I am one of those painters that too often just jumps in to my work and wind up over-painting, either too many colors, too bright or high key etc. trying to restrain myself and still keep the intensity is a challenge for sure. after struggling this late fall with works related to the last blog, i set that subject aside, did some reading and reflecting and came up with a an obvious but ignored (by me) technique to step back. Namely, select a simple contrast and stick to it! in this case and the example included below, "Kitchen Kollaboration", i simply restricted myself to a color complement principle: orange and blue, orange gray and blue grays with a touch of subtle blue green at a diagonal (bottle upper corner and plates in lower right). otherwise the dominant color complement is orange and blue. boy, did it make a big difference in that i was not over-coloring, creating too much distraction in color and forgetting value. the simple complement enabled me to focus on value and composition rather than trying to represent every shape in the composition. i hope this helps as it really set me on a fun course again and i now have four done in this new series on the Kitchens of Langley. Have fun and keep painting, Ron K.
