Playing with the power of value
And trying to keep up with my classes
I am currently teaching two adult classes full of total badasses. They are good. Really good. And they also have a strong desire to be good at painting, which means they might soon be really really good. And it has inspired me to raise my own game to match their game. Kind of like how John McEnroe’s passion for the game elevated Bjorn Borg. Or Henri Matisse and Andre Derain. And, of course, the Real Housewives of Atlanta and those Housewives of Orange County.
So I’m bringing these students to the heart of painting - the visual elements, the Munsell scale, all of those skills and learnings that must be attained if they will become as good as they all seem to want to be.
That is why this week we explored value in the Wednesday night class. Value being the lightness or darkness of a color.
We have worked in value before in terms of shadow and light on an object. We usually do this in the context of painting a still life with the contrasty shadows that result from a strong, direct light. But in this class we considered value in terms of the lightness or darkness of each individual color or hue and looked at a flower painting to explore it. (I’m sorry that the painter of this still life has been lost. Does anybody know who did it?)
This 4-value exercise is often used to explore value. You take four different colors of gray and break the object or scene you are painting into those four different shades. I did the exercises using this Van Gogh painting of sunflowers.
This is a great exercise to do at home on your own. Here is how it goes:
Chose a simple painting with a range of lightness and darkness.
Mix four different shades of gray, from very light to very dark with two mid-range grays.
Using the darkest gray first, map out where the darkest values are in the reference painting.
Do the same for each color of gray you see in the painting you are using as reference.
In the end your painting will look like this. This is a representation of the values of all of the colors in your painting. Not the hues or the colors or the saturation of the colors but the lightness or darkness of it.
The painters in the class did some truly remarkable renditions of that flower painting during this exercise. And then, after the exercise was over, I watched them apply that new knowledge of lightness to the paintings they had started the week before.
The 4-value exercise shows that no matter what the color or hue of the paint that you are using is, maybe it is a yellow we perceive as ‘light’ or a red we perceive of as ‘dark’, that you must consider where the hue lands on the value scale. In the process of practicing this exercise it became apparent to the painters that sometimes when trying to mix that perfect color or match a skin tone or the petal of a flower, it is about about that color’s light or darkenss, and not the hue or saturation.
As a follow up I walked around with a gray scale value finder and we looked at how it matched up with some colors. Try this for yourself and I’m sure you will be very impressed with how good you become at representing the value in your colors.
I’m taking advantage of a spring break lull in classes next week to make some new videos and this exercise will be one of them. Stay tuned!
Coming up at The Painting School! (Please remember that all classes and workshops (especially the ones for kids!) can be scaled based on need.)
March 2nd, 1-4 - Abstract Painting Workshop - Learn to paint abstract paintings and leave with some cool, new art while meeting other creative people and enjoying some treats.
March 8th, 7-9 Date Night Paint and Sip!
March 10th, 1-4 - Flower Painting Workshop! Our last one sold out and was a total blast.
March 21st - Thursday nights ,6:30-9:30 Welcome to Watercolor with Jodie Niss workshops! Take the whole series or just one class.
March 22nd, 7-9 - RHAP Sip and Paint fundraiser. Do you know the important work that Red Hook Art Project does to close the arts opportunities gap in Brooklyn? Check them out then come and paint with us for a $20 donation at the door!
March 24th, 1-4 - Color Theory Workshop for Creative Professionals. Want to get better at leveraging the power of color? This is your chance!
Thank you for reading and have a great week!
Happy painting,
Sara
My book! Painting Can Save Your Life : How and Why we Paint from Penguin Random House
www.thepaintingschool.org
www.sarawoster.com
The flower painting workshop was so fun and, amazingly, productive! Upcoming workshops look interesting — hope to be there.