Month 2-Dark/Light Pattern Wrap Up

24x24, oil on board

I picked a simple subject for this last month's project since I would miss half the classes while I was in Europe. I did manage to finish it in time, so my plan did work perfectly. It was a  fun project. And it was successful to the assignment. The reference for this painting was from a 2008 newspaper cover story on, you guessed it, tomatoes!  The trick was that in order to get the painting to work as dark/light pattern, I either had to darken the tomatoes to match the value of the cast shadow, which was dark purple, or lighten the shadow to go with the value of the tomatoes, which is the direction I took. In order for dark/light pattern to work the darks must be tied together in value. In the light value, which is the whole background, I worked on gradation. Starting cooler and darker in the upper right hand corner and moving diagonally across to the lower left got warmer and  lighter.