Skip to main content

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



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Art School Rejections

So I have heard back from 5 out of 6 schools I applied to. All are rejections so far. Upon hearing the news of the first one it really sucked. After the first two it got better and I braced for them. I quickly then picked up on a pattern. If they tell you in an email about admission decisions through email telling you to look at your portal thats probably a bad sign. I have had positive admissions in the past but for a completely different Masters level field and the email is full of bells and whistles. And a long time ago I was accepted as a transfer student into a BFA program but due to being scared (especially financially) I did not go. I will be honest after all of the rejections I did question if I am on the right path. I thought wow I sacrificed a lot and I took this huge risk switching to art but was it all for nothing? After taking time to deliberate I decided it wasn't. I knew going into this there was no guarantee of getting in and while I was hopeful I knew I had to f...
Post a Comment
Read more

Art Canon

My mind has been blown - the old painting masters Cézanne, Rembrandt and Monet are not all of what I thought they were. I recently discovered that the traditional art historical canon is biased and has created an unrepresentative view of creativity and artistic styles. It has left out entire groups of people only later to place them in subgroups. The traditional canon for art history has favored upper class European white male artists. It is interesting to see that art history has been governed by a select group who overtime decided what qualifies as great works of art and artistic genius. The definition leaves out women and minorities who have not had access to the same resources as men did such as supplies or education but even so they were able to create with items more accessible to them. Yet they are left out of traditional canon as if they never existed. How can we understand culture, history and politics by ignoring these groups of people? - Art is not only a piece of individua...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Journey

Abstract Expressionism,  Marina Ali, 2014 Comic by Sephko  I have contemplated about starting an artist's blog. Of course many questions pop up such as, who will care to read or view my work. I haven't "made" it yet as an artist. But I think the journey is so important not just the success story or simply a highlight reel. I follow, read and subscribe to many artists and creative people I look up to. Mostly I hear about success stories and their reflections and advice looking back on their journey. I believe their struggle in retrospect is much different than what they felt and thought during that journey.  I do like to hear these stories because I learn from them but often times I wonder what would their story or message be from the vantage point of their former self before they reached a certain point in their creative endeavors. I also think that so often we believe that success is linear when it actually zig zags with ups and downs even if as a whole it i...
Post a Comment
Read more