14-Day Beginner Series - What Is “Value”

Hi, I'm Mackenzie Swenson, and welcome to Day Six of this 14-day Beginner Series for the Artist's Academy. Today, we are going to be exploring values. What do I mean when I say values? So, if you have been following along so far you probably have a general idea of what value is. So it is light and dark, right? Value is, if you to flip an image completely into gray scale, where does every piece of it land on the value range, this value scale I have here, right? And I think I mentioned this before but I'll just say it again. I do use a number system, just to keep it easy, where black is zero and white is 10. So that's, I, some people do it differently, but it's just kind of a standardized way that I find is useful for discussing things. So over here, we're gonna kind of come back to our middle line of our paintings that show these different sides of the spectrum with value, right? So we talked about these over here that exist in this middle range. So those being more mid-tone paintings, very calm, not a lot of high contrast or high intensity going on. And then on the flip side, you have these two paintings, right, the Mondrian and the Caravaggio, and these on the other hand, really live in those extremes. They're very light in places and very, very dark in places. And so that's the, just the the range that we're playing with when we talk about identifying and isolating value as a tool. So there are a couple of different things to keep in mind when playing with value. So, as we just discussed here, we've got the mid-tone versus high contrast. Another thing that you can think about with value is a slow gradation where one color is very gradually morphing or not color, where one value, is very gradually morphing into another value, versus a very distinct, abrupt shift, right, where the light and the dark are coming up against each other very quickly. So a place to look at that, is actually, in these two paintings with the Mondrian, you have that really distinct value shift happening, right? Like it's pure abstraction. So you've got these harsh boundaries coming up against each other. Whereas with the Caravaggio, you have some places where there's a very distinct boundary and shift, the top of the knee, the side inside of the forearm here, the hair against the forehead. But you have certain places where there's this really slow gradation of space between the dark and the light where you watch the light coming into the dark, or vice versa, it's kind of both. And so for that, you could look at a, you could look at spot like this side of the forearm here, right? And you can see from this light lightest part of the forearm down, it just, there's like a, there's a gradual gradation that happens as you go down, down, down, down, and then there's still a clear boundary between the shadow on the forearm and the background. But there's, it's not like there's an abrupt shift from light to dark. There's a transition that happens there. So, usually like if we look back over to this Emil Carlsen, you see a lot of places where there are these really slow, gradual transitions happening. So like, say from the light in the cherry trees down into this darker area, you have a really slow shift from this light down into this slightly darker value. So that's one of the things you can play with when using value in your paintings and drawings. And then another thing that you can use frequently is or to, kind of play with, is are you going to use a lot of different values or are you going to use just a couple? So this, again, these two paintings are actually a fantastic example of kind of those two different options. So here with the Caravaggio, everything that's in the light pretty much exists in about the same range, right? It's about in this, let's say this is 10 and this is zero, right here in the eight and nine, right? So there's not a lot of mid-tones and expanses of values being used. And then, when it gets dark, it gets dark. We pretty much go from this light to this dark. So this would be close, not entirely, there's obviously again, those transitions, but when you look at the big value shapes creating this image, it's almost a two-tone painting. Or you could think of like an Andy Warhol iconic. You've got the dark and the light and there's not a lot of variation in between. Whereas with this Mondrian painting, you actually have, even though it's high contrast, there is a full value range here, you do have a lot of those mid-tones being used. So we could look, obviously, the black fits in with this and those lines, the white is maybe it's not bright paper white, as with, who knows with the reproduction, but it's at least getting up to this nine. But then if we look at this orange that's probably gonna be somewhere in these two, but then this blue, we start to get down into here. And then with the red, we're probably straight at a five. And so, this would be a two-tone painting, and this one is using a much larger number of separate values within the composition. So again, you're thinking about overall, am I staying in my mid-tones or am I incorporating more of a high contrast range. Then thinking about the transitions between them, is there a gradation between your values or is it a distinct, line or an edge between where it's light and where it's dark? And you can use a variety of those in your painting. And then am I using a lot of different values or am I keeping it really simple to maybe two or three? So those are some things to keep in mind. And then for today's prompt just to explore a little bit about, like using value, seeing value, one of the things that's really helpful is just to get a few of these tools. And I talked about them a little bit before, but if you could find, I just got this from Amazon, but red transparency that you can look through and turn anything you're looking at into a simple value structure. I actually find having one of these, I actually made this myself, but these are pretty easy to find any, I can put a link in the description and notes, but anything that gives you a distinct range of value options, and you can hold that up on your painting or drawing, you can also hold it up to just normal light and kind of see, oh, okay, what I'm looking at here is about a one, or this is a two. And you can use it as a really useful reference. And then this black mirror also does a great job because of the color of it. It's not just a regular mirror. It simplifies things more into values where the color doesn't come through. And the last thing I find helpful is this little view catcher, which I mentioned before. And this actually kind of ties into what the prompt is for today, which is to use your toned paper sketchbook, right, and then use a little bit of white chalk. And you could do either your pencil or your charcoal, but to look around for something that's in your field of vision, where you're just arranging three or four big simple shapes that you're looking at. So, just look around at anything you want to, wanna look at, and it could even be as simple as, okay, so I'm gonna use my, ooh, running out of space in this one. So what I'm gonna do is just create a little box. Doesn't have to be precise. Right? I'm gonna match my view catcher to be about the same ratio. It's kind of slanted, but that's okay. I don't need it to be perfect. I need it to be a little bit more perfect. I lied. There we go. And then as I look around just something really easy. So there's a camera guy back there and I see a face, and I see the corner of a piece of paper. So first what I'm gonna do, and what I wanna do is simplify what I'm seeing into three values. So I'm gonna let this paper exist, my mid-tone, it's kind of right here, then I'm gonna have this white chalk be my other, my light value, and then I'm gonna let, just for clarity, I'll use the the charcoal. It gets quite a bit darker. So gonna use this to be my dark value, right? So I basically got these three pieces and everything I look at has to fall into one of those three categories. So first thing I see is, there's a little piece of paper kind of at the bottom. And so I'm gonna let that, and I'm not worried about composition right now, but that's definitely the lightest. So I'm just gonna fill that little space in here. And then there is a pillar in the background that's, say, right here, and it runs into a little camera and the black in the back. And then there's a little face and then there's an arm, and then there's, oh, I made his head too big, oops, sorry, and then there's another arm, and then there's a camera here. So this, the pillar, oh, that's another camera, I was like why did the pillar disappear? Is all gonna be dark. So now I'm just gonna fill in everything thing that is not these shapes here, and not gonna worry too much about getting a super clean value, but I'm gonna try to make it kind of similar. Okay. Now this is a ridiculously abstract image But I've simplified what I'm looking at. Just two, three values using the mid-tone of the paper. We're just gonna call it five, because five is half even though it's technically more like a seven. We're gonna call this 10, call this a zero. So we're using these three pieces to organize our value structure. So you can play around with this guy and play around with simplifying the values that you see. So, and you can do that as as many times as you want. It's a really fun exercise and it helps to simplify what can easily become visual chaos. So I really appreciate you guys joining me for this exploration and discussion on values. And I hope to see you to talk about color tomorrow.