table of contents

<aside> 🥞 OK . WE ARE HERE FOR THE PROCESS BUT i wanted to address the topic of values first, because it’s like the bread n butter of painting!! i think about the values for every illustration 🫡

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❥❥❥ values

ripping some images and quotes from my favourite book about color and light !!! (it’s called “Artists’ Master Series: Color and Light”)

value is → “a color’s brightness or darkness level, measured from black to white”

• let’s consider the three dimensions of color: the brightness (value), the intensity (chroma / saturation) and hue (the “color”).
• between these three, value is the most important!! it’s the foundation on which everything else lays. even when a picture is in greyscale, you’re able to tell what’s going on in it due to the values
• in super simple terms, i like to think of values as the tool that gives structure, and color as the tool that evokes emotion

Artists’ Master Series: Color and Light, p. 16

Artists’ Master Series: Color and Light, p. 13

Artists’ Master Series: Color and Light, p. 16

(they use chroma here to refer to the color’s intensity. chroma and saturation are slightly different, but we can’t go into it now…just remember that it refers to the color’s intensity 👌)

<aside> 🥞 you don’t need the full value range from deep dark to bright white in order to create an illustration. limiting your value range can actually be beneficial!! some examples below

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examples of value ranges

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i’ve mostly used values from mid-grey to white for this painting. at the beginning, i always like to decide where my darkest value and my lightest value will be (and then break the rule later if i want!)

for this piece, the darkest shade would be around 50% grey. the values are compressed towards the lighter end of the value scale. the hard part is sticking to it and not going darker, even if the instinct is there.

high-key values also create a light, airy sort of look. because the values are limited, we try to get more expression out of the other dimensions of color (intensity and hue). there’s a lot of hue shifts happening!!! impressionists like claude monet are a great reference for this type of art!!

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this piece uses a much wider value range, so i decided to limit my hues to a set of reds, beiges and browns. the darker values also make the piece look more grounded and dramatic than the previous one.

<aside> 🥞 two classic examples of limited value schemes

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low-key values

• can look dramatic, gloomy, grounded or mysterious
• compresses towards the darks. lights are actually a mid-grey
• great for night scenes, makes lights pop even more due to the contrast

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high-key values

• looks airy and light, can produce colors that seem to “vibrate”
• compresses towards the lights. darks are actually a mid-grey
• focus on colors and color harmonies to account for the lack of darks

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<aside> 🥞 a great way to practice this:

• take a reference picture and draw it in different value schemes using a hard brush (no blending, try to eyeball the colors)
• just studying how some of your favorite artists organize their values! how do they achieve contrast (through hue? intensity? through lights and darks? through composition?), what is the darkest they’ll go and what’s the lightest?

art allows for many many wonderful ways of expression and values are just one of them!! this doc only scratches the surface of what you can do with values

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