"Value does the work..."

Last week I attended a workshop in pastel painting.  We spent three days working on VALUE, VALUE, VALUE - value BEFORE color.  "Value does the work, color gets the glory."

Now, don't get me wrong, we played a lot with color, too.  LOTS of color.

I love learning and having fun at the same time.  We watched some good demonstrations - and one that didn't turn out as planned.  That was also a good experience.  Most of the workshop leaders that I have been with, paint their demos and NEVER tell you that it isn't working. Ray Ewing, our instructor, was very up front about his painting not working - and... it was OK...what a great lesson for us all!  Thanks, Ray.

I ended up with two paintings.  Each had an underpainting done with pastel.  The initial darks are put in and then gone over with water to seal in the color. Then the color fun really begins.  It's such fun to see how much color can be put into a dark - as long as the value is the same, just about any color works!

This is the underpainting for Looking down at Nelson Pond.

Here is the finished painting.  It's a little hard to see in this image, but that tree on the left is purple, red, blue, green...

This underpainting has a red sky.  I was really working on getting in those dark values!

I have reworked the sky a couple of times on this one.  It originally had dark, foreboding clouds.

  I then tried it 'happy' it up.  I also put a slight curve in the road - which I like.

Not sure I like the cheery version as well.  I may go back to the ominous look.  Any comments?