Hi Reader,

How does an artist start with a less than amazing reference photo to find a beautiful painting waiting to be born?

I snapped this photo back in December, through a dirty car window, on a road trip, in an industrial part of the city of Edmonton.

The sky is beautiful, what you can see of it, but most of us would probably scroll right past and choose a more accommodating painting subject.

I might have too, but I've learned how to recognize that flash of inspiration, and how to see past the clutter to the light and shadow, the shape and contrast that I can work with to create something that sings.

I love that when a photo doesn't immediately feel "painting-worthy," that it gives me some freedom to stretch my imagination, play with the raw materials, and find something I can call attention to and bring to life.

"But I can only paint what I see!"

Maybe you are working from reference photos and never getting beyond a stiff representation of your photo, detail for detail, and never quite finding a way to paint anything beyond what you see. You feel like you're just copying rather than expressing yourself more freely.

In Watercolour Mastery: Dynamic Value, my aim is to offer four ways in which value can help you move toward more freedom in interpreting your subject; preparing you and helping you prepare for more evocative work, more freedom to express the lightbulb moment behind the literal.

Four ways value can help you paint better paintings:

1. Value Strengthens Technique. ​
   In the first module of Dynamic Value, value becomes the tool to help evaluate and refine existing paintings. We're actually going to use your existing paintings and learn how adjusting values can help make a painting feel more dimensional, how strengthening contrasts can save a painting that felt like a failure and develop your ability to see what a painting needs through the painting process.
2. Value Informs Process.​
   In this module value becomes the foundation for the start-to-finish development of a painting. Instead of juggling every artistic principle you've ever heard of, you'll learn that when you simplify the painting process and focus on value, you'll be better able to understand what to focus on at each step of the painting process. You get to create a process that allows you to relax during each stage of the painting and trust that when you focus on each stage's priorities, the outcome will reflect what you've invested into it.
3. Value Expands Ideas.​
   In module three, we explore why value opens up the painting to become more than what the original idea expressed. Abstraction, simplification and experimentation get to play together, and value becomes a playground where an artist can truly feel free. This is where your painting can really come to life!
4. Value Supports Identity.​
   If you want your painting to express emotion, to carry a personal voice and experience from you to the viewer, value can help you do that. Value becomes not just an artistic principle, but an visible representation of invisible qualities; your love, awe, questions and attention speak out from your art. Sprinkled through the entire course, this focus on value as a tool for expressing your artistic voice will help you understand how free you are to be exactly who you are, even when you haven't mastered anything yet!

Watercolour Mastery: Dynamic Value opens for enrollment on Thursday, but in the next few days I want to give you a sneak preview of what you'll find in the course. Think of it as a way to sample what the course offers and see if it's a good fit for you and what you're craving in your watercolour journey.

Angela