Bringing Old Paintings Back to Life

Saturday was the first time I attended a workshop during Cheap Joe’s Blue Ridge Art Sampler on June 18-20. I was able to attend Joe’s workshop on how to recover unsuccessful paintings. Joe is such a joy to learn from and the ladies in the class were mesmerized by his knowledge of how to bring a painting back from the dead. Joe’s biggest message was what a painting needs most is VALUE. Here are 8 great tips from Joe himself!

1: Strong values in a painting create depth and dimension.

2: It also establishes the center of interest and light direction.

3: The value is the light and dark tones of the painting.

4: Values range from 10% to 90% between white and black.

5: It is suggested that you have at least 4 or more values in your painting.

6: In watercolor, start with pure color and add water to obtain degrees of value. The more water you add the lighter the value.

7: If you are working from a photo, the easiest way to see your values is to copy the photo in black and white.

8: If you are painting plein-air there are red and blue filters available to convert your color view to values.

There were several paintings that were brought in that simply were not finished. The students had started and got to the point where they were unhappy with how the painting was going and quit. They were amazed when Joe transformed their paintings by adding value and how wonderful the work looked when it was matted! Joe had lots of helpful information about reclaiming old paintings that I will share with you in the future. It was a great experience and I hope to have the opportunity to do it again!