Taking a Peek at Values!

When I say taking a peek at values, I'm not talking about how much my new pastel painting is worth, but about the "values" in the painting. First things first, here is the painting! 

 

Fluvium II, my sinking heart. 

I fell in love with that heart which I found in my reference photo when viewing images for this painting, a little bit kitschy, but it really was there, I think I posted it a couple of weeks back. 

 Now to the "values" which if you paint yourself you no doubt have heard about in tutorials, or art books; at the moment everybody is throwing this phrase around, but what are they? 

Basically  "values" are what you see when you remove all the colour from a picture and just look at it in shades of grey! A scale of values is what happens when you start at white and add a little black to it till you arrive through greys at black (or vice versa) and normally you would be looking at a scale of nine shades. Values create shape and depth in art therefore when painting or drawing it is important to use a good range of values; lights, middles and darks to make your picture visually interesting. Although I was cursing modern technology last week as my blog was purged of photos, it can be useful to check out such things as values. In a comment I read one artist who suggested checking your values by looking at a black and white photo of your painting. Mmmmh, interesting idea, I blog on my ipad/ iphone and  so I used my gallery to edit the painting above ( Google photos, also have b/w filters) to explore my range, see how many I was using (am I in for a nasty surprise?). With pastels it is probably less clear than with oils or acrylics but let's check it out! 

 

Ta taaaaaa! I've marked on the areas 1-9 just roughly to demonstrate the  different values. Well, interesting, I'd definitely try this again. My paintings are usually instinctive, prep is important but too much prep takes the freshness and spontaneity out of my work. If struggling with values you can always paint  a "value scale" with your preferred medium as a strip and put it next to your painting ( 9 boxes from white to black)  while working as an alternative. The photo idea is great for work in progress too. 

As for my easel, it's now empty and a new "blank" support is waiting, that always causes my heart to sink, but perhaps not as colourfully as the one in my painting!