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Value Studies

I decided to take a Figure Painting class and lately we have been doing value studies. This is something I have not done much of and I am realizing how important they are. The challenge was to not mix any black or white and to only use a neutral hue created by mixing two complimentary colors (eg. blue & orange) to create a range of values. Each time I used a different combination and I learned something new about complimentary colors that I did not know before! complimentary colors are opposites but each pair of opposites have different attributes. Before I explain let's brush up on a little vocabulary: hue = color, value = light to dark intensity. The pairs Red & Green have similar values but high contrast between hues, Yellow & Purple have the highest contrast between hues and Blue & Orange have similar values but the highest contrast between warm and cool colors. So what this means is imagine if you used these colors to obtain contrast and took a black and white photo of your painting. So in that black and white version you will see that red and green will show up as the same grey tone because they have similar values, as will blue and orange. However purple and yellow will not since spectrum yellow has a higher intensity than spectrum purple. I did not include my value study practices because they are based on models and in order to protect their privacy and to make this blog accessible for everyone I am leaving them out. Instead, I am including two pieces in progress that I am working on outside of this class. I can already tell that the value studies are affecting my own individual practice. Whenever you are in doubt about your values being accurate use a black and white filter on a photo of your painting just like I did. This will show you how well you are balancing your values and is especially useful if you are working with an expansive color palette. I also learned that it helps a lot to simplify and block out masses of valued areas in an underpainting and add in details and subtly while you continue to render your piece. 
"Value Studies for 'Kaylay Wala'" Marina Ali. 2020

"Value Studies for 'Donkey Cart'" Marina Ali. 2020



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