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For almost a year, I've been trying to improve my understanding and ability to judge and paint values. Everything, of course, has values. Values help turn a form. Every painter I've tried to learn from has emphasized the importance of values. Once when The Artist Magazine featured my painting, "Spirit" in a critique, the artist who wrote the critique talked about NOTAN, which is also all about the patterning of values.

Last September I spent a week in Cinque Terre Italy in a workshop with Scott Burdick. I realized that he has an unerring ability to see and paint just the right value in just the right spot. And I realized that this is an area I need to continue to study and develop.

I began a still life class at the California Art Institute because the description of the class emphasized teaching and practicing values. I'm getting better, but suspect that this will be an area I will work on improving for the rest of my art journey.

At one point our teacher Johanna Spinks, decided to let us set up our own still lifes. I remembered a napkin and pitcher painting that I had done years and years ago while taking classes at Mission Rennaissance with my first wonderful teacher, John Paul Thornton. I decided to limit the value range to see if I could pull off something interesting. The glass perfume bottles and the paper weight were included to add some interesting texture differences from the white background, the book, the white ring pillow and the white napkin.

I had to tone down the value of some of the shadows but I think I now have the values in pretty well. What do you think?