Watercolor Web » Composition and Value

Strategies for Managing Value in Watercolor

Marie Matthews — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:10:37 +0000

I very often hear admonitions about the importance of value in painting. What I hear less frequently, except for advice that preliminary value sketches are helpful, is practical advice on how to go about choosing values. Although I don’t have a specific formula for deciding on values, I have accumulated several rules of thumb that are helpful to me.

First, some general rules:

Values are always relative. You cannot reproduce the actual values that you see, so you have to consider each value in relation to another value on the page.
Figure out your lightest light, your darkest dark, and your middle values before you begin painting.

A big question for me always is which value to start with. Traditional watercolor advice has always been to start with the light values and work your way to the darks. This strategy, however, produces very anemic paintings for me. I usually prefer to start with a fairly strong value. Here are some specific things that work for me. Of course, sometimes the rules contradict one another.

Start with the background. I like to start with the sky when I can.
Start with large areas of value. When I establish a strong middle value with a big, flat brush up front, I have a much better chance of success. When I start with one of my kolinsky rounds, I often fail to establish the big areas of the composition.
Look for middle values that cut across other areas of value. For example, grass or trees may span a broad area of the painting. The foliage may be lighter than a shadow area and darker than another area in the light. If you establish the middle at the beginning, then you will be better able to judge the other areas of the painting.
Start with values you can change later Often, my first value statement will be too light. It’s better if start with a simple area you can glaze later. For example, if I am doing an architectural subject, with complicated patterns of light and dark, I don’t want to have to go in later and rework all the complexity. Not only does this take a lot of time, it overworks the painting as well.
Don’t make the shadows on white objects too dark. The shadow side of a white object is never more than 50% dark. You may have to adjust your other values accordingly.
Cast shadows come last.

Post-mortem on a Failed Painting

Marie Matthews — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:09:04 +0000

Some days the paintings work, and some days they don’t. Yesterday’s was a real stinker, and I’m trying to figure out why. (Maybe I’ll post a picture of it later.) The scene was a group of backlit trees and a tombstone painted late in the afternoon. The foreground was in complete shadow.

What Went Wrong, and what to do about it next time

The drawing was sloppy, but I’ll forgive myself for that. I was actually more interested in a reasonably quick value study than in fine draftsmanship yesterday. On to the other issues:

Value

I generally have more success when I establish a strong middle or dark value up front, rather than working from light to dark. The challenge comes in deciding which value to establish first. In this painting, I started with the light yellow/green around the plants, which was probably a mistake. Then I made the greens in the left side of the paintings too dark. I didn’t establish my darkest values until the end of the painting. So, what what lessons did I learn?

Establish a large area of a middle or dark value early on in the process, preferably in an area that I can go back and glaze later. Clear skies are ideal because they are easy to correct later.
I should have established the darks, the tombstone and the tree trunks, sooner. If I had already established the value of the tree trunks, then I would have known immediately that the background leaves were too dark.

Composition

Composition problems usually turn out to be value problems in disguise. The paintings tend to work better when I play back and forth between what I observe and what I think the abstract design should be. In yesterday’s painting, I was much too concerned with trying to capture exactly what I saw.

Color

Although I usually don’t squawk too much about color, color was a problem yesterday. (Or was it actually a value problem?) The tombstone and foreground were muddy, even though it was a single wash. Perhaps I should try to darken the tombstone? I’m not sure whether the failure was a value problem or a color problem.

Demonstration: White Surfaces in Shadow

Marie Matthews — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:50:54 +0000

I did another watercolor outside this morning. Although I wasn’t entirely happy with the results, I did manage to take pictures after each wash. Here’s what I did:

Step 1: Working out a Battle Plan

The subject was a white statue in shadow. The challenge was to get the statue dark enough to read as a shadow and light enough to contrast with the background.

I made some mistakes in the drawing. I had wanted to get the base of the statue up a little higher on the page, but it didn’t turn out that way. In other circumstances, I might have erased everything and redrawn it, but the weather was getting hot and the bright sunlight was inching ever closer to my work surface. I opted to proceed with what I had.

Step 2: Establishing a Strong Value

After a *very* light wash of nickel azo yellow and raw sienna in parts of the background, I started in with a strong wash of raw umber, burnt sienna, and ultramarine violet for the tree limbs and the foreground. I made what I thought was a very dark wash.

