VALUE STUDIES

Value studies are the key to successful representational painting.

Value is how light or how dark something is. Establish the value relationships between the shapes in your composition. This gives you a very good chance of creating something that the viewer can recognise for what it is.

Getting the values right gives you a convincing painting. Value is much more important than colour to create something convincing.

I do my value sketches with a 4B pencil in a sketchbook.

Sometimes, once I’ve finished the value sketch, I decide that I’m not convinced by the composition. A different approach to the subject may make a better painting.

Value studies help me decide whether or not a painting will be visually appealing.

It’s also a practice run, and a chance to map out the big shapes for a quicker start to painting. For complicated subjects, I make two or three value studies. This helps me really get a feel for the shapes and their placement in the picture plane.

My step-by-step value study process.

Crop my photographic reference to the composition that I like.
Use this as reference to plot the parameters of the sketch.
Sketch out the big shapes from life, referring back to the reference photo to check that I’m within my parameters.
From life, start adding medium and smaller shapes within the big shapes.
Using three values: (light, mid, dark) I fill in the shapes.
I do this in graphite, a 4B or 6B pencil preferably.