something I am grateful for today
Apr. 21st, 2022 04:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johncomiclearning a valuable lesson — today in particular, a valuable art lesson
Almost every book on drawing or painting stresses the value of values [lights and darks], and they are an aspect of art I have long taken for granted. But, now that I've started painting [and working in colour as opposed to the black and white of my comics work], the whole concept of value becomes more challenging for me. Learning to see the lightness or darkness of a colour is not always trivial for me. But all my recent lessons have been emphasizing the importance of this learning, so I finally reached the point where I am trying to pay more attention.
Almost every painting book recommends the exercise of painting a value scale, which looks something like this:
However, since my art skills are surpassed by my procrastination skills, I have never done so. I always handwaved and said yeah yeah I get it. Until today.
I approached the problem logically, and figured that a half-and-half mixture of black and white paint should give me a middle value like 5.
Not so.
It was with considerable consternation that I discovered a 50-50 mixture gave me a result barely distinguishable from 9. In fact, a 90% white - 10% black mixture gave me a result much like 7.
Up until now, when I painted, I mixed what I needed but never paid too much attention to how much of what I used. I just mixed til it worked. But today, by approaching this in a systematic fashion, I have learned a new appreciation for the darkening power of paints. That's gotta be worthwhile knowledge to have, right?
Almost every book on drawing or painting stresses the value of values [lights and darks], and they are an aspect of art I have long taken for granted. But, now that I've started painting [and working in colour as opposed to the black and white of my comics work], the whole concept of value becomes more challenging for me. Learning to see the lightness or darkness of a colour is not always trivial for me. But all my recent lessons have been emphasizing the importance of this learning, so I finally reached the point where I am trying to pay more attention.
Almost every painting book recommends the exercise of painting a value scale, which looks something like this:
However, since my art skills are surpassed by my procrastination skills, I have never done so. I always handwaved and said yeah yeah I get it. Until today.
I approached the problem logically, and figured that a half-and-half mixture of black and white paint should give me a middle value like 5.
Not so.
It was with considerable consternation that I discovered a 50-50 mixture gave me a result barely distinguishable from 9. In fact, a 90% white - 10% black mixture gave me a result much like 7.
Up until now, when I painted, I mixed what I needed but never paid too much attention to how much of what I used. I just mixed til it worked. But today, by approaching this in a systematic fashion, I have learned a new appreciation for the darkening power of paints. That's gotta be worthwhile knowledge to have, right?
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Date: 2022-04-22 04:34 am (UTC)I think my yellow and raw umber are the only small tubes that ran out around the same time, yellow because it also gets dwarfed in mixes with darker pigments and umber because it does double duty as a really nice atmospheric black when mixed with a Prussian blue or similar.
Sigh, your post is swaying towards doing some of my own paint mixing practice for gouache, something I've been avoiding despite struggling with the medium.
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