Step 3: Going for a Darker Value

Next, I wanted the leaves to be as dark as I could make them. Judging against the value I had already established for the tree trunk and foreground, I used thalo blue, burnt sienna, and nickel azo yellow to make the dark green leaves. I added a few drops of gum arabic to my palette to keep the heavy paint fluid as I was working. I made sure to paint carefully around the silhouette of the statue.

Step 4: Painting the Statue

With the medium-dark and dark values established, I was ready to try the statue. Getting the value of the statue right the first time was critical. Taking two tries at the value would almost certainly make the painting labored and overworked. The statue needed to be substantially lighter than the dark of the leaves, but still darker than the full light. I laid in a wash of raw sienna, quinadridone rose, and ultramarine violet. The wash was just a little too dark at the top and I tried to adjust as I went down the page. I wish I had made the wash a little more even.

Step 5: Adjustments and Final Details

After I finished the statue and a few suggestions of trees in the background, I fixed a few things that were bothering me.

I decided that the leaves needed to come down a little lower on the left side of the painting. The big problem, though, was that some of my original darks were simply not dark enough. I made a second pass at some of the leaves and the foreground. In the final stage, I also added the suggestion of the wrought iron fence behind the statue. Although there was indeed a fence behind the statue, I’m not sure that it was a good idea to put it into the painting.

Step 6: Retouching at Home

The big picture is the last picture I took in the field. I may make some minor adjustments at home this evening. I’m not sure yet.

Lessons Learned

… or what I would do differently next time.

Hitting the strong value at the beginning was important. If I had not been able to judge against the darker values, I am fairly certain I would have made the statue too dark.
Running the statue off the bottom of the page bothers me. I should have measured more carefully in the beginning.
The end of the fence and the right side of the tree trunk are almost tangent to one another. I didn’t notice that until after I got home. Hmmm…. I’m not sure what to do about it.
I’m wondering if I could have had some dappled light on the statue. Although I didn’t see any light except for a small rim at the top of her head, a touch of pure light may have helped …. or not. I’ll try it sometime in the future and see what happens.

It’s All About the Values

Marie Matthews — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:45:12 +0000

Value does all the work; color takes all the credit.

I saw this quote on a bulletin board a while back, and it has become one of my favorites. There are so many times people have looked at my work and said: “Oh, the colors are so great.” The truth is that I pay very little attention to color, but I pay a lot of attention to value. If the value structure is strong, you can do pretty much whatever you want with color.

Handprint has an striking example of why value is so important at http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color11.html.

He displays two modifications of a watercolor by Winslow Homer. On the first copy, he leaves the values intact but makes the colors the same — essentially a black and white picture. On the other copy, he retains the original colors and makes all the values the same. The second copy — with everything set to the same value — is virtually unrecognizable.

Here’s another example of a Sargent watercolor. There’s no way the shadow under that umbrella was bright viridian. No reflected light from the grass is going to bounce that much green into a shadow, and yet it’s a very convincing image.

Now, look at it in black and white. The color is wild, but the values are right on the mark.

Hopefully, these examples will convince you of the importance of strong values. So, now the question becomes how to think in terms of value. Ultimately, you will have to resolve this question for yourself. Books and other folks can share pointers and advice, but no two people will do it exactly the same way. It’s an ongoing journey. However, here are a few things that have helped me:

Try to arrange your painting into no more than 12 shapes of 3 or 4 values. The fewer shapes and values the better. I usually try to think of 3 values: light, middle, and dark.

We recently had a Andrew Wyeth exhibit here, and I was astounded at how simple the compositions were. Even with all the details and the drybrush technique, he only used a handful of shapes.

As a rule, a scene will have a lot more than 12 shapes. And sometimes you won’t be able to get it down to 12 shapes. All the same, it’s always good to think about how you are going to join and minimize your shapes.
The eye is going to be attracted to the area of greatest contrast, so I try to put my lightest light and my darkest dark near the center of interest.
I try to establish a very definite value — sometimes a middle value and sometimes a dark value — at the start of my painting. (And I usully try to establish this area in some place that I can adjust later if necessary. In otherwords, I rarely start off with a complex shadow shape that will look overworked if I have to go in for a second pass at the value.) Establishing a strong value up front breaks the white of the page and gives me something against which to judge all my subsequent values. You tend to see values relative to other values, and if the only value you have to compare to is white, then it’s easy to misjudge a value. You’ll think something is a nice, middle value, and then you realize later in the painting that it is actually very light.