Determining Values

[Michele Rushworth]

In another thread I posted a graphic that many people felt helped explain a principle about rendering values to get a three-dimensional form. I was asked to repeat the example in a separate thread.

An artist had posted a painting and a reference photo in one of the critique sections. The face in the painting lacked a three-dimensional quality because the values were much closer overall than what the reference photo showed. The left and lower parts of the whole head needed to be darker to create a sense of roundness. The upper right needed to be much lighter.

I put the painting and the photo in Photoshop, set them both to monochrome and did some value comparisons. Using the Photoshop eyedropper tool, I grabbed the grey from the lower left and from the upper right areas of both the reference photo and the painting. Then I made a box and filled it with the tone that the eyedropper picked up in each of those areas.

It

[Michele Rushworth]

If you don

[Michael Georges]

Michele: This is a great idea. I have a nine value scale on little cards each with a hole in them attached to a key ring. I keep it near as I work and it helps to match values when I can just swatch each in sequence and see what comes closest.

[Juan Martinez]

Michelle and Michael

Those are excellent tools you've devised! I have both kinds plus another set of cards like Michelle's that are mid-value grey and another that are very dark. The latter are especially helpful when examining paintings and trying to distinguish the range of blacks and other darks that an artist may have used. I found that against the white cards, all of the darkest values can look pretty much the same, whereas, in fact, there is often a subtle, but important difference.

The only thing I would add to Michelle's excellent example is that in real life the value range is far greater than in photos (I know I don't have to tell you this). In paint we can often achieve all of the mid-tones and most of the darks found in human faces, except perhaps for the darkest ones which, depending on the lighting chosen, are not always present. But, we can never achieve the lightest lights and still maintain any chroma in them. Our lightest colour is white and it is bereft of chroma. Thus we must use artistry.

I'll go a step further and suggest that this fact is one of the reasons so many artists do not achieve the fullest sense of volume that they could. If one strives to render the mid-tones accurately and faithfully--and, let's face it, the mid-tones (and shadow-line) are often the most interesting parts of a painting--it will mean that the flesh will be too dark or it may end up metallic-looking. We just can't be perfectly faithful to the mid-range and still convincingly indicate the lightest tones. The one (mid-tones) must be down-played in order to make the other (the lightest-lights) appear correct, thus giving the impression of a solid three-dimensional form.

Anyway, this is too hard to put into such few words and I probably shouldn't even have tried.

All the best.

Juan

[Elizabeth Schott]

Michele, I think your illustration of the off value in the photo vs. portrait is one of the best I have seen here. What a tool I have had sitting in my office all along!

[Chris Saper]

Excellent thread!

I wanted to mention, though, one caveat in considering values in evaluating photographs.

Regular film, by its nature, produces prints whose values - on both the light and dark ends of the scale - can be badly compressed. The compression is worse at the dark end of the scale.

For example, if we look at a scene, a subject, and think of what we see in, say a 9-step scale (with equal steps), the (roughly) three darkest values become compressed into one inky clump by the time the print is generated. Film is designed to get most of its color and value information in the middle range. So if your photo is scanned into Photoshop, it can't locate value differentiation that is not on the print.

In Michele's example, I think that using the Photoshop tool is quite effective, as both the light and shadow sides of the subject face are still toward the midle of the range. However, if you were to try to do the same for the darkest areas of an image and (lightest areas to a lesser extent), you risk getting false dark value readings. It is always up to the painter to decide on and control the values in the overall painting.

[Elizabeth Schott]

Chris, when Peggy talks about the 3 values and the lights/darks of one value does not exceed into the value range of the others. How do you handle really "hot" highlights or darker darks in the overall composition? Does this mean as an artist we tone them down because of the 3-value method? I think Steven mentioned she was going to a workshop so I didn

[Chris Saper]

I treat highlights and dark accents as outside the three value scale.