Peggi Kroll-Roberts Workshop Day 3
Day 3: “High Key” Painting
Day 3 of the Peggi Kroll-Roberts workshop at l’Atelier aux Couleurs focused on painting “high-key” paintings. This approach to painting is focused on a narrow range of values at the high end (light) of the value scale. I’ve recently experimented with this approach (here, here). I think it’s ironic that these paintings seem to give a much better sense of light that high-contrast paintings. You’d think that an object painted in near white next to near black would give the best sense of light (and sometimes, it can work), but a high-key painting seems to work even better. I think it’s because the painting overall is much lighter, the darkest shadows are readable and not so dark they loose their vibrancy.
So, I have a treat! If you 8 minutes and 49 seconds to spare, I have a full start-to-finish demo of Peggi using this technique in a 20 minute demo.
Here are some of my own high key studies:
High Key Study 1
High Key Study 2
Finally, this isn’t high key, but just a regular “full key” study.
Figure Study
interesting.
hard to find lighting like that here in Chicago.
I’ll have to try this in the studio. Will that work?
Yes, this should work indoors. It’s really just a different way of seeing, and less about the quality/strength of light.