What are Value Scales in Painting?
In Ep. 60 with Sarah Sedwick, we deep dive into value.
Sedwick mentions a few tools she uses in her painting and teaching including 3-value sketch and a 5-value painting. You could also call this a 3-value scale or a 5-value scale.
In order to understand how those tools work, let’s first look at what they are.
WHAT IS VALUE?
Value is when you take an image and pull all the color out of it. When you desaturate it, you are left with a grayscale photo or painting. This is value. It’s the light and dark of your image.
WHAT IS A VALUE SCALE?
In the real world, lights can go as bright as the sun and as dark as a black hole.
But in the physical world of paint, there are limitations.
As an artist, you can only go as light as your white paper or titanium white or as dark as black.
This means that you have a limited value range within which to work.
However, there are still hundreds if not thousands of subtle value shifts between white and black. It’s hard to plan a painting with a thousand grays, so artists have simplified it into a 9 or 10 value scale. Each value on the scale is given a number and a name.
NOTANS
Many artists will think in terms of a 9 or 10 value scale, but they may not start there. Notans are when you start with just your whites and your blacks. You are working on a 2-value scale.
3-VALUE SKETCHES
One tool Sedwick talks about in Ep. 60 is her 3-value sketch. She is looking at her reference and translating it into just three values: White, black and a mid gray.
Sedwick uses these to establish her lightest lights and her darkest darks and everything else she makes a single mid value.
5-VALUE PAINTING
A second, more complicated tool Sedwick discusses is her 5-value painting. This where you have 5 values to design your reference.
The 5-value painting is also where Sedwick plans the midtones of her painting.
Why use these tools?
Painting is infinitely complicated. By simplifying your values down into just 3 or 5, you are simplifying your painting process.
And by making some of these decisions before you begin mixing color, you are giving yourself a roadmap for your painting.
Listen to Understanding Value with Sarah Sedwick (Ep 60) here.
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