Crimson Alizarene: October 2014

I know, you're going to yab me about the title. Hey, I never said I was super witty or something, lol. Btw, shout out to GRR Martin for the Game of Thrones "Greyscale" call-out (write faster dude!)

What's a value study? Well, it's something I don't see a lot of artists in these parts do, but it is CRUCIAL. VITAL. IMPORTANT. Any other word I can capitalise, so you get the idea that you should grab a pen and paper and take notes.

So, value studies are important, because they teach you how to represent things 3-dimensionally (really important for Representational Artists), otherwise it looks flat. It shows you how light and shade affects an object and shows its form. It can be used as a powerful tool for Design and Composition. It is hard to see properly when drawing from a picture, because most cameras, even the expensive ones, compress values, and then your drawings/paintings always look flat (cough Pencil artists in Nigeria cough).

Most people are very familiar with 3 shades: Light, Medium and Dark. As a professional, you should be able to identify Values to upto to 10 shades (yup). Here's a tonal bar to start you on your way (make yours btw).


courtesy Atelier Atlanta

And here is one of the most important exercises you should do: grab a white object, a ball, a container or anything. Take a lamp and light it from one direction. Draw/paint what you see. Repeat. Repeat till you start seeing tones everywhere. Here's mine:


value sketch of a container, pastel on paper

This exercise is important and you can and should use any medium. Here are more examples.

David Lobenberg, watercolour value sketch

Twi, value study


Jaime Treadwell, oil


David Ebben, cast painting, oil

You can use any colour, as long as it is a monochromatic painting/drawing (y'all know what Monochromatic is, bah?). Btw, I arranged my pastels like that, to further teach me how to strengthen my value work.