Painting & Drawing - Fundamentals - VALUES - 'Let's Get Better'
Howdy!
Today we are on episode 8 of Let's get Better, Values!
They might actually be the most important part of a painting..
When I started out I didn't really understand what it was.. people were always telling me my values were off!
What did mean.. They weren't talking about moral values or anything. It was about the how light or how dark something is.
100 being full white,, 0 being black.
So this might still come over as being a little abstract.. I understand.
But imagine this.. White (100%) happens only when you look into the sun.. or a lightbulb?.. Black is only in places where there is absolutely no light.. Yet how often do we (especially when we are still at the beginning of our painting careers ;) ) use full black or full white in our paintings.. .. .. a .. lot..
I'm not saying that is a bad thing, but if we understand the physics behind it, it doesn't quite make sense.
So if we aim to take a more realistic approach to our painting/s we must perhaps try to avoid going into the extremes.
(being full 100% white/light to 0% light/black)
In other words, if we have a better understanding of the values we actually see around us, the easier it becomes to make a more realistic and believable painting.
So how do we practice this?..
1 of the exercises I can recommend is the simplification of values.. breaking it up in smaller and smaller bits and back!
These exercises will teach your eyes and brain to sort of draw lines of where a certain value (on the 0/100 scale) ends and the other begins. You will have to do this quite some time to fully understand what is going on and how simple you can get, with time and practice you will get better and faster at this.
When you at some point want to make a study (color study for example) it will become easier for you to look at the values instead of the colors.. the colors are then just a distraction and don't make something look more real.. the values rule over the color instead of the other way around..
As you might sometimes hear that people are afraid of using color in their work.. it is probably due to the lack of understanding of values. Values first, then colors.. Later on when you become more confident and comfortable you can easily do both at the same time.. but when you are making studies, focus on the value first.. it will make or break a painting.
A great way to bring this exercise into practice is by doing self-portraits.
Simply grab a mirror and a lamp and start treating your face the same as you did in the exercise.. Then build up the values on the whole painting (background included) in shapes of lighter and darker shapes.. refine the shapes and add smaller and smaller shapes.. until you end up with an actual portrait painting..
Practicing the 'Negative Space' lesson/exercise from episode 1 will definitely help you with this one!
Please check out the video on this here: ( Though I warn you it is fairly old! )
Thank you for your time!
I hope it was useful for you.. If you have any questions, comments or requests! Feel free! :)
Cheers
Rogier
I would love to see you do an actual course, with homework people can post in the comments and get your feedback. I doubt you have the time to do something like that, but if you ever do - hook a sister up. You've inspired me to pick up a pencil and paper, and so might do that for many others.
<3
I got a few of those requests in the past.. it is one of the reasons I started my YT channel :P
Though I dont seem to reach a lot of folks.. I do feel like i want to give back to the community, I had great help from others when I started out, so I try to do a little something back when possible.
It is an idea for sure, but i dont really know how to get that off the ground.
Well, you have plenty of followers and you've made friends in communities. So reaching folks will be easy. You can get your "school opening" post resteemed all over like it ain't no thang. Once there's awareness, adopt a hashtag like #artwithbeek and publish weekly "lessons" with homework. Upvote (according to quality) the homework people post in the comments (like you instructed) to encourage overall engagement. Offer a little reward to the "best student" of every lesson. 1 or 2 SBD will do the trick, and I expect post payouts to more than cover it.
Okay wow.. you have given this some thought already! hahaha :)
It was the initial thought when i started posting the lets get better series here on steemit.. Hoping people would get engaged, but i guess i didnt really invite them too..
My community thing here on steemit is/was the raffles,, but thats not really covering any costs and seem to just stay around the same people.. WHich is totally fine ofcourse but i hoped more.. I'm not quitting though!
I will give this school idea some thought :D You think the artist community on steemit is large enough to pull something off like that?
Happy to help!
And it's not about the "artist community". Artists know how to make art and want to IMPROVE. I am talking about your average steemit joe and jane who'd love to get a new skill (and some SBD if they invest).
You should also check the education tag. There are a few communities and bots that support educational content on steemit, and will gladly resteem those posts.
As for raffles / contests covering costs - there's only costs in terms of time and shipping. There's nothing to ship here, and the time invested is a long term investment, cause these videos can easily be recycled on youtube, possibly bringing you some steem followers from youtube, who'll join steem just to get senpai to notice them and get rewarded for impressing you. :)
Wow. Someone can be a great producer I see ;)
This is a great greaaat idea, I totally keep both eyes open for something like this to share and resteem. If you want to check the potential, maybe can you drop a message on discord or steemit chat, see how the channels react to it ?
By the way, I was waiting for you to upload this video for ages haha (it's been 2-3 posts I was willing to share it to make the point about Values)
I am actually a professional digital content producer. Produced a podcast recently. :)
I spoke to @beekart on discord already and suggested the same. Maybe we should do a chat the 3 of us and see how we can get this show on the road.
Woooooh Awesome ! I saw you do marketing as well ? Well i'll be interested to help definitely, but it'll depend on Beekart I don't want to impose myself ^^ (btw i'm on Discord as well)
No way ! haha I am trying to learn this since the past 2 weeks (trying) ! Do you mind if I reach you on Discord ? (I can't find you on it btw) =D
I really appreciate this as its what im going through right now. I took a 2 year break from painting and am getting back into it. I was really successful with it before, but never really got the values down.
Like you said, i used too much extreme black or extreme white. I look forward to starting a new painting this week and really working this more mid values.
I appreciate this so much that you have my vote and im even bookmarking it so i can come back and be reminded to apply this.
Thanks, you da man! Followed!
That is so nice to hear.. Thank you so much!
Values are super important but are really quite hard to master so take your time it ! Expect to fail at it, as that is when you learn! :)
I have more of these kind of tutorials, and am planning to release more stuff for steem too.. so keep an eye out for that if you are interested! :)
Cheers!
Thanks for the vids, I will be following for more.
Cool mate! Thank you for the support ;) hope it is useful!
Very useful. I'm familiar with a lot of values tutorial and this text seems to explain things rather nicely.
Thank you ver much :)
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