Eggplant and Greens 12x16
Julie Value makes a painting come alive and gives it dimension and shape. Many elements of painting are key to a successful painting, but value will give your art a realistic edge if that is what you want to accomplish. The painting I chose to demonstrate the use of value was painted with soft pastels from a photograph I took at a very unique and fun organic vegetable farm in NW Illinois. We were making vegetable soup from the ingredients we picked on the farm. Beautiful sunny day with strong, late morning light produced a photograph with strong contrasts in value. What do you think?
Peter 10 x 14
Marie Value isn’t my thing. I mostly paint people and struggle with creating clear, dark shadows on skin. In the painting of my nephew, Pete, I started with a value sketch (for those of you who aren't artists, a value sketch is a quick one color sketch that shows how dark various areas of the painting will be) that showed dynamic contrast between the darks and lights, but when I actually sat down to paint, I was mesmerized by the curves of his mouth, the shape of his nose, and the translucency of his eyes. All thought of value was pretty quickly forgotten.
When I did remember, later in the process, I knew that any darks I put in the background that would make his face pop would have to be repeated in the foreground (thank you, Lenox), and I was afraid to do anything that might mess up the portrait I love so much. This is a common theme in my painting process. My solution was to make the background darks not as dark as I had planned, but dark enough to emphasize the curve of the back of Pete’s head and his profile and add a few corresponding darks in low risk areas on the head, such as the eyebrow, the pupil, the inside of the ear. I’m happy with the result, but if I looked at it framed from across the room, I would probably be unhappy with its inability to grab attention from a distance.
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