Value Scale
Value Scale
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35:27

Portrait Painting in Oil

Color Mixing and Values

Understanding values has a lot more to do with mileage and practice rather than pure academic understanding. 

Your assignment is to do the value scale and create distinct separations between each value. An understanding of these concepts are key to later lessons in the course.

Newest
Dan Chisum
Dan Chisum
EUREKA!! I totally get it now! All other classes have delved into complex color theory of Hue, Value, and Saturation. Add this color, now this color - whoops too warm or cool, so add this color. You have made this so simple. I am so ready to get this going. I think it will now be enjoyable. I hated matching skin color and tones. I have scraped off several tubes of paint trying to match perfectly and failing. It looked good on my pallet but once on the canvas it was terrible. Thanks.
Jessa Bratten
Madhu Girish
Hi Morgan, This is my value scale assignment. In skin tone mixing lecture, you said that shadows won't be affected by the temperature of light. Going by that logic, I kept the values of my shadows unchanged and only darkened my light values for subdued lighting. Everyone seem to lighten their shadow values for subdued lighting. But if the lighting is dull, it should have even darker shadows. In case of bright light, the bounce light will also be brighter which should lighten the shadows. This is just my logic and I might be totally wrong. Your words will be final. Thanks.
Morgan Weistling
The temperature of the light has nothing to do with the intensity of the light. I think you’re getting the two mixed up. When it’s a cloudy day, your shadows will lighten and things will not be as contrasty. This has nothing to do with the temperature though. Less contrast means lights and shadows do not have a big jump of value between them in light and shadow.
@rafivclt
7mo
light and shadow family
Salem M
8mo
This was my first time mixing oil paints or doing any type of painting with oils. Took me a while before I was using the palette knife correctly. I hope this is somewhat accurate.
Morgan Weistling
You did a great job looks good to me
@rrb
9mo
Assignment complete. I decided not to go too dark on the diminished light scale. Just enough to see a difference. I hope this is sufficient.🤔
Morgan Weistling
looks like you got it
Angel Kritikos
Challenging project. I realised that I moved up the shadow values by one step and moved down the light ones by one step as well.
Morgan Weistling
you have it.
Ernesto Canas
More challenging than I thought!
Debra Rank
10mo
Flesh values & Cloudy day values. I learned a valuable lesson on this exercise; don’t try to mix values on grey pallet and then paint on white surface. I made it 10 times harder than it should be, and still not sure it’s as accurate as it could be.
Debra Rank
10mo
Just saw this on my bathroom wall. Fun example of value changes.
Rachel Dawn Owens
Good looks
@lipstiger
10mo
This is the greatest explanation I have heard in seven years of trying to understand values, all I have ever heard is "if you get your values right you have got it made...Get your values right, have three to five values and get them right" I don't think YouTubers want you to know this info so you will keep coming back to their channel!!! Thank you Morgan!!!
@jsheffie
10mo
I thought my halftone was too light at first, then I remembered the rule: "Always make your halftones LIGHTER than they appear". I think this is close to being correct ( other than I can't spell Reflective Light ) Are my light and shadow families good?
Morgan Weistling
excellent!
@jjlehmann
10mo
Not sure if I pushed the contrasts too close on the cloudy one (to the right) but hopefully this is good enough.
Morgan Weistling
Very good
@mahatsu
10mo
I did Cloudy Day first as it was cloudy when I painted (although I was indoor.) Then I tried to differentiate Sunny Day from it. Not sure if it worked.
Morgan Weistling
it's easy to see if you did it right by looking at the point where the shadow and light meet.Your cloudy has the same amount of contrast as the sunny one. You could go a value darker or more on the cloudy one and let the average and highlight follow it down.
@szokebarnabas
Value Scale practice
Susan Pennington
This looks simpler than it is. First of all I had a hard time identifying my local skin color. The left side is my sunny day; felt good about my cloudy day until they dried and I took the picture as they seem quite close. Value in color is definitely my weak area.
Michèle Girard
I have no idea if that is ok or not. Is there a way to position my glass palette so I don't have reflection in it, I have a hard time seeing the values on my palette because it reflects everything. I tried slanting it but that didn't help much.
Morgan Weistling
you got it rigft.
Ron Kempke
10mo
I understand the family separation of a single local value but how do you determine the degree of family separation for two differing local values so they appear to be in the same light?
Morgan Weistling
If you have a value scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being black and 0 being white, you could pick any 3 that are together on that scale as one family. The separation should not be so great as to seem to be too big a jump. If you do, the painting will look too choppy. This is just a rule of thumb, not some great law you cannot ever break. But just know in general, keeping the families close together will result in a cleaner sculpted look. If for instance, your highlight value is too big a jump from average value the head can end up looking like it was covered in sweat or oil.
@rdj8564
10mo
Thanks for the side bars on value. They were very helpful. I may not know how to implement them correctly, but I do understand how it’s supposed to work.
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Award winning fine artist represented by @legacygalleryart in Scottsdale AZ
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