Upside Down Sketching and Hint

You might guess that an item was "upside down"  The red, white and blue bowls called to me again that I sketched for bowl and plate last Hunt.

Number 5, upside down - in the big book on the page with the greenback with the Lamy pen.

And here is the big sketchbook again for you that don't know about it and the post when I started it.
https://jocastilloartblog.blogspot.com/2016/01/happy-new-year-sketches-for-hunt-434.html

You would never know the bowls are red, white and blue.  Here is the pastel I did turned upside down.  I was going to cheat and just turn this one over.  Not kosher, eh?

Turning the painting upside down, taking a photo and changing to black and white are great ways to check if your painting is successful.  It is easy to see in the upside down photo that the ellipses are not true and the sides of the bowls are uneven.  The values in the black and white version are pretty good.  If this were a painting to frame, I would fix the sides of the big bowl.   I would be happy with the values.

If you don't have time to use the camera, you can look at your painting in a mirror and/or turn it upside down.

Here is another sample, the Fishing Shack from a few weeks back.

Fishing Shack

10 x 8 inches on Pastelbord

Try this with your paintings.  I find that I use color instead of value a lot and this doesn't always transfer to a successful painting.  More about that later.