Values In Painting - Art Class Roswell, GA.

VALUES IN PAINTING by Jill Saur

The paintings below are by Winslow Homer. The first painting is the original.  The second painting is the same one.  I removed the color from the second image to see the tonal values.

Lightness or tonal value is the light or dark of a color, regardless of its hue. Creating a black and white painting is very helpful to train your eye to perceive value.

Sometimes it’s easier to classify values into three groups: lights, darks, and mid-range.  Roughly, values from one through three are the lightest values.  Values from four through seven are the mid values, and values from eight through ten are the darkest values.  A general guide is that mid-tones should occupy 70% of your painting, the lightest lights 20%, and the darkest darks should occupy 10% of your work.

If I'm going to paint from a photo that I take, the first thing I do is put it in a photo program and I turn it into a black and white image.  When I do this, I know immediately if the image has a good range to make the composition interesting as well as intriguing.

A number of my students have been working on value drawings and paintings.  I hope this tip helps you see the importance of training your eye to see and use value changes in your artwork.

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