"Paintings With Personality"

I did this sketch in Prague, Chez Republic. I was very interested in the light, middle and dark value shapes. I will do a better job of creating value dominance if I do the painting again on larger paper.

One night a month for the past 20 years, you might have found me sitting around a restaurant table with the same group of friends, talking, laughing, and sometimes crying. I can “snicker” over something said for several days, after each dinner. Last winter, I mistakenly went to the wrong restaurant. By the time I realized my error I was in a narrow, dark alley that had recently been closed for through traffic. Of course there weren’t any “dead end” signs, and there was nowhere to turn around. The only recourse was to back out. You guessed it, there was a black car parked against the (also dark) building and I backed into it. The car was invisible, it was too dark and everything around it was dark.

It’s the same with value in art; dark against dark is a bigger dark, dark in dark is still dark. There is no contrast and nothing to grab our attention. In art, white is the highest or lightest value and black is the lowest or darkest value and painters have to learn to see their subjects in terms of light and dark. Value helps us explain the shape and form of things in our paintings. Value can be the lightness or darkness of a color as well as black or white. It’s fairly easy to see value to black, white, and gray, but the value in color is more difficult. Colors also have a value range, just like black to white, but they don’t all have the 9 steps of tones. Yellow, for example, is very light and at its darkest doesn’t reach a mid-value. Blue, on the other hand, has a deeper value range and can reach values of 8 or 9.

There are several reasons why we need value in all art forms. A few of those reasons are listed below:

• Design - Many painters think about what colors they are going to use when they begin a painting without first giving consideration to the very important task of designing the composition. The human eye sees value first when viewing a painting, and automatically goes to the area of greatest contrast. Artists take advantage of this by using value to create a focal point, and direct their viewer through the areas in their work that they consider the most important.
• Create an illusion - Value is used to create depth and gradation in a painting. Value contrast creates the depth, and value gradation creates the mass and contour. Painters must fully understand light and how it acts on surfaces in order to create an illusion of light in their work.
• Create Interest: As mentioned above, the contrast between light and dark attract the human eye and create interest and excitement in a painting.­­­
• Help the viewer see – Without the illusion of a light source we can’t see. Value illuminates and depicts rounded surfaces, angles, and textures.
• Improve our work - When we see, understand, and use value correctly our design and composition will improve and we will see our work improve dramatically.

Art that shows a full range of value is usually successful, assuming the design is good. Even when creating abstracts or non-representational art, harmonizing light and dark values is extremely important. This is only a drop as far as value is concerned. The best way to learn is to read and practice. My next blog post will be on other aspects of value and the artist can learn to see value.

I have to finish about the poor man whose car I backed into. I got out of my car and went into the small tavern I was next to, and announced my error to the room in general. A nice man got up and accompanied me outside. We called the police, got all insurance issues ironed out and I was only a little late for dinner.