rules about keys

[Form]

cant for the life of me remember where i read it... i keep thinking schmid or whittacker or ron lemen... but i cant find it anywhere.

some rule about if you do a high key painting, dont use value contrast...use temp/sat contrast instead, and vice versa....

so if you do a high contrast painting you keep your colours muted, and if you do a high key/low value contrast painting you use hue and temperature to compose?


reason being im trying to compose a painting of a swamp panoramic in high key warm reds/pinks/yellows... and i dont know whether leaving the dark values out of the foreground is a good or bad thing... if im using sort of impressionistic colours, should i leave the foreground in the same high key (basically i was thinking of working all values 50%+ and just using saturation/temperature/line to compose?)

does that make ANY sense? :D

[Art_Addict]

The temperature relationship is always important while painting but i would watch out with set rules like that.

What do you mean with working all values 50% ? It is the relationship between values that is important.
As is the case for hue and chroma as well. All painting is constantly comparing one against the other.
Look at the impressionists for the effect you want to achieve. However I always feel that I miss the proper
value relationships in their painting.
Things in the background should have lower chroma and be lower in value outdoors depending on atmospheric perspective..

I'm not really answering your questions... hehe
Hope this helps a bit though

[steve kim]

does that make ANY sense? :D

no.

formulas are only good for one thing: to keep people from thinking and deciding for themselves.

since you already have an understanding of the vocabulary (chroma, keying, etc) beyond observing what others have done, it's up to you to decide what to do. what is it you want to achieve? how will you get there? what are the trade-offs and are they worth it? are the things you stand to gain worth what you will lose?

vague i know but at this level what else is there! :)

steve

[k4pka]

True to the above. If you want to work in a high key, then do so. If you want to keep it purely high key, then by definition you wouldn't have any dark values. You would make your darkest dark a middle value, and key to that.

And though not a rule, you will find that with a limited set of values, you will need to work more with colour temperature to turn the forms convincingly.

Naturally, since its your decision, you can violate the key at anytime to get an eye catcher. Do it too much however, and your painting wont be high keyed at all, it will just have a jumbled mess of values.

[Form]

231994

here is how the painting came out over about 4 hours.

As you guys said - there are no set formulas to follow, but i think there are certainly contexts in which certain approaches are more effective. There are also broad, universal 'rules' that help a painting from being seen as crap in the eyes of the vast majority of those who see it.

This was an experiment to try working without high value contrast and using colour more, to see what would happen.

I think i got a bit confused though, i decided to key high (using only values above 50% in photoshop) and then half way through decided to challenge myself to use only one hue... because i then lost my colour contrast i think it turned out too washy. Its really about needing to break comfort zones for myself i think. It was a useful experience and i think i learned a lot about using magic greys. I was pretty stoked when my roommate was like 'ooh i like the blues!'. Its an approach i find really intuitive and simple... i have wanted to approach a painting in that way since i saw the tutorial vance kovacs did on magic greys... i finally did it. Anyway...
Art Addict - Yep, good point, temp is ideally useful in both situations. It was more a case that i had heard to use temp and saturation to create contrast INSTEAD of values, in this approach... anyway cheers for your input.
Stevekim - rules are for tools! That is very useful advice though about premeditating a painting. This painting really taught me that i need to spend time planning and making decisions about my piece before jumping into it (at least when im doing something that has a definable goal). really useful - cheers man.
kapka - yeah, its all about subtlety :)

[Faxtar]

cant for the life of me remember where i read it...

Perhaps it was Harold Speeds book The Practice and Science of Drawing? Here is a link to page 208 were he talks about it. http://books.google.com/books?id=mFoFf35rIpIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=harold+speed&sig=ryAcYJ43Ucb9oaWQu9hZbfDP_GU#PPA208,M1
But remember its like Vilppu says, there are no rules, only tools.

[Form]

But remember its like Vilppu says, there are no rules, only tools.

now im stuck in an eternally self referencing contradiction, THANKS.

[Faxtar]

now im stuck in an eternally self referencing contradiction, THANKS.

And the only rule is there are no rules and never say never.

[Form]

DID YOU KNOW ATOMS NEVER ACTUALLY TOUCH EACH OTHER??

Wait did i just stumble into the Lounge?