3 shades of gray

Camping!!!

I didn't paint anything yesterday because I was "roughing it" with one of my good friends.  We've both never built fires OR hammock camped, so we went to a state park that had little camping lots and a bathhouse (yay for toilets!) and trails that were easy to follow and had many-a-time been trod.  We coined it the 'kindergarten class' of camping.  Which, for camping for the first time by ourselves, I think it was pretty successful!  Praise God we had FANTASTIC weather and no one died or had even the slightest flesh wound.

"Gray day, everything is gray.  I watch, but nothing moves today" - Dr. Seuss' My Many Colored Days

Color intensity is the richness of color: how blue is a blue, how green is a green; but color value is the lightness or darkness of a color.  Today I studied how to use value to create dimension and depth... the rules were to create 3 shades of gray and only use those 3 values to make the object come to life.  It is difficult!  My eye doesn't automatically want to look at the big picture.  I'm excited to practice it more this summer. 

"Art is 10% inspiration, 10% perspiration, and 80% education." 

          - Penny Soto, The Watercolorist's Answer Book