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My daughter came home for Christmas break sporting a beautiful vintage coat and hat.  She knows the way to my heart and offered to model.  We did several photo sessions and changed the lighting and background to create different moods.  I now have about 400 photos to work from.

Where to start?  I was attracted immediately to the dark background and the poses with the white carnation.  The idea of representing the range of whites and their textures was appealing to me.  With the very dark background I knew the focus would be on extremes of value and the color would be subdued.  I used my set of Vianna Szabo Portrait Pastels (by Terry Ludwig) to paint it.  Once I knew where the lightest lights and darkest darks were all the other decisions were much easier.  I used a few harder pastels as well to help soften some of the edges.

On the next painting I wanted the concept to be about color.  I backlit my daughter using theater gel taped over a light which gave off an intense red glow like a fire.  In the photograph she was lit with an intense cool light from the front and had a black background.  I softened the lighting from the front and then made the background a mosaic of color to stay consistent with the concept.  I shortened the value range from middle values to dark and left off the extremes of light and dark.  For my palette I used my Vianna Szabo Still Life Pastels (by Terry Ludwig) along with my portrait set so I could expand the color intensity.  Keeping the value range subdued allows the color to stand out. 

Our eyes are attracted to extremes of value and bright color.  If those elements are competing for attention in a painting it confuses the viewer and the painting loses its visual punch.

Having a clear concept will help you create stronger paintings. If the concept is about value, subdue the color; if the concept is about color subdue the value differences.

You can see the value ranges in the black and white versions of the paintings below.

I will be teaching a workshop on color at the North Port Art Center in Florida, February 20-21, 2016.  I will also be teaching two portrait workshops this year in Michigan.  One in April on painting portraits from photographs and one on Painterly Pastel Portraits that is sponsored by UART Paper.  For detailed information on my workshops visit my website