Light in the Dark--Value

This week, I worked on a portrait of my son. I took the reference photo with my iPhone, but it took it when it was dark with just the table lamp shining on his face. It obscured most of his face and left fun shadows to play with.

I've really got to do my research on taking better photos of art! But anyway, this piece is a good example of value changes and contrast creating excitement.

Part of me really wanted to define more facial features on the left, but it was so dark that they weren't really apparent. I think it gives it some appearance of mystery.

Now, a problem I did run across is that I worked with a lot of glazes. I also didn't use white in the darker areas of the painting. This meant that most of the colors were very transparent, leaving the work streaker than I wanted. To correct this, I spent some time an arms length away using a long brush to add touches of thick, opaque color. I even had to borrow some better art supplies from my teacher because my student-grade (I'm only buying professional grade as I run out) burnt sienna and burnt umber were too transparent.