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Value, tone, shade and colout remperature.
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Message
Posted
Total novice. I've been watching a couple of videos regarding values, tones and shade and temp on the colour wheel.
I painted a mountain scene from a photo- initially a green monochrome (from my only green- emerald) to experiment with value and a deliberately narrow palette. The first iteration looked very dark so, after some thought I attempted to lift the mood only by lightening the sky and adding the complementary red colour 
to warm the foreground detail.
Notionally, the red seems a poor choice and I think purple hue might have been better although it's not a warm colour.
It's deliberately lacking on detail in an effort to focus on theory. Would anyone like to criticize the application of my understanding and offer ideas to adopt in a repaint?
Paint is Daler system 3 acrylic.
to warm the foreground detail.
Notionally, the red seems a poor choice and I think purple hue might have been better although it's not a warm colour.
It's deliberately lacking on detail in an effort to focus on theory. Would anyone like to criticize the application of my understanding and offer ideas to adopt in a repaint?
Paint is Daler system 3 acrylic.
Posted
I'd say it looks like a good effort... I am sure someone more expert than me will give you feedback but warm colours are meant to come forwards and cool move away from you. This is quite apparent with your red tree's coming into the foreground and purple hue would typically be used for trees nearer the horizon.
Posted
You've painted a good example of making distant objects recede by making colours more neutral and paler.
I'd try another painting, but this time paint the distant grey mountains with softer edges, which gives the impression of distance.
Also make the some of the colours of the vegetation in the foreground warmer. They are mainly blue green, but you would be better with a mixture of say lemon yellow and ultramarine blue, with some extra cadmium yellow added right in the foreground. Adding a touch of red to a green will also make it warmer, but overdo the red and the colour might look autumna
I think you'll get more responses to your query if you reply to the people who've offered advice - that way your query doesn't get moved down the list by newer queries
Posted
What matters is the painting, rather than strict adherence to reality - so your red trees might look wrong in a painting painted, as it were, for the sake of it; but they're a very good example of experimenting with colour and tone in this one and - they work. Because you have the principle of receding colour/tone right, and the picture is also well-composed.
Posted
Apologies for the response delay. I work some strange hours.
In an odd way I kind of like it. It has a bit of a foreboding atmosphere, like before a thunderstorm. That wans't my intention. The reference photo was a lightly overcast day.
Anyway, what I didn't do was block any of it. It was intended solely as a test of values and the receding mountain subject was an obvious one so I went straight to paint on canvas.
I've actually painted the same scene three times now and they are all different, obviously, but the overriding take from this is that I am using too much dark in my paint. The number of values might be ok but I think I'm using range 3 to 5 when I should be 1 to 3. Or spreading the ranges from 1,3 and 5 maybe.
Even my blocking is over dark. I've another landscape that needs repainting over with lighter values.
My paint set is comes in 75ml tubes. In future purchases I'll buy a 35ml black and a 150ml white. I'm a little short of white and I think that's influencing by under-use of it, vis over dark paintings.
Oh, like all underlings, I am struggling with rapidly drying paint and paint appearing to be sucked into the canvas. That's not helping either but I'm focusing on technique for now.
Appreciate the comment of 'just paint rather than focus on the fundamentals' (paraphrasing, of course) but any art I've ever produced has always been like that. Now I'm learning some of the fundamentals painting is opening up in ways I've never imagined. I'm looking at object like I've never seen them before. Interesting but strange.
Posted
Possibly too much black rather than too much dark - or alternatively, not enough light. But yes, you've created quite a foreboding painting using the materials to hand, and I rather like a bit of foreboding.
I don't have black on my palette, irrespective of medium - when I want a dark, I mix it in one of the many ways that can be done (green and red; blue and a dark brown or orange brown) but others would disagree and are happy with black. I think it gives a rather sooty look if you're not careful, though I didn't notice that in this picture.