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     As a forever fan of John Singer Sargent's paintings, I've poured over every quote I could find to give me clues about the way he was taught and his approach to painting. At the same time, I have to acknowledge that I wasn't put on the planet to paint just like him, or anybody else for that matter. This life is a journey to paint like myself, yet I definitely want to take advantage of anything in somebody else's experience that could possibly help me understand more about this daunting task we refer to as painting.

     Although many new and very chromatic pigments have come on the market since Sargent's time, as painters we are still bound in place by the exact same black to white value range that painters throughout history have had to work with. For all of the innovations, any supposedly blacker black or whiter white that has come on the market has barely moved the needle, if at all. And for representational painters, especially ones like me who are trying to convey a convincing illusion of light and depth, we are still faced with the frustrating task of depicting the unbelievable value range of nature and light, with an extremely limited set of tools. That's exactly the reason most of the painters I admire place a huge emphasis on understanding values. It's because that is where the limitations of our palette come into clear focus. On the other hand, a solid understanding of those limitations is the key to unlocking the power of your palette.

       In order to figure out how to use my materials to their best advantage, my first step was to figure out what it was I wanted to do with them. This is something so obvious, that it is more often than not, overlooked. In practice, not all of the instruction I received in school seemed to fit for what I was trying to accomplish (although a part of me still expects to be struck by lightning for admitting this). Ditto on some of the quotes by Sargent and his teacher Carolus Duran. Those teachings, typically working with figures as subject matter, advise starting with an average light and average shadow and sneaking up on the value adjustments from there. Over time I realized this did make the most sense if the object you were painting was in the mid-value range or something a step or two down from our lightest value. On a value scale where 10 is white and a subject that is 7th or 8th value, in bringing up the lights you would still have a couple of values to play with before you would hit the upper limits of pure white. In that situation, there's not much risk of running out of room to describe any additional value changes the painting required. What if though,as is often the case in still life,  the actual object you are trying to depict is white? And worse yet, what if that white object has a highlight that's important to the composition? Where do you want to use up the very most extreme value statement that you have? If I want to capture the most intense feeling of light that I can achieve, I find that it's critical to have those very subtle value transitions right there in front of me. It works best to have a spot of the very lightest value I plan to use so I have a clear visual in front of me of what my parameters are and am confident I'm making the best statement my paints will be capable of. I'm far from being the first painter to push the envelope in this way but at the same time it flies in the face of a lot of the classic art instruction out there.

    Essentially I'd be using a similar approach with anything white, like lilies or orchids, with one big caveat. On those objects, as well as a light value object that wasn't in my center of interest, I might be willing to sacrifice the very lightest highlight, either leaving it out altogether or content myself with more of a suggestion of it.

                                           "Arrangement with Brass Bowl"   10x12     oil on linen

    As an example of a situation where I used this approach, I've brought up this painting with a white pot that was deceptively difficult to pull off. I adjusted and readjusted and re-readjusted the values in the focal area, in my attempt to to as successfully as possible, capture the light, the shiny quality of the porcelain, but also the silhouette of the slight bit of underplane up against the intense highlight of the brass bowl behind it. In the area of the highlight, changes in form are indicated more by the thickness of paint and the way it has been applied rather than by a different note of paint. I've practiced 'Conservation of Values' to squeeze the most out of the upper value range. If I had attempted to capture this same effect by starting with average light and average shadow notes, I truly cannot envision creating anything other than a hopeless mess. In addition, had I started out early on locking myself into a different value range by painting in the background first, I could have easily given up all or most of the options that enabled me to eventually be able to capture what intrigued me about the arrangement.

      For the white pot in this painting, hanging onto enough value range to convey the shiny character of the porcelain was important to me. When I'm painting an object somewhat lower in value, I will often revert back to starting off with more of an average of the light however. It kind of gets down to instincts and being willing to try pushing the limits when it might just pay off. Since every subject and every composition presents unique challenges to the painter, I never feel like there's a one-size-fits-all approach that will work best in every situation.