Torpedo Factory #3: Colors

I should have known that this was going to be harder than I thought it would be.

The lightest value is the red thing with the warm spotlight on it.  You’ll notice in my painting — I was in a hurry and obsessed with the darn cloth — that the ceramic bowl is the lightest thing.  In theory, the lightest thing in this painting should be the red thing.  That’s what made this so difficult.  The darkest object in this painting is the white ceramic bowl.  Oy.

In order for the top of the red cube to have the lightest value, though, some decisions have to be made.  How are you going to make it the lightest?  We were instructed to let cadmium red straight out of the tube be the lightest, which meant that everything else has to be lowered in value.

And thus, my butt was kicked once again.   If I would have had more time — say, 4 hours instead of 3 — I could have really pulled things together and got the cloth color more accurate and brought down that bowl a bit.  Lots of interesting reflections, shadows, highlights and backlight to to capture that I just glossed over.

Paint!  For you.  Is good!