my art skills and realized it would be great to finally learn values.

*I said realized, cuz' since last year I camed across videos where artists often tell to study value before color.

*I skipped that part, completely. I was confident in my painting skills — cuz' I was using reference images as well referencing the displayed colors, but... The first attempts of original works weren't that good. The colors were off place, same when I painted (for the first time) a portrait without reference & understanding face planes. But I still skip value, until the last weeks. I acknowledge the fact, that I **need** to study value if I want to paint impactful landscapes and portraits. And I'm glad that I did, it was hard but fun and also very entertaining (No one was there when I was squinting my eyes)* 🤣 

I would definitely do more in the future.

# Fun fact 😎

My cat's name is Descartes. Yes we named her after the famous french philosopher René Descartes. Don't ask me why... Strangely enough, I only got 6/20 (E for the English Folks) after each test.

# Referral Video

Sketch Ideas

A plan to Greatly Improve Your Drawing in 2025