Tomales Bay - Local Tone

Tomales Bay, California . 30x30, oil on linen

In my last post, I talked about local tone using just THREE VALUES. This painting is local tone, with three distinct groupings of a light group, medium group and dark group. But there are more than three values. My light group, as is very obvious in this particular painting, is the sky, the sky reflected in the water, the yellow house and boat house and the white roof. They create a wonderful circular pattern in this painting. The mediums are the rest of the houses (blue and red) and the 3 roofs in the center. The dark group includes the trees and the dark gray roof and the corresponding reflections including the darks under the docks to the right. The docks themselves are both light and medium and create their own pattern.

I currently have a number of other LOCAL TONE paintings in various stages of development. Local Tone is, I believe, my favorite visual approach. Stay tuned! But my next big painting will be light and shadow. As Kevin Weckbach likes to say "the foundation for a good light and shadow painting is a solid local tone."

Tomales Bay is in Northern California, or almost directly west of Petaluma.  Every time my husband and I travel to visit his family, we drive to Tomales Bay to get fresh oysters. We then eat oysters for days! Yes, most of them are eaten raw, but the chef will BBQ "some" for those who just can't eat them raw. But oh, my, talk about tasting of the ocean. I do love a good oyster, and Tomales Bay is where we go to get them. I have heard that there is now an outlet from the farm we go to in SF.  The Farm is called Hog Island. I highly recommend it.