Thursday, November 17, 2016

Just One Shot


sold.

I've been meaning to do this for a while - paint an example of how value does all the work but color gets the credit. After painting this one above, I did this other version where all the colors are in the right family, but the values are mostly wrong. You can see how the colors are still interesting, but nothing holds together - the scene is only vaguely 3-dimensional. Honestly, I could have (and meant to) push it a lot further (make the values WAY wrong), but my brain pushed back against it. I will try again someday.

Value is the number ONE thing I end up helping my students with. If you want your painting to look 3-D, you've got to get the values right.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I appreciate it! important concept :)

Kathy Clu said...

That is exactly what I teach but you said it much more concisely! If you don’t mind, I am going to steal your quote “Tone does all the work but color gets all the credit” Brilliant!!

Carol Marine said...

Please do, Kathy!! I stole it myself. : )

Mary Sheehan Winn said...

I even like the wrong value painting but I do get it!

Julie Mai said...

What I have struggled with, is not value from a monotone point of view...I can nail that....it's value in colour. I get so thrown off by chroma. A long time ago, when I was a faux finisher, back in the days when a paint store fan deck had the LRV (light reflective value) assigned to every colour,; I cut up the whole deck (about 2000 colours) and placed them all in their respective order. I was shocked at how still, a vibrant yellow, can seem so much lighter than it's true "value".
Tomorrow I start a new idea, that I hope will help me with my 6 year long struggle. I am painting my palette (mixing) mid grey. I have recently become aware of this idea, and I hope it will help me nail value when dealing with chroma. Like all good Germans, I like efficiency, and doing a value study first, not only dulls my painting, but takes away from the spontaneity.
Thanks Carol for your continued posts!

Unknown said...

The bad value painting, though incorrect, still has a nice variety of values. It is also a good composition, which all makes it a lovely abstract!

Caroline said...

Please explain 'value' . Thanks.

Carol Marine said...

Caroline, value is the lightness or darkness of a color. I have a whole ArtByte (online tutorial) about value if you're interested, here: http://www.dailypaintworks.com/ArtTutorials/ArtBytePage?inArtByteId=31