15 x 15 inches.  Acrylic on canvas. Available for purchase.

In my past paintings I was trying to use as many colors as posible, creating very complex combinations. Now i'm trying to focus on more contrasting palettes with more variations of tone and value insted of hue.

15x15" Acrylic on canvas. Available for Purchase.

15x15'' Acrylic on canvas. Available for Purchase. 

Getting the colors and values right.

When we are kids, and we are learning how to paint, often the teacher will suggest for us to learn how to see, to look closely to our subject to detect every variation in shape, but not so often we are asked to approach color in the same way. If you look at an apple, there are many different tones of green, yellow, and orange. Getting them wrong  or  painting the whole apple without variation will look as bad as  getting the shape of the apple wrong. I’m convinced that if you get the tone of the color right, then color will becomes the main  subject of the painting an shape would become the supporting role.
Tone variations are easier to see when we are working with one color only, in this case, green.

15x15" Acrylic on canvas.  Available for Purchase. 

15x15" Acrylic on canvas.  Available for Purchase. 

I love to encourage new artist to develope your own method and creative process. I would like to share with you some of the steps involved in my artwork. 

I start by setting up the subject, and then choosing a pleasant composition ( I use a piece of cardboard as a viewfnder, this allows me to make  marks as guides). Once I have established the composition I start transferring it to a toned canvas. I tend to choose the brightest color in the image as the background color. That way the subject would look even brighter one the painting is completed.

One of the most important steps of a painting is the composition. If you don't arrange the objects in a pleasing manner, the painting is going to look out of balance.  

A good technique is to connect the figures geometrically. In this painting you can see that the three figures are connected by lines. The shadow of the figure at the top is continued by the shadow of the figure in the middle, and both of the corners of the oranges are draw by the same line. This lines are not all going to be visible once  the painting is finished, but it will give the effect of continuity that is so esential for a painting that pleases to the eyes. 

The nex step is to put down the colors.  I f you get the values of the colors right your image will read as a real volume.

15x15'' Acrylic on canvas. Available for purchase.

12x12  Acrylic on canvas. Available for purchase. 

15x15" Acrylic on canvas.  Available for Purchase. 

15x15" Acrylic on canvas.  Available for Purchase.