Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine - Value Study

To begin with you'll need an image or, if you don't have a picture of Nick Saban with you, a still life to work from. Choose a fairly simple one and make a few value studies in pencil in your journal. The object of a value study is to break down the image into digestible bits and to compose those bits as well as possible. Value studies are not supposed to be finished work. They are simple sketches that help you think through and compose your picture. In the process of composing the picture you will deal with any potential issues before you get to the painting.

Here's a value study from Stan Prokopenko. You can see that it's just a sketch, it's small, and it didn't take him long to do. More importantly, you can see how he's simplified and composed the image. He's simplified the image by turning everything into values. Now, rather than worrying about drawing each individual thing in the image he can quickly block it in. It's less obvious that he's working with the values to make each rock or tree separate from the ones in front or behind. The scene he's drawing from wouldn't have been like this in real life. The values would have been all jumbled up. He has prioritized them.

http://www.stanprokopenko.com/blog/images/sunsetpinetreeforest/value-comp.jpg

Once you have worked through your pencil value studies and you've got the composition the way you want it move on to repeating it with water color. You can do this in your journal if the pages will take the watercolor without crumpling. Otherwise you'll need to do it on a scrap piece of watercolor paper. Use a pencil to sketch out the outlines. Don't make it too big, maybe 6"x8" or so. Remember, keep it minimal.

Start by making up a 50/50 mixture of burnt Sienna and Ultramarine.

The reason for using these two colors is that they are compliments. That means that they are directly opposite of each other on the color wheel. When you mix two compliments you get a grey. While it appears that the colors on the color wheel should correspond to some color that you can buy, that's not actually so. These are the only true compliments that I am aware of that you can buy in a tube.

Below is a chart created by watercolor artist Lance Weisser. If you count on the top row, six from the left, see how the right mixture of these two colors makes a grey? That's the grey that you're going to mix and use for this painting. The whole thing will be done using different values of that grey.

https://weisserwatercolours.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/49-burnt-sienna-ultramarine.jpg

Here's a little video demonstration:

Once you have your grey mixed up move on to making a string. Painters can work from a variety of strings; color strings, value strings, opacity strings and so on. Lance Weisser's example above is really a variety of color strings. From top left to right he has a color string that transitions from pure burnt Sienna to pure ultramarine. Descending from each color he has short three value strings that show the change in value as he adds more and more water to each color. Those value strings are what you're going to make. Instead of three, like Lance has, you'll make five. These five need to include your grey at it's darkest, the white of the paper, and three shades in between.

Here's a demo video from Peter Wolley. Note that he's not making a value string. You still need to do that even if he's not.

http://www.artistsnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/watercolor-painting-demo-Casino_step3.jpg?a6521a