Munsell Neutral Grayscale


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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Color Wheel/Color Theory

Image
Last year I was able to work on doing a color wheel with Carlos Madrid. Carlos studied color theory with Michael Aviano for a few years. He had me come to his studio and work with him once a week over a 3 month span. I started by creating a value scale, based off of the Munsell Color System. From there I worked to get the color as accurate as I could, and worked mixing the lightest colors to the darkest colors. The end result of my color wheel represents the highest chroma of each color. After working the highest chroma, I then went and created a value string of each color, using my value scale. In the end I have a very valuable color wheel that I use when painting still life's.
Read more

Step by Step: Still Life

Image
This past year I have been able to paint with a small group of professional artists in Maynard MA. While teaching, I wanted to take them through the step by step process that I had learned at The Water Street Atelier. Below is each step in this   process for doing a still life painting. The Drawing : this is the most essential part of the whole process. I use my drawing (done from life) to recreate the 3 dimensional world on my 2 dimensional paper. I'm mapping over the set up so many times that I become really familiar with the objects and the orientation of the light to the objects. Transfer to Canvas : In this step, I get a printout of my drawing to scale, and do a paint transfer to canvas. Essentially its rubbing paint on the back of paper and then applying the paper over the canvas. I use a ball point pen over the printout to push the paint onto the canvas. when my drawing is transferred and dry, I go back in and do a open grisaille. This is done usually in on
Read more

Still Life: Wash In or Ebauche

Image
I wanted to share some more work in progress shots of a painting that I've nearly completed. Here are the abbreviated steps: 1: Poster Study These are essential! With form painting sometimes its hard to see the big picture. Working on a smaller 5 x 7 or 6 x 8 can help you see the bigger forms and then you can reference this poster for you final painting. 2. Setup Having a good setup is key to making a good painting. Notice how I blocked out the light and have one  light directed on my setup but a separate light on my painting. The light is also over the top of me so that the cast shadows from my arm and brush don't fall across my surface when painting. 3. Transfer Drawing: I do a Oil transfer (put paint on the back of a printout of my drawing and go over the top of my printout with a pen to transfer lines [think carbon paper]), and then use Raw Umber to build my values before going in with color. This will guide me for the next step and als
Read more