Elegance in Art Starts with Careful Attention to Value Relationships
In art where there is real tonal beauty—where the light and dark nuances are rendered with thoughtful care—a sense of elegance will permeate your work of art.
In the painting membership, we are delving into the topic of values and tonal beauty. Before beginning, I want to share a bit of my journey in how I began to understand the importance and beauty conceived in your work when you really pay attention to the nuances of value.
First off, I came to oils after working in watercolors, and one of the reasons I made the switch to oils was because I wanted to get the luscious and vibrant colors I was seeing in the work of the local artists I admired and wanted to achieve in my own work.
When I began taking oil painting classes, I chose instructors who used vivid color. It was heaven, playing with vivid color and always being pushed to go brighter and really hit the high notes of color.
The year I was finally was able to study with the Doyenne of Color, Danni Dawson, I entered a new level of awareness of color, she pushed more than any other instructor I had had, asking me to observe more and see the color vibrations. She would also point out when my neutrals were all off, and she pointed out when my values were out of whack as well. Danni had no problem being blunt and abrasive at times when things were going all wrong.
Her directness is what I needed at the time and forced me to reassess the areas in my art practice that needed attention.
It was then that I realized I needed to go back and build a better foundation on the basics… and this meant I needed to focus more on rendering value, because I reasoned that all the mistakes I was making fell within the realm of correct values and neutrals.
This was early in my oil painting journey and I was still working as a full-time architect. By acknowledging that I had to shift the focus of my studies, I also had to accept that I would no longer be able to study with Danni (at that time) and had to switch to study with the local master of tonal beauty, Robert Liberace. This was a difficult decision for me because I knew I would be leaving all the instruction in color and painting techniques to be surrounded by charcoal and earth tones.
As reluctant as I was, I knew this was a weak area in my skill set, so I dove in and tried to learn as much as I could.
My first class with Rob Liberace was in the winter of 2009. Every time Rob would demonstrate, I would take copious notes, writing every step down and then try to apply the lessons learned to my work. But taking notes and having good intentions does not always make for change in behavior.
In Rob’s class, I would block in the figure and lay in the large masses of value and then I would think the drawing was done and I would pull out another sheet of paper and begin a new drawing. Rob noticed this and asked me why I was not going back and refining the drawing more. This was the first time that I realized he saw more shifts in value than I was seeing.
Being the sort not to be left out, I went back to the discarded drawing and began working on it again, really trying to note the nuances and see if I could add more to it. (Here is the blog post about this lesson and the drawing I completed that day).
As I continued to study with Rob, my eye became more honed to seeing value shapes and in expressing and celebrating the nuances. All the drawings created in these classes were exercises in seeing and rendering the form, and as I became more adept at seeing the shifts in value, I began to realize that my ability to see the value shifts in color became more honed, enabling all my work to move to a new level of expression.
It is from this experience that I began to develop the opinion, that in artwork where there is real tonal beauty—where the nuances are rendered with thoughtful care—a sense of elegance permeates the work.
Why is learning to see values so important?
Value, first and foremost is the foundation that supports all other aspects of the painting. If your values are off, even a great composition will not be able to convey your idea because the viewer will have difficulty discerning what is going on.
Also, seeing the value shifts in your subject, makes it easier to make decisions when painting. You see the shifts in value, which in turn makes it easier to mix your paint colors.
When mixing colors, always ask these four questions:
What is the local color you are trying to match and what pigment on your paint palette that is the closest to it?
How light or dark is the local color you are trying to match?
What is the color temperature of the local color?
How saturated is the local color you are trying to match?
Notice after selecting the paint pigment that is closest to the local color, the next question is about deciding on the value of the color you are mixing. As much as I love color, getting the correct value of the color is the most important aspect of painting realistically.
Inside the membership we are spending a month on studying the importance of values and tonal beauty. Join us for the skill-building workshop on Values and Tonal Beauty.