Lines and Colors of Objects vs Value Pattern

This week on Facebook BeckerArt Group I was looking at a couple of paintings that the artist Kar and Mark posted. I also saw a bunch of other older posts and it started me thinking about what many of these paintings had in common. All were painted nicely and the drawing was done well, but the thing that they lacked was a pattern of light and dark values

When I looked at these paintings and started analyzing them I squint my eyes to get rid of color and to see large value shapes and that was what I didn't see in these works. They all lacked a large value pattern to hold the painting's composition together.

After asking Kar and Mark I took their paintings into Photoshop and manipulated them to visually show you what I would do to bring a large value pattern into these paintings.  

This is Kar's first painting then she did another which is pictured below

Kar's second go at it was much better, but the pattern could be even more pronounced as I demonstrate in the Photoshopped image below.

Above I had darken the entire foreground which included the front trees and the foreground snow. Now you have a light background and a dark forground.

Above is Mark's painting that is technically painted very well. 
Since there are a lot of hard edged black lines in the painting, that usually tends to flatten a painting. Below you will see 2 variations of how I manipulated the values to achieve a larger more simplified value pattern.

Above I put the pelicans against a light background and made them all in shadow making it a large dark against a large light background.

Above I switched the large values around from the pelicans being in the light and the background now is dark.

Thank You Kar and Mark for letting me use your paintings.

Ottawa Art League W/C Workshop Ottawa IL February 25th

Lake County Art League W/C Workshop Grayslake IL April 15th and 16th

Bagley Area Arts Collaborative W/C Workshop Bagley MN June 13,14,15th
Dillman's Watercolor Workshop Lac du Flambeau WI  June 18th to the 22nd
Thousand Island Art Center Clayton NY  July 19th, 20th and 21st

Vermont Art Event, Burlington VT Dates to come
Dillman's Gouache/Watercolor Lac du Flambeau WI Sept 24th to the 28th