Perfecting Value and Color
by Ned Mueller
Learning value relationships is probably the easiest and most basic technique we can learn. But, identifying how light or dark something in a painting needs to be can be a bit more complicated.
The Old Masters studied values for four years…yes, four long years before they worked seriously in color! It’s hard to get workshop students nowadays to work in values for four days, but those that do really can reap great rewards. When learning about color, the value of a color is what students usually get wrong. For any painting, the different value arrangements of shapes will be the main “structure.” The old saying really holds true: “Values do all the work and color gets all the credit!" Students should work diligently on getting a good solid grasp on how to arrange values within a painting.
A good and simple way to learn values is to premix four values: on a scale of 0 to 10, 0 being white and 10 being black; mix four values, your lightest being a 1 or 2 and your darkest being an 8 or 9. Then mix two mid-tone values in between those. About a 3 or 4 and a 6 or 7. You could mix one 5 for the middle value with the light and dark, but having four values may work better to cover a more realistic look. The idea is to learn to simplify whatever we are painting. This way you will have a better handle on painting form. When learning, the simpler we can make it the better. Most of us see way too much and our paintings become busy and detailed. This is why you see artists squint down so they can see simple relationships and make adjustments accordingly.
“Students should work diligently on getting a good solid grasp on how to arrange values within a painting.”
As artists, we need to start out painting simple relationships. Perfecting our values and colors is how we will achieve results and see our paintings grow.
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