Using Monochrome in 3 Values to Build a Form

Here's a great little video I came across demonstrating how to create a simple form using just one color in three values. In this demo the artist is working in watercolor, using Paynes gray to create an apple.

Eventhough this is an object and not a landscape demo the principles are the same and it's worth watching.... here ya' go Demo

Little Lesson #1 & #2

Get yourself an inexpensive canvas board, 16x20, and divide it up into 8 rectangles using masking tape. Alternately get 8 small canvas panels 5x7 to do the excerises on.

Exercise #1, top left, Big Sky

The first exercise in the top left has a low horizon line and emphasises the sky area, a Big Sky painting.

1. For Exercise #1 start by placing your horizon line about 1 in. from the bottom edge of the canvas panel.
2. Mix up a sky color, be careful of the sky it is often lighter in value than you think. In fact, on an average sunny day the sky will be the lightest value in your painting.
3. The sky is darker at the top and gets lighter as it approaches the horizon line.
4. The sky often gets a little greenish near the horizon because the green from tree foliage is reflected back up into the atmosphere.
5. Mix up an earthy green for the land. Either use a tube (green olive, or sap green are good choices) or mix a green from a blue and a yellow. Modify your green, either tube or mixed with something from the red family. Try using an orange, transparent red oxide, or burnt sienna to tone down the intemsity of the green, creating a more believable, natural green.
6. The land will be darker in the foreground close to the bottom of the panel and will get lighter as it approaches the horizon.
7. The green land color can also be warmer (with more red or yellow in it) in the foreground and you may need to add a touch of blue to it as it recedes into the distance.
8. The value of the land at the horizon in the distance should be very close, just slightly darker than the value of the sky. By manipulating these 2 values at the horizon you can create the illiusion of 1/2 mile or 100 miles.
9. Your goal is to create believeable distance.
10. Have fun!

Exercise #2, Land Focused

1. For exercise #2 place your horizon line a little more than an inch from the top of the canvas, well away from the middle.
2. Repeat steps #2-#10
3. Feel free to leave links to your painitngs in the comment section if you like.

The Horizon Line

The most basic element of a landscape painting is the horizon line. The great division between earth and sky.



The first critical decision you will make when beginning a landscape is whether your painitng is about sky or land.

A Simple Value Scale

A simple value scale is a great tool to have. Get out your paints and make one. It's harder than it looks to mix these values but really good practice.

How to make a Notan Sketch

Gather your supplies:

art magazines, books, or use the internet for resource materials
sketch pad or paper
Prismacolor artist markers in cool gray 20%, 50% ,80% (the white of the paper will be your lighest value).
pencil

Being by looking for paintings in magazines and books that have an easily identifible value structure. In other words strong darks and lights. Squint to help you see this.

Mark off a quick square or rectanlge depending on the proportions of the painting you're copying from.

Squint to see the big masses of value. Your goal is to simplify the number of value masses by grouping elements into a few value groups.

You will have to push things and by that I mean you will need to make choices as to whether something in a middle value can or should be pushed into the light mass or the dark mass. If you're not sure try it different ways.

DO NOT SPEND A LOT OF TIME ON THESE!! (10 min max.) You will need a little time to think and make decisions but don't labor over these go with your gut intuition, that's part of what these sketches will be developing your innate ability to read values and construct an aesthetically pleasing and sensible value plan in a painting.

CAUTION: notan sketching can be addicting once you get the hang of it. Feed this healthy obsession by doing 3 or 4 notan sketches everyday (for the rest of your life!)



Here are 4 notan sketches I did as I browsed through some at magazines.

Notan Sketches...Why bother?

Here are 10 reasons:

1.) it teaches you to analyze a painting

2.) it develops your ability to accurately see values

3.) you automatically absorb compositional models from the works you've chosen to sketch

4.) it increases your abilility to simplify shapes

5.) it teaches you to think in masses not details

6.) you learn to identify the value of a color

7.) it reinforces the underlying value structure of atmospheric perspective

8.) it strengthens your sensitivity to good design

9.) your awareness of the abstract design in realist works is increased

10.) it gives you a reason to look through art magazines and books searching for excellent examples

Discovering Value: a cautionary tale

When I first began painting en plein air about 10 years ago I was totally overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of sunlight and equally underwhelmed by the monotony of an overcast day.

Here in New England we have 3 types of summer day:

Sunny, dry and gorgeous: rare, but loved by all.

Hazy, hot and humid: common and generally tolerated, as we can't control the weather (yet).

Pouring rain: often times welcomed as that usually signals a turn in the weather back to drier sunnier days.

When I began painting outside I just could not seem to make a "good" painting. They were either dull and lifeless, washed out or dark and morbid.

Older and wiser artists pointed out that my paintings were always comprised of a single value family. Either all in the middle range or all in the high key range etc. They told me what I lacked was value contrast.

Bah Humbug to that I grumbled. I was a colorist (at that point in my career) and didn't give a fig about values.

But in the end it turns out they were right. It is value contrast that creates "pop" in a painting, it's what draws a viewer from across a room, it's what gets a judge's attention, it's what creates a convincing sense of form and the feeling of sunlight.

Value does all the work, but color gets all the credit. Just another one of those unfair things in life.

Actually, the reason for that is because it's much easier to identify the color and much harder to identify the value of a thing. That's partly due to the characteristics of color,(hue, value, intensity, temperature) intensity being the thing that will throw you off most easily.

Don't let color bewitch you, and don't let overcast days or bleaching sunlight trick you into creating boring paintings.

Read master painter Charles Sovek's explanation of Basic Lighting Conditions and Different Kinds of Light .

The Importance of Values

Values are the foundation of any type of realism in visual art, including creating convincing landscapes.

What are Values? In the art world, values refer to the amount or degree of light or dark in a painting. Values create contrast between shapes and that in turn provides interest in the work.


Starting to get the idea? Read more about the importance of values at

Fine Art Views here
Empty Easel here


Need More Convincing? Read on.......

"It is impossible to make a picture without values. Values are the basis. If they are not, tell me what the basis is." - William Morris Hunt

Problems with color are almost never problems with color. They are almost always problems with value." -Eric Wiegardt

"Many of the most powerful paintings have the simplest value structures. That is to say, they only use two, three, or four major values."- Barry John Raybould

"When begnning artists understand and use values for the first time, there is usually a quantum leap in the quality of their painting." - Paul de Marrals

"When it comes to value, that's when we find out why most paintings are boring and others will knock your socks off." -Harley Brown