About the author
Gary Tucker is a watercolor artist/ instructor living in the Boston area. He offers online workshops , in person workshops, and a catalogue of watercolor videos on technique and design
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Description
Today I will give you a couple of new terms. Low Key and High Key, the Mid key exists also but is not used with the frequancy of the other 2.
These terms describe the general tonality of a painting or scene. A high key painting is made up of values on the higherer end of the value scale and a low key painting of values primarily on the low end. Understanding the value arrangement before starting the painting can alert you to the need for more lights or more darks Brighter color or subtle color and this will also help you to create the mood your looking for.
As you can see the higher key has more potential with brighter/ purer color where as the low key painting is more evocative using grays and subtle mixed darks
In the drill today we start by creating a value scale together using a single color black.
The goal in doing the scale is to better understand the lights and darks and how to acheive them in the media of watercolor. Technically we lighten a color by adding water to it affecting the consistency of the paint and so we often paint by feel as much as we do by sight.
To further the exercise I continue by squirting out a bit of pure pigment onto the paper - lining up lighter hues with the scale equivalent. The point in this exercise is to understand which colors we need to do a low key painting effectively.
The drill has got me thinking about an approach to the moonlight over the salt marsh and I envision creating a dark moody painting with blue as a mother color. Last week our mother color was yellow orange and so this will figure into all of my mixtures. But before I hate into the color work I want to begin with a single color study using one of my favorites Sepia.