Finding a "path" with values

 Finding a dark "path" through your painting

One of the ideas I took away from Dan Wiemer's workshop was finding a path of values. In class today we had everyone take their reference photo and overlay it with transparent tracing paper.  Here is my process start to finish:

I began with this reference photo I took while on a walk in Lesko Park, Aurora.

I placed a piece of tracing paper over it, and with a black marker, I filled in everything that looked dark. I also moved the large tree to the left and placed the eagle closer to a center of interest. I tried to connect the darks to create a pathway for the eyes to move through.

I added some darks across the bottom  to make more connections. 

I drew my new pattern onto cold press paper.

I did this using Dan Wiemer's method, but you can also work light to dark, like normal watercolor, as long as you always work toward getting that pathway in your painting.

So here I masked out everything that was not going to be darkest dark.

I mixed a dark water color with some matte medium and painted over the painting, mostly trees.

When dry I removed the mask. Boy, do I HATE that step.

Then I proceeded to paint sky, water, and foreground.

With watercolor. 

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The main thing I wanted to stress in class was not the procedure, but the 5 minute exercise of finding your darkest shapes to see if they create an interesting path. You can have a so-so reference, but if you adjust darks, add shadows, create movement, the picture will be much more interesting and cohesive.

Another artist, John Salminon, creates a "path of white" before painting his subjects. It is the same idea of creating interest and cohesiveness in your painting before you even add a drop of paint. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94vJwgFvYCc