D'Ambruoso Studios

The Importance of Values

So many of our workshop participants have heard me discuss over and over again the importance of values in all your work. Whether it is only a pencil sketch to the most elaborate composition, values will determine the success of the painting.

Jean-Baptiste- Camille Corot (1796-1875) believed we should develop at least twenty shades of values from the darkest to the lightest. I think those twenty shades exist in the final painting. However, I have found that when doing a thumb-nail sketch with 3 or 4 values of the landscape that we are painting, we then have an orderly method of determining our lightest lights and our darkest darks. More importantly, we also have preliminarily recorded what our center of interest is going to be.

Value systems help us determine the power of light and how it will move the viewer of the work. I often find that what makes me want to paint the picture in front of me is the patterns of light and shadow. So if the scene...the very first image of the scene...moves you, that's what you should be painting. Of course, you can add or subtract elements of the painting...move a bush or tree...add a house in the distance...all of these things become part of the painting plan that is recorded in the all-important, can't be missed, thumb- nail sketch.

There is one other key piece of information often over- looked concerning values. In the distance, when comparing two values of one hill in front of another, the value differences in those hills are not as great as if those objects where in the foreground. Take a look at a distant landscape and observe the rolling hills. The farthest one is the lightest and then the next one in front of the farthest is slightly darker. Value contrasts are less in the distance. Make sure your preliminary sketches record this next time you're in front of a sweeping landscape.