Todd M. Casey - Fine Art

Today I'm posting my Munsell Neutral Scale. This is a useful tool when I'm painting still life's in my studio. The Neutral String is important as Value is probably the most important thing in setting up a painting. This was created with a sheet of Acetate and I painted oil paint mixed to the Munsell Chips on the back. Now I can check my color by daubing on the front (acetate) and then just wipe it off. The Munsell system breaks color down into Value, Hue and Chroma. I'll try to post later on Hue and Chroma.

I was accepted into this years 2011 Salon International at the Greenhouse Gallery in San Antonio Texas. It was a great experience to go to the awards and see the awardees, and to be part of the opening. I just found out I was selected as one of the Jury's Top 50, so I'm providing a link. http://www.greenhousegallery.com/cgi-bin/mp/salon/siawards.pl?Category=top50

I'm posting some poster studies that I've worked on in the last few month. They are for the 2 paintings that I'm working on now, and hope to have completed in the next few months. I've also posted the study for the last still life I completed. Poster studies are a very important part of my paintings. I try to finish the usually 5 x 7 painting in about 2-3 hours from life, so that my decisions are based on other decisions that are being painted. When form painting on the larger painting, I tend to focus on the small area that I'm rendering (sometimes referred to as window shading technique), but with the poster study I can focus on creating the picture as a whole. I then refer to the poster to make sure that those larger relationships are transferred to the final painting.