Paint Better Values
The best way I have found to help my own values is to really narrow my palette down to black and white. This could be pure charcoal or pencil. If we are talking paint, just black and white paint. That way, you will eliminate color, and all you are concentrating on is value. Most of my student struggle with values, but not as much with color. Color is subjective, value is not. Value is black and white.
“The beauty lies within those subtle grays. When you add color around that, the color really shines.”
If you are struggling with value in your paintings, just squeeze black and white paint and start utilizing these in smaller paintings. It does not have to be anything major, maybe 8x10. Start doing solely black and white paintings for around 6 months. Try to be consistent for six months if you are struggling with values. This is what you need to do to improve. Six months from now, if you keep to black and white, you will see improvement. You have to be consistent with this, like everything.
We have to fix value first before we move into color. Color is very seductive and we tend to want to dive in before we are ready. I have seen many painters that look like they have squeezed out from the tube onto the canvas. Nature does not give us this strong of a color. There are a lot of grays when you look at things. The beauty lies within those subtle grays. When you add color around that, the color really shines.
If you look at old Russian painters, their images have a lot of grays in their paintings while still looking very colorful. This happens because of the color is put next to the gray and becomes much stronger. It is relative. It is how we see things, our eyes trick us because we see things in relationship to another. Again, choose black and white paint in your studies for the next 6 months and you will see improvement.
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